Color Correcting the Dragon Box - 3 Part Spectacular

[Ashura]

NOTE: I DO NOT HAVE TIME TO ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS THREAD OVER PMS.

A LOT OF THINGS IN THIS GUIDE ARE OUTDATED AND BECAUSE OF MY DAY JOB I DO NOT HAVE A LOT OF TIME TO ANSWER QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS OR UPDATE IT.

Color Correcting the DragonBox - Part 1 - Preface & Prep
WARNING: These guides will be image heavy.


LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/cc ... ntro01.png

PREFACE

In this guide, I will be talking about color correcting the Dragon Box masters to better match their original colors. This guide is actually easily applicable to just about any old cartoon that exhibits these types of film age problems, though. This guide will be helpful for those looking to color correct full episodes, or even those just looking to improve the quality of their clips for AMVs.

I'm writing this guide because a lot of people have asked me about the shots I've posted around the boards, and especially want to know what my process is in remastering things. By nature I like to share information and give back to the community, so that's why I'm posting this.

Mind you, this guide is quite extensive, and not for the faint of heart. I've managed to do it with 99% open source tools, though, and have gotten what I feel are close to professional level results.

In this guide we will be using the Trunks Special as an example, and we will take the stock video from the Special Selection DVD shown above from the muddy colors on the left to the improved colors shown on the right.

WHY?

The answer is that masters Toei used on the Dragon Box -- like a lot of shows from the 1980s -- have aged. This has affected video in two noticable ways:

-The film prints have yellowed, greened, or otherwise developed what is known as a color cast. That is, color that shouldn't be there that has seeped into the entirety of the picture. You can see the color cast mostly in the eyes. The eyes should almost always be a shade of grey in any cartoon or anime, but on the Dragon Box they are often tones of yellow, green, or red. This is a byproduct of the film aging.

-The film masters have lost color information in general. In the case of the Dragon Box, the film has primarily lost color within blue/cyan, which generally turns a sort of seaish green color. There also seems to be loss across the board in red/magenta. Often, skintones and Goku's dougi will look pinkish and tangerine instead of more red or orange tones like they should. Depending on which way the color has cast from film age changes how heavily you need to apply color correction to each individual hue!

WHAT WON'T WE BE TALKING ABOUT IN THESE THREADS?

Arguing about what the original colors are supposed to be. Any process we do will only ever come close to the original colors.

However, with these directions you can color correct things HOW YOU WANT.

Do you want to make the skies bluer than me? Go ahead, go bananas! This is why I am giving you that power.

HOW DID YOU COME TO YOUR OWN CONCLUSIONS, THOUGH?

My theories on film aging presented here are based upon studying guidebooks, cels, and a bunch of other materials I've been given. Many thanks to Kei17, Krycek7o2, private collectors, and many others for their help in researching this stuff. I will be posting more information about the film masters at a later date; I have spoken to some people who own some prints, and have been making inroads into film communities to learn more about the characteristics of the film that Toei printed these on and why we're seeing these kinds of color shifts on the film.

What I've learned so far -- however -- is pretty interesting. Shows like Dragon Ball back in the 80s and 90s worked from limited color palletes; something like maybe 16 colors total. As such, a lot of colors are used repeatedly. Thus, some common sense is involved here; they always use pretty much the same paint for Bulma's hair, Goku's dougi, etc. After a while, I've managed to figure out a pattern to how the colors have been affected on each film reel by eye, and it's easy to guess from using the guidebooks how much the colors are off even in stuff that's not covered in the references I have.

To be honest, you have to be a bit of an artist and know a bit of color theory to be able to do this and get good results; you're never going to get it exact to the guidebooks/captures/cels, and the refs themselves aren't a TV set to begin with. The best you can do is come close and try to serve the footage you have. Most people tend to overdo things, so at the very least I hope that you guys learn a little bit of a metered hand in the way I'm showing you how to apply stuff. Just remember; less is more with this stuff.

YOU'RE CONVERTING FROM YUV TO RGB?

