DBZ Kai: adding episodes of character building filler from the original series to Kai

[Stamosito]

Hey guys! I've seen some truly amazing fan projects on here and it has inspired me to potentially start a project of my own. I'm not sure if anybody would be interested in it but here it is. Basically, I think it would be fun to edit together some episodes of good filler from the original series that can be watched as 'supplemental episodes' alongside the original episodes of kai. I won't be changing any existing episodes of kai, but rather making new ones that can be watched alongside the series. For example, before the saiyans come to earth in kai, I can edit together a new episode where Vegeta and Nappa obliterate the bug planet, and alongside their destruction, we can get an introduction to the rest of the Z fighters before they start their training at Kami's lookout, like Yamcha playing baseball etc.

You're probably thinking, "isn't the point of kai to remove all of the filler from Z?" Well yes and while there is a ton of generally disliked filler that was cut from kai, there are also many instances of typically loved filler that was cut as well. I feel that this good filler is very beneficial to world building, establishing characters' backgrounds and character development and it would be nice to have this reinserted back into the series. This would be nice for not only returning viewers who are wanting a bit of nostalgia while watching kai, but also for first time viewers who may not have the same understanding of the characters that long time fans have.

For dbz, I like to categorize filler into two types, "arc expansion filler" and "side story filler." Arc expansion filler is where extra lines of dialogue, combat, and prolonged stare downs before fights occur. I think we can agree that this kind of filler kills pacing and isn't really missed in Kai. Without it, story events happen much quicker and viewers aren't left watching episode after episode of stare downs and powering up. However, I define "side story filler" as characters going on a side adventure completely separate from the main story. As I stated before, I think this kind of filler can actually be really beneficial to character development. This filler can also be free from prolonged stare downs so the pacing of this side story filler can flow really nicely as well.

As for the editing, I could take the desired filler scenes from the dragon box footage and edit them together into a stand alone episode so that it can fit right into the series. Lets say some filler from the original Z series would occur in between episodes 5 and 6 of kai. I could name the episode something along the lines of "Filler episode 5.1" and watch it between 5 and 6. I guess it would be similar to the movies and how they can be watched on the side of the series. These filler episodes could also get a bit of a recut and a change of music placement as well which could help with the pacing of the episode.

I know that there may be some challenges with this, the main one being that there will be different voice actors for a couple of the characters but I honestly don't mind it. I still think it would be a fun project to work on and I hope other people like the idea as well. If there is anyone out there who is more experienced than me and would like to take over the project then I am all for it. Seriously I'm completely new to this. If not then I also wouldn't mind getting some pointers on how to get started, like which software to use or which tutorials I could use to get familiar with editing etc. It would also be really nice to get some feedback on this idea, maybe some things such as what filler people would like to see reinserted, or which separate bits of filler would fit together in an episode. An example could be Goku's time with princess snake along side Gohan with the robot. I really think this can work, if anyone has any advice then please let me know!

[Diccolo-420]

I was throwing around the exact same idea with IHaveNoUsername, glad someone beat us to it though.

Thank you, this is definitely a project that's been needed. Having the Gohan filler in the Saiyan saga especially got us attached to him.

When it comes to the Saiyan Saga, I'd say let Goku's time traveling snake way be. The filler with him and HFIL (aside from the name in all its glory) was unnecessary and somewhat contradictory. Sure it makes his arc a bit of a drag, but the filler could arguably just focus centrally on the Earth Z fighters. Just a thought

Other than that once again I'm glad someone is taking this project up

[KBABZ]

Awesome idea! It'd be interesting to see if this approach could also be applied to the original Dragon Ball with the various training arcs, as well as the expanded encounters with Colonel Silver.

[IHaveNoUserName]

I'm all for this you should go for it !

[Stamosito]

I was throwing around the exact same idea with IHaveNoUsername, glad someone beat us to it though.

Thank you, this is definitely a project that's been needed. Having the Gohan filler in the Saiyan saga especially got us attached to him.

