Disposal of old FUNimation DBZ film reel

[Inkei9001]

https://www.reddit.com/r/dbz/comments/w ... or_bojack/


Dude says he got a single film reel of Bojack unbound from his friend. His friend that was helping dispose of all of funimations dragon ball film. So now everything but that is rotting in some Texas land fill...

Man seriously fuck Sony.

[JulieYBM]

Wow, what a shame. Big corporations just don't care about art at all.

[DragonBallFoodie]

That's terrible news!

Hopefully some archives will be preserved somewhere. Probably not by Sony, but by other parties/individuals.

[Metalwario64]

So, am I to hope they have everything scanned at a higher resolution for future remasters, or is this basically proof that the new Crunchyroll will basically never put out a decent release of Dragon Ball Z?

[MasenkoHA]

the new Crunchyroll will basically never put out a decent release of Dragon Ball Z?

People were already kidding themselves with that dream anyways

[Metalwario64]

I suppose so. :/

[Inkei9001]

So, am I to hope they have everything scanned at a higher resolution for future remasters, or is this basically proof that the new Crunchyroll will basically never put out a decent release of Dragon Ball Z?

Sony wouldn't do new scans of shit they plan to throw away I'm afraid. So z will be forever capped at whatever they scanned the level sets/season sets/30thA (all the same scan) at and their dragon ball will always be the composite 480i mess that the saga set s and blue bricks used.


They got dbox masters from toei for gt so eh there

[eledoremassis02]

That's terrible news!

Hopefully some archives will be preserved somewhere. Probably not by Sony, but by other parties/individuals.

They do atleast have Z scanned and the movies. Dragon Ball the series is up in the air and I'm assuming they just have tape copies of those.

its kind of funny tho because beween this and the new head of WB they seemed like they'd fix (or atleast address our problems) but are actually making them worse.

What I'm worried about is stuff that isnt archived (if it hasnt been digitally) like the "Vendar" dub or anything else we dont know about.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

That's terrible news!

Hopefully some archives will be preserved somewhere. Probably not by Sony, but by other parties/individuals.

They do atleast have Z scanned and the movies. Dragon Ball the series is up in the air and I'm assuming they just have tape copies of those.

Yeah, I've been told Steve Franko transferred all 291 episodes of Z, so the base scan used for the season Blu-Rays was done in level set quality. OG Dragon Ball is possible, but we don't know how much of it Funimation had on film, I don't believe it was the full series though, most was digibeta.

Either way I'll take a random Reddit post with a grain of salt. Has anyone at Crunchyroll confirmed this?

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Wait a minute, has this even been confirmed by Crunchyroll in an official capacity? Up to now the only thing they have had as far as film transfers is those scans FUNi did for the Level sets back in 2011 (apparently they did the entirety of Z) and the movies prior to that for the double feature releases, while OG DB is the standard definition tape transfers from like the late '90s/early 2000's and those GT masters that were later used for the Dragon Box.

Didn't Funi apparently sell off or give away the film copies of OG DB they had at some point in the last decade or so? Seeing as how eps 1-28 had a different source on the season sets compared to 29 onward which more or less just used the tape transfers (albeit with noise reduction/zooming) that had been used for the Saga sets prior to that, and especially the former since the Pilaf episodes were not released uncut and bilingual here before 2009.

[WittyUsername]

That sucks if it’s true, but I think we may need to wait for a more firm confirmation than a simple Reddit post.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

That sucks if it’s true, but I think we may need to wait for a more firm confirmation than a simple Reddit post.

Yes, and thus i wouldn't just immediately assume something like this is true from that alone. A single post on Reddit without pointing to any actual info is not a credible source.

[Ajay]

This isn't anything to do with Sony or CrunchyRoll. These prints were discarded in 2008/2009, shortly after Funimation produced their remasters for the double feature Blu-rays. This particular reel came from Allied Vaughn who are company that provide reel scanning. It's likely Funimation used their services, and perhaps failed to retrieve the materials. It's not uncommon, and while the company isn't legally allowed to dispose of the materials, it's sadly not unheard of for it to be done quietly. They shut down their Dallas offices around this time, so I guess it makes sense.

[Metalwario64]

This isn't anything to do with Sony or CrunchyRoll. These prints were discarded in 2008/2009, shortly after Funimation produced their remasters for the double feature Blu-rays. This particular reel came from Allied Vaughn who are company that provide reel scanning. It's likely Funimation used their services, and perhaps failed to retrieve the materials. It's not uncommon, and while the company isn't legally allowed to dispose of the materials, it's sadly not unheard of for it to be done quietly. They shut down their Dallas offices around this time, so I guess it makes sense.

I see. I hope they have high res future-proofed scans of them at least.

[AlexSketchy04]

Didn't Funi apparently sell off or give away the film copies of OG DB they had at some point in the last decade or so? Seeing as how eps 1-28 had a different source on the season sets compared to 29 onward which more or less just used the tape transfers (albeit with noise reduction/zooming) that had been used for the Saga sets prior to that, and especially the former since the Pilaf episodes were not released uncut and bilingual here before 2009.

