Japanese Audio Sync Issues - Dragon Box

YouTube · Post by **Ajay** » Thu Aug 07, 2014 3:10 pm

I've noticed anecdotal reports on the site about sync issues with the English audio on the Dragon Boxes but never the Japanese one despite it being such a clear issue. A few forum searches have led me to very few comments about it so I thought I'd bring it up again to try and work out exactly what the issues are!

Quite often dialogue is out of sync with mouth flaps while other times it's the FX not matching the punches on screen. It's not consistent either which makes it a pain to identify what exactly the issue is and what needs adjusting from episode to episode.

From various tests, it does seem the average sync rate is around -200ms to -250ms depending on the episode.

What happened here?! How exactly did this get through and why don't we hear more uproar about it? Is it just because it's such an easy fix to do natively or, as a mostly English speaking audience, do we not focus enough on the screen to care?

eledoremassis02 · Post by **eledoremassis02** » Thu Aug 07, 2014 3:29 pm

This is something I never noticed (read about it) but I always thought it was like that cause a lot of the subbed VHS clips online had sync issues too

jjgp1112 · Post by **jjgp1112** » Thu Aug 07, 2014 3:35 pm

I remember reading from somebody here - I think it may have been kei17 - that it was an issue with the Japanese audio in general on all of the releases, including TV airings. The audio is ever so slightly out of sync. I think it's most apparent in the recaps.

YouTube · Post by **Ajay** » Thu Aug 07, 2014 7:19 pm

Oh, really? Even on the broadcast? That's pretty crazy.

I'll be interested to see what Kei has to say if he happens to see this thread then.

Valerius Dover · Post by **Valerius Dover** » Thu Aug 07, 2014 8:23 pm

Isn't it quite common in Japanese anime for the lip syncing to be off a few times? Even the dubs are better at it at times.
Or am I way off?

YouTube · Post by **Ajay** » Thu Aug 07, 2014 8:31 pm

Not that I've noticed, no. It's not just mouth flaps though; it's the sounds of punches and various other FX tracks that are out of sync too.

kei17 · Post by **kei17** » Thu Aug 07, 2014 9:32 pm

AjayLikesGaming wrote:I'll be interested to see what Kei has to say if he happens to see this thread then.

And here I am.

I am not sure about what exactly happened, but considering that it's a problem unique to the TV series, I guess it has something to do with optical soundtrack on film. Maybe they messed up something during transferring or printing new film masters. As for TV airings, only reruns of the original DB on Animax suffer from this problem because they updated the masters when the channel became HD. They're still using Fuji TV's old transfers for Z, so it has perfectly synced audio.

Audio being 0.2 seconds behind may sound so minimal to those who are not familiar with video editing, but it's a very unprofessional level of error that could have caused a recall for the releases if it's not a kids anime show. It's a shame that something like this happaned to Dragon Ball, which is known for characteristic sound effects and action-packed that it has so many moments when the off-sync problem gets painfully apparent. I feel bad for Hidenori Arai.

I've pointed this out multiple times in some Japanese online communities and I was accused of being nitpicky. The fanbase seems to be mostly consist of non-nerds and they just don't give a fuck about something like this.

YouTube · Post by **Ajay** » Thu Aug 07, 2014 9:43 pm

Ah, well at least it wasn't a problem initially! That would have been pretty crazy. Still, you're right though, that's such a basic error that seems so clear that I'm baffled that a bigger fuss wasn't made by the fans. Various characters' mouths start flapping before anyone speaks! It's pretty glaringly obvious.

For the longest time I genuinely thought it was just how things were recorded since the animation was done first and the actors would see the animation and then deliver the line a split second later. It was only when I started paying closer attention to the sound effects and the eyecatch music timings that it became glaringly obvious something was off.

Do you think it's a consistent -200ms desync? I've been trying to work out if it does genuinely vary from episode or episode or whether I'm just paranoid. What do you think?

