Corpsecreate
Smash Lord
So we all know what DBZ is (hopefully) and some of us know that there are different versions of DBZ. There are multiple different dubs, different audio tracks, different cuts and image editing. My goal is to have the best of each all combined into one perfect DBZ series. This would mean I have to create (encode) this DBZ myself as there is currently no perfect version available for purchase or download.
For those that are uninformed, I will list the main different versions of DBZ, what they have that is good and what they are missing.
1. DBZ Original
2. DBZ Remastered
3. DBZ Kai
4. DBZ Dragon Box
[COLLAPSE="Different Versions"]DBZ Original
This is the original Dragon Ball Z that was released in 1989 in Japan. No English Tracks (obviously) and the full 291 episodes. This was then adapted into a US release which had cut down the 291 Eps to 276. This was dubbed by "Ocean Productions" and had a musical score by Shuky Levy to replace the original japanese music.
Episodes: 276.
Video: 4:3, low quality.
Audio: Ocean Dub, Ocean Music.
DBZ Remastered
The Remastered version is exactly what it sounds like, a digitally enhanced version of the original. The Aspect Ratio has been changed to 16:9 (the downside of this is that the screen is cut off on the top and bottom), the colour has been modified and some of the grain/video noise has been removed. There are also no cuts of the episodes so there are the full 291.
Episodes: 291.
Video: 16:9, Remastered visuals.
Audio: Funimation Dub, Funimation Music.
DBZ Kai
The "Enhanced re-cut" of DBZ. This has been cut down to 98 episodes and the Buu Saga has been removed. This has a redone japanese audio track with a redone Funimation Dub. Image enhancement has also been applied. The english release for the whole series has not yet finished.
Episodes: 98.
Video: 4:3, Enhanced visuals.
Audio: Funimation Dub 2, Japanese Music 2.
DBZ Dragon Box
This is the limited edition "Ultimate" DBZ box set. It has the complete 291 episodes in the original 4:3 Aspect Ratio with a complete clean up of frames. The image no longer shakes like all other versions and has far less white 'pops'. There is no digital enhancement. The Japanese set has the original japanese music and dub. The US release has the Funimation Dub with japanese audio.
Episodes: 291.
Video: 4:3, Cleaned frames.
Audio: Funimation Dub, Japanese Music.[/COLLAPSE]
Phew now that we got that out of the way. The question is, "What is the best combination of everything?". Well it's my opinion that fake 16:9 is unforgivable, the Funimation dub is an absolute must, and the Funimation music is the best out there. However you will notice that there is no 4:3 Funimation Dub + Music in that list. It doesnt actually exist.
The plan is to take the video of the Dragon Box sets (as it is the only version that has no jitter/clean frames) and combine that together with the Funimation audio tracks. I would then apply digital enhancement/color correction to make the visuals even better. I have a sample of pictures here to compare with.
1. Remastered
2. Dragon Box Original
3. Dragon Box my encode
[COLLAPSE="Pictures"]
Remastered
Dragon Box
My Encode
Remastered
Dragon Box
My Encode
Remastered
Dragon Box
My Encode
Remastered
Dragon Box
My Encode
Remastered
Dragon Box
My Encode
[/COLLAPSE]
Now I hope you'll agree that the third picture looks the best in most if not all scenarios.
I'll be doing my own "Remastering" of the Dragon Box episodes. Since I'll be encoding each one, I have applied filters to the images to make them appear sharper/clearer than the original rips. There are downsides to doing this (longer encode times, potential loss of detail) but I believe the benefits outweigh the negatives. To each episode I have:
[COLLAPSE="Encode Settings"]1. Used the title screen from the Remastered sets (it is the only set with an english title screen)
2. Removed the two intermission scenes and replaced it with only one, this same one will be used for every episode to avoid sync problems.
3. YUV has been remapped from 16-235 to 0-255, 16-235 is a false colour scale and was only used to accomodate old TVs. This means that blacks will actually be black and white will actually be white now.
4. Colour intensity has been increased by 11.65% to stop colours from looking washed out.
5. Every episode has been Inverse Telecined to change the soft telecined interlaced framerate of 29.970 (the standard for NTSC TV) to the true 23.976 progressive framerate. There is no visual difference between these two other than the native switch from interlaced to progressive, most players will auto de-interlace anyway.
6. The pixel aspect ratio has been switched from 10:11 to 1:1, this results in a change of aspect ratio from 720 x 480 to 648/652 x 480.
7. The black border buffer has been cut off as much as possible without losing any picture detail, there will still be some borders because the cropping that needs to be done is different for the first and second half of each episode however the final encode can only be one resolution. To minimise this problem I have averaged the cropped resolution of each episode and used that as the basis for calculating the final resolution.
8. The Funimation dub with the Bruce Faulconer music has been transplanted from the remastered sets into the final encode and have (to the best of my ability) been synced up with the dragon box video. The audio tracks were encoded with 128 Kb/s AAC and the sound amplitude has been doubled. This is the only audio track in the final encode.
9. I have added a Contour filter that makes all lines appear more defined or bold, however the real purpose of this filter was to remove blur, the next filter I added counter-acts the bold effect.