Yes, because unfortunately Virtualdub's filters only work in RGB and not YUV. Even still, I think this is acceptable given the budget (none) I had for tools.

CORRECTIONS/UPDATES?

Yes, I probably messed something up, and as they are pointed out in the threads I will edit the top posts.

MATERIALS & TOOLS

-For this guide, I will be using the Trunks Special from the Special Selection DVD, since I assume a lot of people here picked it up.

-Photoshop. Adobe has a 30 day free trial! http://www.adobe.com !

-Virtualdub 32bit. It is available here: http://virtualdub.sourceforge.net/

-The Hue/Saturation/Intensity Filter for Virtual Dub by Donald Graft: http://neuron2.net/hue.html

-Gradation Curves Filter by Alexander Nagiller: http://members.chello.at/nagiller/vdub/index.html

-Avisynth 32bit. It is available here: http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/Main_Page

-DGIndex. It is available here: http://hank315.nl/ (Ignore the terrifying encoder at the top; scroll down to the bottom for the link labeled 'Download DGMPGDec 1.5.8.')

-Notepad, or another text editor. You should have this!

PREP

Install everything that has an installer. For AVISYNTH, make sure you install the optional plugins it may come with. DGIndex, Virtual Dub, and the filters have no installers, so put them into a directory you remember.

For me, Virtualdub is in 'C:\Program Files\Virtualdub\' and this is where the guide will point you.
For me, I put Virtualdub's extra filters here: 'C:\Program Files\Virtualdub\plugins' and this is where the guide will point you.
For me, DGIndex is in 'C:\Program Files\dgmpgdec158\' and this is where the guide will point you.

Rip your video to a VOB using your favorite DVD ripper. I will not be going over how to do this, but for this guide you need a VOB. For this guide, I will be refering to my video as Trunks_Special.vob.

NOTE: If you don't want to use a VOB, so long as you can get screenshots of your video into Photoshop and then load it into Virtualdub, though, you will be fine using this guide.

I will be putting the vob and all of my materials in C:\Trunks_Special\

GETTING SCREENSHOTS & INDEXING YOUR VIDEO FOR VIRTUALDUB

The first step is to take multiple screen screengrabs of your video. I take about 4-8 to get a good idea of what the overall color cast is for the show. The easiest way I've found to do this is to open up my vob inside of DGIndex and press F8. Going back to Photoshop, and then hitting CTRL-V to paste in the screenshots.



Once you have your screenshots, in DGindex you want to set up the frame-settings properly for your video...



...and then save the project as Trunks_Special.d2v.

NOTE: Force Film works for most Dragon Box related materials, even though there are a few hard interlaced episodes. I am not going to go into using dgindex or further ivtcing video in this guide. Please do not post questions about this.



Let that process while you're working in Photoshop to remove the Color Cast!

In Photoshop, you should have something like this:


LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/cc ... shop01.png

Once you have both of these tasks completed, you're ready to do the color cast removal. Stay tuned for part 2!

[Ashura]

Color Correcting the DragonBox - Part 2 - Color Cast Removal
WARNING: These guides will be image heavy.

The first thing we want to do is remove the color cast. Essentially, there's extra color in the picture that shouldn't be there due to the film aging ("yellowing"), and we want to use the areas we know for sure are white to remove this extra color. Those areas are almost always the eyes, and instead of being white as they may appear, they're actually more of a middle grey.

The reason we do not want to do a straight white balance is because we do not want to change the overall tonality of the colors; we just want to remove remove the excess color added by the aging but keep the brightness/contrast as close as possible as to what's on the Dragon Box already. We can do any kind of contrast/brightness adjustment later in a more controlled fashion.

IDENTIFYING THE COLOR CAST

As you can see, I have a stack of images from the Trunks Special. As I mentioned before, I got a lot of shots where the eyes and teeth are visible, but I tried to pick scenes with many different colors.


LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/cc ... shop01.png

With this, you want to check to see how the video is overall Color Cast, and to do this, you color-select from the eyes in the areas you're sure are supposed to be shades of grey.