MagicBox · Post by **MagicBox** » Thu Aug 07, 2014 9:56 pm

AjayLikesGaming wrote:For the longest time I genuinely thought it was just how things were recorded since the animation was done first and the actors would see the animation and then deliver the line a split second later. It was only when I started paying closer attention to the sound effects and the eyecatch music timings that it became glaringly obvious something was off.

Same here. I honestly just thought that's how the show was recorded back then. I even started to think it was a little charming. But now that I know it's a mixing error, I'll probably be noticing it far more often now. How very unfortunate.

I'd heard of the sync issues you mentioned with the FUNiBox English track as well, but I don't recall anything specific. Is everything off by roughly the same margin of time as the Japanese audio (about 0.2 seconds like kei mentioned), or does it vary?

kei17 · Post by **kei17** » Thu Aug 07, 2014 10:01 pm

AjayLikesGaming wrote:Do you think it's a consistent -200ms desync? I've been trying to work out if it does genuinely vary from episode or episode or whether I'm just paranoid. What do you think?

Sadly, it does vary from episode to episode or occasionally even part to part. In addition, the opening, ending, and NEP are all differently desynced. It's crazy.

Tatakae!!Ramenman · Post by **Tatakae!!Ramenman** » Thu Aug 07, 2014 10:31 pm

When I was watching the Dragon Boxes when they were first released here, the only issues I ever saw was that every once in a while I'd think that the voices didn't match up to the mouth movements perfectly, but that's all I ever noticed. I never noticed the audio happening too quick or too late, just the mouth movements not being exact, but I could be wrong.

Corpsecreate · Post by **Corpsecreate** » Thu Aug 07, 2014 11:05 pm

I manually fixed the delay for every episode on my remaster. Here you go!

Spoiler:

The average turned out to be about -260 ms.

1st number = PEP -> Eyecatch Delay
2nd number = Eyecatch -> Outro
3rd Number = NEP

Also, from the broadcast audio clip of episode 031 kei shared with me, the playback rate of the audio fluctuates A LOT. It goes faster and slower constantly, fluctuating about +-0.2% That might not sound like much, but it quickly adds up to a seconds worth of desync.

YouTube · Post by **Ajay** » Fri Aug 08, 2014 8:12 am

Holy shit! If this were Reddit, you'd have gold right now. Wow, thanks so much! This is incredibly helpful.

Yeah, the broadcast audio is pretty screwy in that regard. Fortunately the TV special audio Kei sent me was already synced so I had to make zero adjustments. It's a shame how temperamental analogue sources are. What should be an easy but time consuming process turns into a very difficult and even more time consuming process.

I looked into Capstan as way to fix the potential bow and flutter from the source but the software is so damn expensive. Rental isn't too bad but I'd have to find a chunk of time where I know I have absolutely nothing going on before even considering it. This solution wasn't too bad a starting point but it's very trial-and-error and that's not really something I'd want to deal with for hundreds of episodes.

I really do have to commend everyone trying to work on syncing this stuff. It's an absolute ball-ache!

Again though, thanks so much! These timings certainly make my life easier.

ricecake · Post by **ricecake** » Fri Aug 08, 2014 12:47 pm

That is awesome! Are those numbers for the Japanese Dragon Box, or the Funimation Dragon Box (or are they the same?)? Do you know if these numbers would also work for the dub track as well?

Corpsecreate · Post by **Corpsecreate** » Fri Aug 08, 2014 1:01 pm

I actually tried Capstan. I didnt get any good results at all. Things got a lot worse actually...It made me sad

These timings were done manually by me using the Japanese DBOX as the source. I manually re-synced the FUNimation dub as well which required vastly different timings however because of the way I've cut my episodes, my timings wouldn't mean much of anything to anyone other than myself. Sorry

Kanzenshuu

Japanese Audio Sync Issues - Dragon Box

Japanese Audio Sync Issues - Dragon Box

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Re: Japanese Audio Sync Issues - Dragon Box

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Re: Japanese Audio Sync Issues - Dragon Box

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