If I'm not mistaken, those film copies of episodes 1-28 come from the BLT Dub reels, correct?

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Didn't Funi apparently sell off or give away the film copies of OG DB they had at some point in the last decade or so? Seeing as how eps 1-28 had a different source on the season sets compared to 29 onward which more or less just used the tape transfers (albeit with noise reduction/zooming) that had been used for the Saga sets prior to that, and especially the former since the Pilaf episodes were not released uncut and bilingual here before 2009.

If I'm not mistaken, those film copies of episodes 1-28 come from the BLT Dub reels, correct?

Yes, they had apparently recieved full copies of 1-28 on film back in 1994/1995 for the BLT dub. Seeing as the plan initially was to to dub that portion (up to the end of the 21st Budokai) before it was abruptly stopped short at ep 13. Given how different those eps look on the Blue Bricks compared to 29-153 it wouldn't surprise me if FUNi had used these film transfers on the latter and the digibeta tape masters for the rest.

[Robo4900]

Didn't Funi apparently sell off or give away the film copies of OG DB they had at some point in the last decade or so? Seeing as how eps 1-28 had a different source on the season sets compared to 29 onward which more or less just used the tape transfers (albeit with noise reduction/zooming) that had been used for the Saga sets prior to that, and especially the former since the Pilaf episodes were not released uncut and bilingual here before 2009.

If I'm not mistaken, those film copies of episodes 1-28 come from the BLT Dub reels, correct?

Yes, they had apparently recieved full copies of 1-28 on film back in 1994/1995 for the BLT dub. Seeing as the plan initially was to to dub that portion (up to the end of the 21st Budokai) before it was abruptly stopped short at ep 13. Given how different those eps look on the Blue Bricks compared to 29-153 it wouldn't surprise me if FUNi had used these film transfers on the latter and the digibeta tape masters for the rest.

Time to dispell some misinformation about the film and digibeta masters and all that:

All of Funimation's pre-Kai Dragon Ball material except for GT was given to them on film (Toei never distributed GT on film, whereas everything else was basically only ever distributed on film until 2003 or so, at which point Funimation was basically done with Z anyway). The "DigiBeta tape masters" are Funimation's own transfers of their film material that Toei sent them between about 1994 and 2004. They thus had all this film on-hand to re-transfer a couple of times in later years for the Orange Bricks, Levels, steelbooks, and everything else.
Funi would have most likely also had shitty VHS copies of Z from Latin America to use as the footage in the dubbing studio for the actors to look at, which is why the Funi actors only ever heard the Latin American dub as the original language track until Budokai 1.

Of course, once Funi had HD transfers of everything in about 2008/2009, it's likely they didn't see the point in keeping the film in expensive storage. We know they kept their DBZ series film for a little longer, and Steve Franko supervised a re-transfer of all 291 episodes in HD in about 2011, and then that transfer was the basis of the Levels, the Season BDs, and the 30th anniversary sets/steelbooks, and as I recall some evidence points to a new transfer of at least some of DB being used for the Blue Bricks in 2009 (but most of it was just the old DigiBeta transfers from 1994-2004 that we saw on the DVD singles, the BLT dub, etc., just with some awful degraining filtering).

It's known that stateside private collectors now have some bits and pieces of Funimation's old film material, so it seems Funimation disposed of all their film material at some point in the past 15 years. I would speculate that after Steve Franko did the big re-transfer of the Z series, everything was thrown out as a cost-saving measure. It's possible Steve Franko oversaw new transfers of any of the movies they still had, and the complete DB series, just so Funi had all their film transferred before throwing it all away, but knowing Funimation (again, this was before the CR buyout; hell, it was before the Sony buyout), I wouldn't be surprised if it was just Z that was transferred in HD, leaving their only HD copies of the movies and specials as the ones they did in 2008/2009, and DB having no HD transfer at all, aside from maybe a handful of episodes from the early run they re-transferred for the Blue Bricks.

Mind you, I'm not aware of any episodes of Z turning up stateside, so it's possible Funimation just threw out everything except Z prior to 2011, and that they still to this day have Z's film sitting in their vaults... Furthermore, it's possible CR either had them throw that out recently, or is going to have them throw it out in future, if they don't foresee a need to transfer all 291 episodes for a fourth time (1st time was 1996-2003 for the original TV run, 2nd time was 2007/2008 for the Bricks, 3rd time was 2011 for the Levels).

And for the record, GT was never on the table for a HD transfer; rather than sending out release prints, Toei transferred GT's episodes to tape and send these tapes out to TV stations, distributors, etc. This master was used for the Blue Water dub's release, and the end credits (and some parts of the opening) of Funi's version, but Funi primarily used the Dragon Box transfers (prior to the cleanup being finished) as their basis for GT, which wouldn't have been an option for any part of Dragon Ball prior to 2003, when Funi was already wrapping up Z and moving onto GT...
Funi never acquired any film prints as new for transferring in HD, so GT was only ever going to be in standard def as far as Funimation releases go.

I think that should cover everything.