TRUNKS SPECIAL:


LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/cc ... shop02.png

For the Trunks Special, it has very minor shades of yellow in it; sometimes pushing into the yellowish greens.

DB MOVIE 1: LEGEND OF SHENLONG / CURSE OF THE BLOOD RUBIES:


LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/cc ... shop03.png

For Curse of the Blood Rubies, on the other hand, the color cast is a VERY VERY intense yellow. This was selected directly from Bulma's eyes.

DRAGON BALL EPISODE 02:


LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/cc ... shop04.png

For classic Dragon Ball episode 02, it's actually a sea green!


REMOVING THE COLOR CAST

To do this, you can actually use either Curves Adjustment or Levels Adjustment since they both have the same white-balance color picker. For the purposes of this guide, we will be using the Curves Adjustment due to the fact that we need to save a .acv file with our caculations in it for later.


LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/cc ... shop05.png

What you want to do is add create an new adjustment layer by clicking the circled area labeled as [1] and selecting Curves Adjustment. It will add a Curves Adjustment Layer to the top of your stack [2]. From your list of screenshots, select a representetive picture. I picked Gohan being all awesome. Finally, click on the half black/half white circle [3] to de-select the layer mask mask. Finally, double click on the white-balance color picker [4] until you get this dialogue.


LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/cc ... shop06.png

Now, color pick inside Gohan's (or your subject's) eye, and watch the RGB values [5]. You want to find the highest number. For Gohan here, it is around 220 in the R channel.

Now, this is important; DO NOT MOVE YOUR MOUSE at all during this process. Hit TAB, and then fill in all of the boxes with the same highest value. So, [6] 220, 220, 220. What we're doing is middling out the yellow (or whatever it may be in the animation) out to be a proper grey value. This is the building blocks which then allow us to correct all the other colors later on.

The following dialogue will pop up. HIT ENTER. DO NOT MOVE YOUR MOUSE. I REPEAT. DO NOT MOVE YOUR MOUSE.



Once you are back to this screen, again, WITHOUT moving your mouse, LEFT CLICK. It should then look something like this:


LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/cc ... shop08.png

GOOD! You've properly removed the color cast.

Let's compare shots:

TRUNKS SPECIAL


LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/cc ... comp01.png

With Gohan, there's already a lot of improvement on the colors. The sky is actually almost a blue shade again. Look through all your shots. Things should be such that the eyes are balanced back to greys like they should. You can tell how much better a lot of things look already. If something looks iffy, you should retry.

DB MOVIE 1: LEGEND OF SHENLONG / CURSE OF THE BLOOD RUBIES:


LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/cc ... comp02.png

In Blood Rubies, the change is already really dynamic. Notice how much less dingy Yamucha and Goku look!

DRAGONBALL EPISODE 02:


LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/cc ... comp03.png

As for episode 2 of classic Dragonball, you can really see the removal of the green helps fix the sky, Bulma's skin tone, eyes, etc.


LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/cc ... shop09.png

So from here, you want to select your Curves Adjustment Layer [6], then in the adjustments dialogue, you want to click on the top right corner [7] and select 'Save Curves Preset.' Save it in C:\Trunks Special\ as Trunks_Special_Color_Cast.acv.

This saves the calculations we just did to remove the color cast from the picture into a portable format that we will then be importing into Virtualdub and spreading across our video.

SETTING UP YOUR AVS SCRIPT

Earlier I had you install AVISynth. Avisynth is a powerful frameserver/filtering system that we will use to feed our video into Virtualdub... and to do that, we need to write an AVISynth script!

NOTE: I will not help you troubleshoot Avisynth. So long as you install everything -- including any included plugins -- it should work properly however.

So, first, you want to open notepad (or a text editor of your choice; I use editpad)!

If you've been following along, you should have already saved Trunks_Special.d2v in C:\Trunks_Special\

Inside notepad, paste the following code, making changes for whatever directories you used:

Code: Select all

LoadPlugin("C:\Program Files (x86)\dgmpgdec158\DGDecode.dll")
MPEG2Source("C:\Trunks_Special\Trunks_Special.d2v", iPP=false)
KillAudio()
ConvertToRGB32()

Breakdown of each line:

-First line loads DGIndex's MPEG2 Decoder.
-Second line loads the index file and the video we made back at the end of Part 1.
-Third line kills the audio to ensure compatability with vdub.
-Fourth Line converts the video to RGB32 so we can mess with it in Virtual Dub.

