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

[Ajay]

Only way I can think of dealing with that shot would be through this very crude gif:

[Kendamu]

I really want to see frames that will be troublesome to crop.

Splitscenes, wide shots etc.

If you guys find the best way to not destroy the composition with those scenes, I might be sold on this said.

Everything cropped so far has not been problematic at all.

What about stuff like this...



Also, how did Kai handle this shot?

This is one of those shots that always gets brought up when discussing cropping. Without some serious editing to each quadrant or a panning shot, the best you can do is completely screw Gohan to salvage a good portion of the other three characters.

[eledoremassis02]

Maybe something like this?


I wonder if the people cropping scenes like this say "why ate we doing this...?"

[SSJ3_Zack]

I know it's an "American" thing to do but I still do not get why Funimation labels each set as seasons. Just do each of them in saga sets. I.E. Saiyan Saga, Namek Saga part 1, Namek Saga part 2, Freeza Saga ETC.

[qjz123]

I really want to see frames that will be troublesome to crop.

Splitscenes, wide shots etc.

If you guys find the best way to not destroy the composition with those scenes, I might be sold on this said.

Everything cropped so far has not been problematic at all.

What about stuff like this...



Also, how did Kai handle this shot?

Since they're doing selective cropping instead of auto cropping from a 4:3 film scan presumably it would also be possible to leave that one scene with a 4:3 aspect ratio.

[OutlawTorn]

I know it's an "American" thing to do but I still do not get why Funimation labels each set as seasons.

That's not exactly a fair assessment, as there are other American companies who release DVD sets without using the "season" label. Shout Factory, for instance, uses the season label when appropriate and, in the case of something like Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, uses "Volume" as the series lasted a single season.

I think it's more accurate to say it's a "FUNimation" thing to do, as Viz generally does not label their releases as "seasons" until they begin repackaging releases similar to FUNimation with the Kai sets. Let's not overlook that FUNimation doesn't do so with every release, as FMA: Brotherhood was released in "parts."

As for why they do so, we can really only speculate at this point, though I'm inclined to guess that it has something to do with whatever business model they've developed. Just as the cropping to widescreen was done from a business perspective, perhaps there's some business reasoning which leads them to believe people are more inclined to pick up the series if it is separated into "seasons." The Dragon Boxes, for instance, didn't use "seasons" and they weren't as big sellers as the "season" sets, nor were the level sets. Of course, it could be argued other factors came into play as to why the sales figures weren't up to par, but it could be all the excuse FUNimation needs to say the "season" label makes the sets a more attractive sale.

[BlazingFiddlesticks]

I think it's more accurate to say it's a "FUNimation" thing to do, as Viz generally does not label their releases as "seasons" until they begin repackaging releases similar to FUNimation with the Kai sets. Let's not overlook that FUNimation doesn't do so with every release, as FMA: Brotherhood was released in "parts."

As was, more importantly, Dragon Ball Kai. I think their One Piece releases were "Voyages", and I know they've used "volume" with other series somewhere. Honestly, the only reason I can think of for it is as a way to tone down DBZ's being Japanese; not saying that disparagingly, just that using an American television term technically does do that.

[OmegaRockman]

If I'm not mistaken, Japan divides series into intervals every 26 episodes (it may be 13, I don't remember) and it ends up being something like their equivalent to "seasons" in America. I think Julian gave this a name in one of the podcast episodes, though I don't remember what it was. Anyways, I think this is why Funimation uses the term "season" for collections of 26 episodes, save for non-Kai DB releases. So outside of non-Kai DB stuff, I think their use of the term "season" is somewhat justified.

[KingofWisdom]

The One Piece voyage sets are actually divided into seasons. But, interestingly enough, when One Piece began being repackaged into boxed sets, they went with "collection" over "season" (I guess it's because their "seasons" span across several volumes, while each boxed set is a couple volumes worth of episodes). Maybe Dragon Ball Z is mainstream enough in the US that the season branding increases sales. Or maybe it's just something FUNimation likes applying to lighthearted shonen series (it happened with Case Closed too, a series which didn't do well). Who knows? I think it's fair to say that it's done at complete random. I don't actually mind it being divided into seasons. In the grand scheme of things, I find it pretty insignificant.

[Rukura]

What about stuff like this...

That one got me curious. How did it look on the Orange Bricks?

[Metalwario64]

That one got me curious. How did it look on the Orange Bricks?

Like this:


Though, I do admit to liking the colors on some of the "season one" episodes. I think the Level sets' colors were a bit too washed out or faded.

Ideally, I think the orange bricks should have looked like this:


Here's the method of grain removal I used in Photoshop that I came up with:

1. Enlarge the image 300-400%

2. Do a first pass with full strength and 5-10% detail preservation

3. Increase the detail preservation to 15-20% and do another pass, and continually increase the detail preservation until you've achieved the level of grain reduction you desire

4. Add a very slight Gaussian blur to the image to hide any jagged edges, then resize back down to the original resolution, and done!

[Rukura]

That one got me curious. How did it look on the Orange Bricks?

Like this:

Thanks. Yeah, that's just kinda sad.

[theoriginalbilis]

Jesus, I forgot how blurry and unfocused the Season Sets looked.

I guess I've gotten used to the crispness of the Dragon Boxes and Kai, I never realized how awfully "VHS"-looking the Orange Bricks are going back.

[Metalwario64]

Jesus, I forgot how blurry and unfocused the Season Sets looked.

I guess I've gotten used to the crispness of the Dragon Boxes and Kai, I never realized how awfully "VHS"-looking the Orange Bricks are going back.

Only season one looks this blurry. Even crappy over bright season two is a bit sharper, and the rest have decent sharpness. At least 6-9 are relatively close to the US Dragon Boxes in terms of sharpness.

[BlazingFiddlesticks]

I can second that Season 3 doesn't have any blur issues either.

[Martinrock]

Another little gif comparing the Levels, DBox and Orange Brick

[eledoremassis02]

Another little gif comparing the Levels, DBox and Orange Brick

I miss the level sets

[Martinrock]

I miss the level sets

Yes me too so much. Here a larger gif to see how the level is great.

[kei17]

Another little gif comparing the Levels, DBox and Orange Brick

The Dbox shot is slightly stretched because when it comes to DVDs, you have to horizontally crop 16 pixels to get the accurate aspect ratio.

[Zestanor]

Another little gif comparing the Levels, DBox and Orange Brick

The Dbox shot is slightly stretched because when it comes to DVDs, you have to horizontally crop 16 pixels to get the accurate aspect ratio.

It really depends on how precise the encoding people knew how to be. If you want a to display a perfect circle on a NTSC CRT TV, the exact width of a 4:3 frame is 710.85 . So that MPEG-2 macroblocking works, DVD width is either 720, or as you said, 704. They usually go with 720. That being said, if they encoded the width absolutely perfectly for a CRT, to get it to display correctly on a computer, you'll have to resize to 648x480. But I've never seen anyone do this, so maybe it's best just to live it alone...