When it comes to the Saiyan Saga, I'd say let Goku's time traveling snake way be. The filler with him and HFIL (aside from the name in all its glory) was unnecessary and somewhat contradictory. Sure it makes his arc a bit of a drag, but the filler could arguably just focus centrally on the Earth Z fighters. Just a thought

Other than that once again I'm glad someone is taking this project up

Alright awesome! I'm glad to see that there is some interest out there for this! I've done some searching around and it seems like Premiere video editing software is the way to go. I am also going to start filtering through all of the filler and map out which bits would work together and where they should be placed as far as the episode sequence in Kai. I've also thought about it and I don't think I will be doing TFC since there is so much filler left in already. That's all for now!

[IHaveNoUserName]

Are you going to be using 480p or try to upscale the dragon box footage? If you want to upscale the dragon box footage you can use AVISynth to upscale the footage

[Stamosito]

Are you going to be using 480p or try to upscale the dragon box footage? If you want to upscale the dragon box footage you can use AVISynth to upscale the footage

Great question! I was planning on upscaling the footage with Handbreak. I did this before with MR.Mark's fan project "Buu Kai Manga Cut (Dragon box footage)" I absolutely love his project and its now my preferred way to watch the buu arc. He uses dragon box footage too but the files he uses are very large and I noticed a good amount of film grain in the picture. Its also in 720x540 for some reason. I'm not sure if all dragon box footage is this way or if that's just how that specific rip turned out.

To fix this I used the setting "H.265 MKV 2160p60" under Matroska. This allows me to set the resolution to 1440x1080,

I also used the denoise filter set to NLMeans on Medium and Animation.

The last thing i used was the sharpen filter set to Unsharp on very sharp and fine.

I played with a lot of these settings and I think these settings output a really nice picture quality. I'm not sure if this is true or not, but I think because I bumped up the resolution, when it sharpens the image, it sharpens it at 1080p quality because it can be more precise with the pixels.

I have never heard of AVISynth, is it similar to what I did with handbrake or is it better? And if it is, how so?

[IHaveNoUserName]

Are you going to be using 480p or try to upscale the dragon box footage? If you want to upscale the dragon box footage you can use AVISynth to upscale the footage

Great question! I was planning on upscaling the footage with Handbreak. I did this before with MR.Mark's fan project "Buu Kai Manga Cut (Dragon box footage)" I absolutely love his project and its now my preferred way to watch the buu arc. He uses dragon box footage too but the files he uses are very large and I noticed a good amount of film grain in the picture. Its also in 720x540 for some reason. I'm not sure if all dragon box footage is this way or if that's just how that specific rip turned out.

To fix this I used the setting "H.265 MKV 2160p60" under Matroska. This allows me to set the resolution to 1440x1080,

I also used the denoise filter set to NLMeans on Medium and Animation.

The last thing i used was the sharpen filter set to Unsharp on very sharp and fine.

I played with a lot of these settings and I think these settings output a really nice picture quality. I'm not sure if this is true or not, but I think because I bumped up the resolution, when it sharpens the image, it sharpens it at 1080p quality and it can be more precise with the pixels.

I have never heard of AVISynth, is it similar to what I did with handbrake or is it better? And if it is, how so?

RIght now, I can't really tell you if it is better because I am only experimenting with it, http://avisynth.nl/index.php/Main_Page

[Stamosito]

RIght now, I can't really tell you if it is better because I am only experimenting with it, http://avisynth.nl/index.php/Main_Page

Hmm, the lack of a UI might make it a bit of an investment to use. If you're able to try it out and compare the results, then that would be awesome! I'm just not sure how it upscales, like can it truly make the detail better? Also, inputting the code manually is very beneficial, granted you know what you're doing. I would have to learn the language to be able to use it before I could play with it and see what setting would be best. As for now, I think the compression with handbreak will work. It definitely upscales it, so at least we have that so far. Oh and I still have to learn how to use premiere first before we can even get to that haha. I'm in for a real project here.

[IHaveNoUserName]

RIght now, I can't really tell you if it is better because I am only experimenting with it, http://avisynth.nl/index.php/Main_Page

Hmm, the lack of a UI might make it a bit of an investment to use. If you're able to try it out and compare the results, then that would be awesome! I'm just not sure how it upscales, like can it truly make the detail better? Also, inputting the code manually is very beneficial, granted you know what you're dong. I would have to learn the language to be able to use it before I could play with it and see what setting would be best. As for now, I think the compression with handbreak will work. It definitely upscales it, so at least we have that so far. Oh and I still have to learn how to use premiere first before we can even get to that haha. I'm in for a real project here.