Within 'C:\Trunks_Special\', save this text file as 'Trunks_Special.avs'.

APPLYING YOUR COLOR CAST REMOVAL IN VIRTUALDUB

Now, run Virtualdub. Open up Trunks_Special.avs

LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/ccguide/vdub01.png

It should look something like this.


LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/ccguide/vdub02.png

Go to Video, Filters, Add, and then select 'Gradation Curves' from the list.


LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/ccguide/vdub03.png

Click on "Show Preview", and then "Import".


LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/ccguide/vdub04.png

Go to C:\Trunks_Special\. Change the filetype to 'acv.' Select 'Trunks_Special_Color_Cast.acv' These are the color calculations that we made earlier that remove the color cast from the video.


LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/ccguide/vdub05.png

After this is done, you want to change the the color mode from RGB to RGB + R/G/B since we have done adjustments on all of the available color levels. You will notice an immediate difference in the tone of the blues.

Ok everything out.

Congratulations, you have properly removed the color cast from your video! Your grey values are actually grey again!



LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/ccguide/vdub06.png
LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/ccguide/vdub07.png

Scrolling through, you will notice a subtle or sometimes not-so-subtle difference in the video depending on how deep the color cast was.

While the color correction at this point might seem very minimal when considering this particular special (which is why I brought in the varying examples), bringing the grey/white values back is actually the biggest hurdle we face in color correcting the video. Preserving these white tones are important, since they allow you to pick and adjust the other colors properly.

Stay tuned for part 3!

[Ashura]

Color Correcting the Dragon Box - Part 3 - Basic Color Correction
WARNING: These guides will be image heavy.



So now, looking through the footage we've just created... we'll notice a few things:

-The biggest problem: The skies still aren't as blue as they should be.
-The oranges and reds are a little off.
-The skintones look a little weird.
-There might be a little blue in the skin tones, too.

This is all generally the case with all of the DBox footage. In other footage -- DBOX and non-- you may also find:

-Other colors that are off.
-Colors may be too intense and you may need to bring the saturation down.
-The brightness/contrast may be off.
-The OP, Episode, ED, and Preview may all have completely different color casts. Almost every episode of DB is like this, in fact.

Since we have restored the whites by removing the colors within them, we can now freely use the HUE/SATURATION/LIGHTNESS filter to modify each color set individually.

STEP 1: CORRECT THE BLUES

Now, correcting the blues heavily depends on how yellowed your colors were. For Blood Rubies, it's a bigger uphill battle than it is for the Trunks special, for instance; the Trunks Special is actually fairly well preserved comparatively. Either way, it's adjusting the blues and possibly further adjusting the intensity if need be.


LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/ccguide/cc01.png

To adjust the blues, we want to add Donald Graft's 'Hue/Saturation/Intensity' filter, and click ok.

This filter allows us to adjust any of the hues within the video individually. It also allows further adjustments, such as saturation and intensity.


LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/ccguide/cc02.png

We then want to hit 'show preview.' We want to uncheck everything but Cyan and Blue, and push those up on the slider. For the Trunks special, '9' seems about right. The biggest challenge here is to not push too much, since you can remove tones that should be there and force things to look completely unnatural. What we want here is a more natural tone to the sky, not to be blinded by how blue it is.

Some things I've run into may require much less blue push; maybe 5 or 6. I think Classic Dragon Ball episode 01 took 4? Remember, always look at the footage as a whole when you're making these adjustments!

STEP 2: CORRECT THE REDS


LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/ccguide/cc03.png

Add another 'Hue/Saturation/Intensity' filter. Uncheck everything but Red and Magenta.

