Looking for Information About the Making of the Dragon Box DVDs

[roseofpain]

Where can I find a video that details the process that went into creating the Dragon Box DVDs?

I remember seeing one (I can't remember if it was from here, on YT, or somewhere else) that played out like a promo describing how the footage was taken from the original negatives and many other resourceful information like this.

If anybody knows what video I'm talking about, please link it. Or, if there are other sources of information about this, please share them.

[Luso Saiyan]

Are you sure you're not talking about a promo video for the Level Blu-ray sets?

[roseofpain]

Are you sure you're not talking about a promo video for the Level Blu-ray sets?

Where can I see it?

[VegettoEX]

Yeah, you're almost certainly thinking of the FUNimation "Level" Blu-ray set featurette. Here's a re-upload of it on some random channel (I thought FUNimation's YouTube channel was gone, but it's rebranded as "Crunchyroll Dubs" now and I'm having trouble with search terms to find old stuff right now) --

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moAy02J2fd8

There is a little bit of "making of" information included within the original Japanese Dragon Box booklets, but nothing of any in-depth substance to really sink your teeth into.

[Robo4900]

Here's what I can tell you, from memory of my various conversations with people who've done the research...

Toei sent basically all their film materials for Dr. Slump, Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, and Dragon Ball GT to Pony Canyon in about 2003. (I'm pretty sure other shows were in this lot too, but I can't remember what they are)

Essentially it looks like Toei paid for a bulk transfer. The negatives and first gen prints of every episode were transferred, and the negatives and sep-mag audio tracks for all the movies were transferred as well.

Toei then stitched together the episodes from Pony Canyon's transfers and began a cleanup process...

The main episode contents are from the negatives of every episode, but the OP is from the first gen print of one episode in each lot of episodes that use the same OP (though they eliminated the differences in the first couple of Z episodes, the first couple of Saiyaman arc episodes, etc), and each episode's ED and NEP was taken from its first gen print.

The print scanning is because the credits were added when the negatives were copied to make the first master print, and were customised per-episode to credit the voices, animators, etc. on each one. The NEPs were then added by directly copying the negatives for any footage that was ready for the next episode's animation.

The scanning was not carried out especially well; it seems the scans are soft, and it's very likely the brightness/contrast was poorly calibrated and varied from scanner to scanner.

The scanned footage was then cleaned (but not colour corrected), likely by Toei themselves, over the course of 2003-2006, removing film damage, tape marks, etc.
They also applied digital video noise reduction, partially in the form of, basically, a motion blur filter. You can see evidence of this in very dark areas, where artefacts of previous frames blend through.

The footage prior to Toei's cleaning was what was sent to Funimation to form the basis of their original video masters for GT. (Which Funi then applied heavy noise reduction to, to create the Season sets)
If you pick up some of the Funi GT singles, you can see what the footage looked like prior to cleanup. Japanese TV stations use the exact same type of footage when airing reruns of DB and GT (but not Z, which uses its own, weird, unique transfer from release prints).

I can't provide sources for this stuff at this time, I gathered this all from conversations with various people over a period of a few years, so don't take this as gospel; it's very likely I'm forgetting things.

[roseofpain]

I can't provide sources for this stuff at this time, I gathered this all from conversations with various people over a period of a few years, so don't take this as gospel; it's very likely I'm forgetting things.

This sums it up. If there's anything else you remember, please share it.