Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z Classic Movies - Seed of Might White Balance

[lansing]

There's a clear difference in the vast majority of them, particularly the ones that Toei Yellow-blasted. I dunno what to tell you. Like,

Spoiler:

The skies are damn near two different colors breh

That makes it 2 or 3 out of the 36 samples that you can see moderate differences, which was what I said. For the rest it was like nothing. For example, look at this Goku one that they used for the banner.

Spoiler:

You started out with Goku with some yellow cast on top, then after the process, we have Goku with a little bit less of yellow on top, while none of his color is correct or even close to correct. There is no visible improvement.

I know you got an axe to grind but 1) it has clearly been stated multiple times that this isn't a full blown CC, just a white balance and 2) we have eyes. It's far more than "just 2 out of 36." The screenshot you posted is a significant improvement. This is a lot more than "a little bit less yellow"

Spoiler:

Even on my janky monitor there's a clear difference
There's no need to front on this when the clear intention wasn't a color correction.

The purpose of white balancing is not just to make the white color on the image white. In photography, a gray card can be used for white balancing, its purpose mainly, is to restore the other color, given the camera sensor is doing what it supposed to do. It is assumed that by white balancing on a grayscale color, the rest of the colors will fall into places, in which they usually do. The gray card alone is not going to give you a highly accurate result, but it should still be able to decently restore the other colors. However that is not the case for most of the Dragon Ball movies.

For this Goku shot, no other color had been restored after the white balancing, the skin colors are still way off and the shirt and gi color didn't even change at all, this tell us that the method simply doesn't work.

[lansing]

There's a clear difference in the vast majority of them, particularly the ones that Toei Yellow-blasted. I dunno what to tell you. Like,

Spoiler:

The skies are damn near two different colors breh

That makes it 2 or 3 out of the 36 samples that you can see moderate differences, which was what I said. For the rest it was like nothing. For example, look at this Goku one that they used for the banner.

Spoiler:

You started out with Goku with some yellow cast on top, then after the process, we have Goku with a little bit less of yellow on top, while none of his color is correct or even close to correct. There is no visible improvement.

Once again it is just a white balance NOT A FULL color correction, not sure how much more clear we need to be. We made no attempt to adjust the colors to what they "should" be for this release, we simply removed the various tints that the movies have. If you don't find there to be an improvement well that's fine I guess but at no point did we say "these are the what the colors should be". We are still working on a full cc but we have no timeline so we felt it was better to release what we have at this point so people have something. We are very well aware that the colors are not 100% correct and we do not claim they are such.

I know and I'm not here to argue whether the color is fully correct, I'm just curious as to why even do this with so little gain.

[vanner64]

great job SoM team! they look fantastic! I also really appreciate the inclusion of all the various English dubs. as someone who grew up seeing more than one version of a lot of these it's really nice to be able to watch whichever one I'm in the mood for, compare and contrast the dubs I personally owned with the ones I had only seen once or twice, and check out the couple I never have. all of the SoM releases have been excellent and it makes me really happy as an English speaking Dragon Ball fan to through them get definitive releases of the franchise. Everything about them rules from the picture quality, the color work, the subs, the dubs. Also big shoutout to the adjacent guys who have put up syncs of the blue water and Westwood dubs for the shows too.

Right on! Glad you like. I'll be making a video soon comparing some of the different audio options.

[ikaos]

That makes it 2 or 3 out of the 36 samples that you can see moderate differences, which was what I said. For the rest it was like nothing. For example, look at this Goku one that they used for the banner.

Spoiler:

You started out with Goku with some yellow cast on top, then after the process, we have Goku with a little bit less of yellow on top, while none of his color is correct or even close to correct. There is no visible improvement.

Once again it is just a white balance NOT A FULL color correction, not sure how much more clear we need to be. We made no attempt to adjust the colors to what they "should" be for this release, we simply removed the various tints that the movies have. If you don't find there to be an improvement well that's fine I guess but at no point did we say "these are the what the colors should be". We are still working on a full cc but we have no timeline so we felt it was better to release what we have at this point so people have something. We are very well aware that the colors are not 100% correct and we do not claim they are such.

I know and I'm not here to argue whether the color is fully correct, I'm just curious as to why even do this with so little gain.

As we have elaborated on in our other release threads, our correction methodology requires us to white balance the image first before we move on the second stage of the process (hue correction and leveling). So the white balancing process is intended to be just the first step, however due to the difficulty in working with this footage because, as you say, even after the white balance was done the colors are still incorrect, we elected to release just this version for now as in incremental improvement, so that we could allow people to experience the other positives of our movie release (the dubs, stylized subs, etc) while we continue to hopefully work on completing the process in the background when we have time.

[vanner64]

Just created a video to help show more of what we made. While I'd say the main attraction of the video is the amount of dub options (which can't be shared over pictures that have been posted already), I included a sample of the different subtitles for the title screen as well as the raw footage and our white balance side by side.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9ipOzMA3YY

[TechExpert2021]

This release is looking almost flawless like the other SoM DB releases. I hope they will color-correct DBZ.

[jjgp1112]

This release is looking almost flawless like the other SoM DB releases. I hope they will color-correct DBZ.

Color correcting DBZ is what started this all, it's just by far the steepest undertaking.

[lansing]

As we have elaborated on in our other release threads, our correction methodology requires us to white balance the image first before we move on the second stage of the process (hue correction and leveling). So the white balancing process is intended to be just the first step, however due to the difficulty in working with this footage because, as you say, even after the white balance was done the colors are still incorrect, we elected to release just this version for now as in incremental improvement, so that we could allow people to experience the other positives of our movie release (the dubs, stylized subs, etc) while we continue to hopefully work on completing the process in the background when we have time.

I have read your team's documentation, what you guys did was not really white balancing. The 3 way color corrector tool that was used was meant for color grading and creative works. By adjusting the color separately into highlight, midtone and shadow, you're essentially breaking the connection between the color as a whole, which is not what white balancing was about.

The proper steps to color correcting old anime is to first reconstruct its linear curve, then restore the saturation, and then fine tune the color as the last step. It works pretty much every time, like on this one whose the worst of the Dragon Ball movies.

Spoiler:

[Ajay]

Whatever weird vendetta going on here needs to stop. Please stop causing this in every colour-related thread, lansing.

It's extremely opaque and these bad faith retorts are exhausting for everyone who has to witness them.

[lansing]

Whatever weird vendetta going on here needs to stop. Please stop causing this in every colour-related thread, lansing.

It's extremely opaque and these bad faith retorts are exhausting for everyone who has to witness them.

What are you even talking about??

[Shintoki]

Whatever weird vendetta going on here needs to stop. Please stop causing this in every colour-related thread, lansing.

It's extremely opaque and these bad faith retorts are exhausting for everyone who has to witness them.

What are you even talking about??

being a pedant and lecturing lay people about the minute details of color grading for the sake of it when the vast majority are not even gonna care about that tbh.