Dragon Ball Z "Seasons" On Blu-ray: News & Discussion

[MagicBox]

An early listing for "season" seven has been posted on FUNi's store. We should be getting coverart soon.

Extras (Not Final):
"Inside Dragon Ball Z: Interview With Justin Cook"
"Inside Dragon Ball Z: Interview With Nathanael Harrison"
"Dragon Ball Z Card Game: Past, Present And Future"
Textless Opening Song
Textless Closing Song
U.S. Trailer
Trailers

Nathanael Harrison is an audio mixing engineer for the FUNi dub, for those of you who don't recognize the name.

[Kendamu]

Not really a bad crop but it can show how they avoid bad cropping by panning. Though for this scene, it makes it a little disorienting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nc3sMudMw4k

What exactly am I supposed to be looking at here?

Not 100%, but from what I can tell, around 58 seconds in, the original show tilts up to show Freeza. To fix their cropping, the camera pans up even further than the show's natural one. You can see where the show stops and the cropping adjustment starts.

The most obvious example is at 1:19. Look at the crop adjust itself as Goku moves his head. It looks so artificial. Again, around 2:34, when Goku brings his head back down, the camera comes down with it.

I mean, at least it shows they put real effort into the cropping. Still, the fact they had to do all of that just to get an 'acceptable' crop is sad.

If I weren't asked to look for those things, I probably would have never actually noticed. I'm sure a lot of other people buying this will never notice it or won't mind it if they do. It isn't really much different than in 16:9 Kai where Goku was at the top of the frame and Nappa was across from him at the bottom of the frame. Since they couldn't properly fit both in a 16:9 frame, they literally cropped Nappa and moved him up into the frame for that version. Honestly, I trust FUNi more with adding a bit of panning I won't notice on my own than I do with them trying to cut and paste characters around their cropping.

[Metalwario64]

I just made a GIF comparison between the DVD and Blu-ray season sets of Goku's transformation:

Left is the DVD, and right is the Blu-ray:



I noticed while making this that the camera is panning all over the place before Goku's head even lifts up. Why? Also, the camera pans DOWN when Goku's head shifts up, resulting in more of the top of his head getting cut off. That looks terrible, and it's extremely counterproductive. It also messes with the scrolling of the rocks (which don't shift with the camera in the original footage), and makes it overall look like someone with a shaky camera filming it off screen. I also noticed that the Blu-rays have a random black bar on the left side of the footage for a few frames in the middle of this shot. I don't know what that's about.

These flaws are very obvious to me.

I'll upload a comparison of Goku's actual transformation later. This one took some time to rip each frame twice, then splice them together.

[DarkPrince_92]

Personally I think it looks cool. It was a little disorienting at first, but I kinda like the camera shake.

[kei17]

I also noticed that the Blu-rays have a random black bar on the left side of the footage for a few frames in the middle of this shot. I don't know what that's about.

Maybe they applied some kind of auto tracking filter and marked Goku's head, which made the screen move to the right to set his head at the center and the left edge got unexpectedly visible as a result. The same thing happens on episode 120, too:

[Metalwario64]

Maybe they applied some kind of auto tracking filter and marked Goku's head, which made the screen move to the right to set his head at the center and the left edge got unexpectedly visible as a result. The same thing happens on episode 120, too:

I see, that makes sense.

Though I don't get why they thought they needed to pan with Goku's head in the first place, since the center framed DVD's framing for that shot looked completely fine (aside from being cropped. ).

[eledoremassis02]

I think this was an attempt to make it look more "epic"?

[dbboxkaifan]

I just made a GIF comparison between the DVD and Blu-ray season sets of Goku's transformation:

Left is the DVD, and right is the Blu-ray:



I noticed while making this that the camera is panning all over the place before Goku's head even lifts up. Why? Also, the camera pans DOWN when Goku's head shifts up, resulting in more of the top of his head getting cut off. That looks terrible, and it's extremely counterproductive. It also messes with the scrolling of the rocks (which don't shift with the camera in the original footage), and makes it overall look like someone with a shaky camera filming it off screen. I also noticed that the Blu-rays have a random black bar on the left side of the footage for a few frames in the middle of this shot. I don't know what that's about.

These flaws are very obvious to me.

I'll upload a comparison of Goku's actual transformation later. This one took some time to rip each frame twice, then splice them together.

FUNimation said they were going to remove any unnatural shakiness and then look at this.

[bkev]

That's really not so bad compared to a lot of the frame jitter from the earlier Orange Bricks.

Although I gotta laugh--if they are indeed using an automated process for the cropping, there's another marketing lie there. Not too surprised.

[Lumos]

The footage hasn't been stretched they're essentially zooming in the image and as a result the top and bottom of the image get cut off.

Thanks for explaining and it makes sense I suppose. That is the actual explanation makes sense not FUNimation's reason for actually doing it!

[JEFFMAN219]

Hey guys heres the trailers for seasons 5 and 6
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWL_llR1od4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcp_KM6Ndhc

And I can't even lie the picture quality from what I can see from the trailers look really nice. I'm actually tempted to buy them lool. This question is for anybody who've bought all the season blu ray sets so far, does the picture quality and remastering get better?

[Blade]

That's really not so bad compared to a lot of the frame jitter from the earlier Orange Bricks.

Although I gotta laugh--if they are indeed using an automated process for the cropping, there's another marketing lie there. Not too surprised.

Did they ever say it was manually cropped? I thought they just said that they were exploring more cost effective methods of carrying out the remaster process in comparison to what they did with the Levels. I guess that a non-manual process could be encompassed within that.

[Soul]

Who wants some aggravating hilarity? You do!? You do don't you.
Here's Meredith Mauldin (McCoy)'s interview on the season 5 blu-ray: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C49rR9uhyxY

...Yep, they placed FOUR BY THREE DRAGON BOX footage throughout the interview.
On the blu-ray set.


...Silence.

[OmegaRockman]

Who wants some aggravating hilarity? You do!? You do don't you.
Here's Meredith Mauldin (McCoy)'s interview on the season 5 blu-ray: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C49rR9uhyxY

...Yep, they placed FOUR BY THREE DRAGON BOX footage throughout the interview.
On the blu-ray set.


...Silence.

Okay, that's really weird. Weren't they using the footage from these Blu-rays for the interviews and extras on the other sets? Why switch to the Dragon Box footage now?

[Soul]

There were a few snippets of the blu-ray footage in that. But seriously, why use the Dragon Box footage at all?
It's incredibly insulting.

[SupremeSSJ]

But seriously, why use the Dragon Box footage at all?
It's incredibly insulting.

yea talk about throwing it in are faces.

[yamipuff]

Amazon have put up a rather... interesting image for Season 7! It kind of looks like possible Season 7 artwork, but most likely not. It's just an image with no logos or anything. Take a look though and see what you all think: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KU3 ... UTF8&psc=1

Would anyone like to see this as the official Season 7 Artwork?

Also it looks like the price has jumped up to $40... I hope it goes down. That's a lot of money for a boxset that has the least amount of episodes in it...

[qjz123]

Here are screenshots from the first 9 episodes of the Season 5 set. http://minus.com/mpuICJdgn0aba

[Ajay]

Here are screenshots from the first 9 episodes of the Season 5 set. http://minus.com/mpuICJdgn0aba

I-Is that GRAIN?!

That DNR is a lot less heavy than before. Interesting. Maybe, much like the Orange Bricks, these last few 'seasons' will be relatively inoffensive outside of the crop.

[eledoremassis02]

why does that always happen? Didt the season sets have no grain to less DNR as the sets progressed?