So, as you might notice, Gohan's dougi looks a bit off (it's not orange) and his skin is slightly tinted pink. Pushing this up to 9, as well, seems to be the sweet spot for this! However, the reds are MUCH more finicky than the blues when it comes to Dragon Ball. There are some episodes where you just need to push things up to 2 or 3, otherwise things go haywire. Even with this level of control, it's a balance of what you can do vs. pushing too far and completely ruining the skin colors.

Also note that red tends to saturate easily, and on some episodes you may need to bring that down. Further, sometimes adjusting just red channel might be enough. You don't always have to do both... again, always scrub your video!

STEP 3: CHECK FOR ARTIFACTING, AND FOR OTHER COLORS THAT ARE OFF

For the Dragon Boxes, the colors above are the ones I've found which are the most off consistantly. On other cartoons, you may need to tweak some other values, intensity, etc. At this point I will usually scrub through the video and look for artifacting where my color correction didn't work correctly. This usually happens most with scenes that have heavy macroblocking and the colors are a bit warped, and it's mainly due to the fact that we're working from the materials of a consumer product instead of an actual uncompressed scan. It doesn't happen often, but it can.


LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/ccguide/cc04.png

In the case of the Trunks Special, there is one scene where the intensity of Bulma's screen is a high green, but parts of it were in the cyan and blue range. We need to fix it!


LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/ccguide/cc05.png

Add another 'Hue/Saturation/Intensity' filter. Since the screen is green, uncheck everything but green. Push up the value until the artifacting goes away, like above!

STEP 4: IF THE SKIN IS TOO PINK, CLAMP THE BLUES

Sometimes there's too much residual blue data in the skin, or Bulma's hair might look too blue comparitive to reference. What I do for this is I apply a final curves adjustment that looks like this:


LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/ccguide/cc06.png

I select RGB + R/G/B, the blue channel, and move the bottom left in a little bit. This clamps out any residual blue information that may be in the video.


LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/ccguide/cc07.png

The change is very, very sleight. So sleight I may even say it's optional.

Hit 'OK.'

SAVING YOUR SETTINGS

You're scrubbing your video and saying, wow, this looks awesome! What if I want to reload these settings later, though? Easy: File, Save Process Settings, Trunks_Special_Color_Correction.vcf. You can ALWAYS re-load this whenever you open up your AVS file and going to Load Process Settings.

From here you can save AVI clips or do whatever you want with the video. At a later date, I will show you how to load these settings directly into AVSsynth so you can encode on the fly.

RESULTS

You followed this guide to the end... did all the hard work pay off? I hope so!



















LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/cc ... inal01.png
LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/cc ... inal02.png
LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/cc ... inal03.png
LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/cc ... inal04.png
LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/cc ... inal05.png
LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/cc ... inal06.png
LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/cc ... inal07.png
LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/cc ... inal08.png
LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/br/br_shot01.png
LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/br/br_shot02.png
LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/br/br_shot03.png
LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/br/br_shot04.png
LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/br/br_shot05.png
LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/br/br_shot06.png
LARGE: http://www.twistygadget.com/stuff/db/br/br_shot07.png

My hope is that if other people try to color correct episodes that they may share their saved vcf settings in the future. I have no idea how much interest there will be in this guide, but if there is I will post some advanced techniques.

[bkev]

Your corrections look just a bit bright, to me... look at the shot of Trunks swimming. It almost looks like the whites are crushed there.

That said, this is a quite in-depth guide and I'm impressed by your work.

[jpdbzrulz4sure]

I've been experimenting with color correction myself for awhile now. Just click the link in my signature and let me know what you think.

[jjgp1112]

Holy shit...it's amazing how much better it looks. Good job, Ashura!

[Ahiru77]

Great guide Ashura.

[Pokewhiz7]

Great job on this. I remember looking at the Blood Rubies thread at comparison shots, thinking how much better the colors were on FUNimation's disc, but being very disappointed at the amount of detail lost. When I go home tomorrow, if nobody else does, I might do some shots of the Goku vs. Vegeta fight.