Whatever works for you man, I will say though setting up AVISynth is a pain in the ass and sometimes setting up filters for AVISynth like QTGMC

[Masquerade]

Good luck to you.

I'm doing something similar too: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=41338

[Stamosito]

Hey guys! It's time for a quick update on the project. I haven't been able to do much until now because I didn't have access to the dragon boxes. However, I just got ahold of the content from box 1 discs 2 and 3 which conveniently enough is of episodes 8-21 and contains all of the filler from the saiyan saga! So I can finally get the ball rolling here. Moving forward, I do have a few questions regarding preference for this thing.

1 Do you think it'd be better to make one mega episode for the saiyan saga filler, or would it be better to make a few 22ish minute episodes?

2 Should I separate each character event into its own part or would it be better to clump together a couple character events and cut back and forth between them?

3 Would it be better to make custom intros, use the standard DBZ intros, or use Kai's intro and outros?

Also if you would like me to specify anything I'm asking, then feel free to ask.

As far as the filler itself goes, I plan on leaving the goku stuff out and will mainly focus on the characters' time on earth. Also, there is ton of gohan filler to work with and I'm thinking about cutting some of it out to just focus on a couple main parts like helping the dinosaur, the robot and the village. If you have any suggestions on what filler you'd like to see or maybe a specific order to organize the events, I'd love to hear it. Let me know what you think!

[Diccolo-420]

Hey guys! It's time for a quick update on the project. I haven't been able to do much until now because I didn't have access to the dragon boxes. However, I just got ahold of the content from box 1 discs 2 and 3 which conveniently enough is of episodes 8-21 and contains all of the filler from the saiyan saga! So I can finally get the ball rolling here. Moving forward, I do have a few questions regarding preference for this thing.

1 Do you think it'd be better to make one mega episode for the saiyan saga filler, or would it be better to make a few 22ish minute episodes?

2 Should I separate each character event into its own part or would it be better to clump together a couple character events and cut back and forth between them?

3 Would it be better to make custom intros, use the standard DBZ intros, or use Kai's intro and outros?

Also if you would like me to specify anything I'm asking, then feel free to ask.

As far as the filler itself goes, I plan on leaving the goku stuff out and will mainly focus on the characters' time on earth. Also, there is ton of gohan filler to work with and I'm thinking about cutting some of it out to just focus on a couple main parts like helping the dinosaur, the robot and the village. If you have any suggestions on what filler you'd like to see or maybe a specific order to organize the events, I'd love to hear it. Let me know what you think!

1. It depends on what you're going for, if you're going for an OVA then maybe one whole episode, especially since the narration is different from Kai. However, if you want to style it to kai then probably go with the 22 min format, but it also depends on how much filler you can squeeze in and make the cut.

2. When it comes to narrative pacing I'd say have cuts between sequences, this allows the audience to stay invested in what's going on without getting bored of the immediate action. You might end up having lon sequences of Gohan since that is the majority of the filler, but that's not a bad thing

3. Making custom intros takes a lot of time and effort, if you want to go for that more power to you but honestly just using Kai's intros would do fine.

In terms of organizing the filler you should also look and see if it makes sense in the canon version. For instance, the whole "gohan was trapped on an island" made no sense, so if you can do an edit that takes that little tidbit out, maybe just have Gohan reach the beach and immediately build a boat. Leaving in a lot of the gohan filler honestly might work out because it gives us more reason to be invested in Gohan, wheras in Kai all we know is he's Goku's kid and has immense potential. What I loved about it is that it also had the same feeling as the original dragon ball. I do hope you also play to keep Gohan nearly coming back to Chi Chi only to decide to stick with Piccolo, because IMO that was a part of Z that really stood out for me and was big in Gohan's development.

[Kakkaroto735]

I'm considering working on something like this.
I would probably start with the bardock special but I would have to get custom eyecatches for it which is just a drag.