[FindKenshi]

I am so impressed. Ashura do you have formal education and training in this stuff? Like, is it part of your profession? Or is this your side hobby? Either way, you can produce these remarkable results... I think it was a very big eye opener, and the picture you chose to showcase as the title example: Trunks in his time machine, one can clearly see what a big difference the correction makes.

[Krycek7o2]

Very nice Ashura. This is a very comprehensive guide that I'll be taking advantage of in the future. And here I was prepping a PM on your process!

[MarcFBR]

Good guide.

I think Ashura did forgot to mention one thing (unless I missed it.)

Doing this sort of thing is very time consuming, and PC intensive.

While you can do this sort of thing, I wouldn't recommend it for most people. In many cases, if you don't really know what you are doing, the final video file you end up with won't look nearly as good as the DVD.



If you are going to do this, pay attention to everything closely.

And I'd be very aware of this point...
Doing video work can be intensive to the point that it will end up taking life off the machine.

[FindKenshi]

Doing video work can be intensive to the point that it will end up taking life off the machine.

That's incredible, really. I've heard this too for rendering large 3D projects.. I've heard of a machine that had no business even attempting such a render being utterly destroyed on the spot, as in it would never even boot up anymore. I'm sure it's not this bad though, it just has to render all these frames right? Anyway, thanks again Ashura for an amazing guide. I'd do this for single-frame snapshots anyway, just because it's cool and easy.

[Perfect]

Impressive guide, especially when it comes to those that really hate the red tint in the random earlier episodes. Am I the only one that kinda likes the blueish tint on some of the episodes?

[MarcFBR]

That's incredible, really. I've heard this too for rendering large 3D projects.. I've heard of a machine that had no business even attempting such a render being utterly destroyed on the spot, as in it would never even boot up anymore. I'm sure it's not this bad though, it just has to render all these frames right? Anyway, thanks again Ashura for an amazing guide. I'd do this for single-frame snapshots anyway, just because it's cool and easy.

I wouldn't recommend most people attempt it.

For single frames this won't be an issue. If you don't have Photoshop, Paint.net or The Gimp are good places to look.

[BlazingFiddlesticks]

What level of video editing are we talking here? I don't intend on doing this, but I've re-encoded half hour videos on run of the mill laptops before. Would something like that eventually be fatal?

[MarcFBR]

What level of video editing are we talking here? I don't intend on doing this, but I've re-encoded half hour videos on run of the mill laptops before. Would something like that eventually be fatal?

When most people 'encode' they are actually doing what is generally known as transcoding. Transcoding goes much faster than encoding and I wouldn't worry about it in most cases. But then when you are transcoding you generally don't do major amounts of filters

If you are using a program like say... Handbrake, that's transcoding, and don't worry about it.

[BlazingFiddlesticks]

Thought so, I've just joining, converting, and scaling videos lately. No filtering beyond some attempts at deinterlacing, which I'm sure even falls under that.

[MarcFBR]

Thought so, I've just joining, converting, and scaling videos lately. No filtering beyond some attempts at deinterlacing, which I'm sure even falls under that.

I'm not sure if I'm reading your post wrong, or if you misunderstood.

The types of filtering don't decide if it's encoding or transcoding. I was simply pointing out most of the time, when you transcode you generally won't be doing much in the way of more deluxe filtering, you generally stick to what is necessary to go from 'format a to format b.'

I don't know if the software you are using is encoding or transcoding. Everything you named is routinely done by both.

[BlazingFiddlesticks]

I have no idea which one process it is. Just listed what I was doing. Oddly enough, I recently got Microsoft Expression Encoder 4 (Love student shop freebies!) and it uses "transcoding", but then, that would be just it.

[Jawdrahb]

Despite the recent clutter of Dragon Box threads on this forum, it's positive to see a alternatively themed thread; thank you for your time and efforts Ashura. I won't personally be using this guide as I'm content and believe in maintaining and viewing a product as intentionally sold. Nevertheless, I do acknowledge there is a hue and tonal inconsistency issue between the colours of the Dragon Boxes and the original airing.

Feasibly, this is a factor Toei or FUNimation may take into consideration with releases in the not too distant future.