10. I added a Sharpen filter that makes lines thinner and gives the image a sharper cleaner look, this can make super thin lines disappear entirely but with the effect of Contour, this should not happen at all. I have yet to see a line disappear compared with the Dragon Box rip and I have very picky eyes.
11. Perhaps to your dismay, I have applied Noise Reduction. This was a hard choice, I did two encodes of the first episode, one with NR and one without and I came to the conclusion that the NR one was better. The benefit of NR is that the small 'dots' or 'grain' that appears everywhere on the screen with the dvd rip is blended together to smoothen out the picture. In this picture the left segment is what the grain looks like and the right segment is what it looks like with NR applied. The downside to NR is that very small tiny detail is potentially lost when it is surrounded by a different colour. I have seen the effect of this but it is very minor and is something I'm willing to accept as the price of the smoother looking image.
12. The video has been encoded with a 2 pass variable bit rate between 570 - 620 Kb/s depending on the length of the episode. This makes every episode fit almost exactly 100 Mb which would mean the whole series would take up 29.1 Gb.
13. I am also looking to buy a new CPU because a 3 hour encode per episode is extremely painful. I also need a new HDD to store the rips of Dragon Box and the Remastered Sets (700+ Gb together) because I dont have enough space atm :/[/COLLAPSE]
For those that are uninformed, I will list the main different versions of DBZ, what they have that is good and what they are missing.
1. DBZ Original
2. DBZ Remastered
3. DBZ Kai
4. DBZ Dragon Box
[COLLAPSE="Different Versions"]DBZ Original
This is the original Dragon Ball Z that was released in 1989 in Japan. No English Tracks (obviously) and the full 291 episodes. This was then adapted into a US release which had cut down the 291 Eps to 276. This was dubbed by "Ocean Productions" and had a musical score by Shuky Levy to replace the original japanese music.
Episodes: 276.
Video: 4:3, low quality.
Audio: Ocean Dub, Ocean Music.
DBZ Remastered
The Remastered version is exactly what it sounds like, a digitally enhanced version of the original. The Aspect Ratio has been changed to 16:9 (the downside of this is that the screen is cut off on the top and bottom), the colour has been modified and some of the grain/video noise has been removed. There are also no cuts of the episodes so there are the full 291.
Episodes: 291.
Video: 16:9, Remastered visuals.
Audio: Funimation Dub, Funimation Music.
DBZ Kai
The "Enhanced re-cut" of DBZ. This has been cut down to 98 episodes and the Buu Saga has been removed. This has a redone japanese audio track with a redone Funimation Dub. Image enhancement has also been applied. The english release for the whole series has not yet finished.
Episodes: 98.
Video: 4:3, Enhanced visuals.
Audio: Funimation Dub 2, Japanese Music 2.
DBZ Dragon Box
This is the limited edition "Ultimate" DBZ box set. It has the complete 291 episodes in the original 4:3 Aspect Ratio with a complete clean up of frames. The image no longer shakes like all other versions and has far less white 'pops'. There is no digital enhancement. The Japanese set has the original japanese music and dub. The US release has the Funimation Dub with japanese audio.
Episodes: 291.
Video: 4:3, Cleaned frames.
Audio: Funimation Dub, Japanese Music.[/COLLAPSE]
Phew now that we got that out of the way. The question is, "What is the best combination of everything?". Well it's my opinion that fake 16:9 is unforgivable, the Funimation dub is an absolute must, and the Funimation music is the best out there. However you will notice that there is no 4:3 Funimation Dub + Music in that list. It doesnt actually exist.
The plan is to take the video of the Dragon Box sets (as it is the only version that has no jitter/clean frames) and combine that together with the Funimation audio tracks. I would then apply digital enhancement/color correction to make the visuals even better. I have a sample of pictures here to compare with.
1. Remastered
2. Dragon Box Original
3. Dragon Box my encode
[COLLAPSE="Pictures"]
[/COLLAPSE]
Now I hope you'll agree that the third picture looks the best in most if not all scenarios.
I'll be doing my own "Remastering" of the Dragon Box episodes. Since I'll be encoding each one, I have applied filters to the images to make them appear sharper/clearer than the original rips. There are downsides to doing this (longer encode times, potential loss of detail) but I believe the benefits outweigh the negatives. To each episode I have:
[COLLAPSE="Encode Settings"]1. Used the title screen from the Remastered sets (it is the only set with an english title screen)
2. Removed the two intermission scenes and replaced it with only one, this same one will be used for every episode to avoid sync problems.
3. YUV has been remapped from 16-235 to 0-255, 16-235 is a false colour scale and was only used to accomodate old TVs. This means that blacks will actually be black and white will actually be white now.
4. Colour intensity has been increased by 11.65% to stop colours from looking washed out.
5. Every episode has been Inverse Telecined to change the soft telecined interlaced framerate of 29.970 (the standard for NTSC TV) to the true 23.976 progressive framerate. There is no visual difference between these two other than the native switch from interlaced to progressive, most players will auto de-interlace anyway.
6. The pixel aspect ratio has been switched from 10:11 to 1:1, this results in a change of aspect ratio from 720 x 480 to 648/652 x 480.
7. The black border buffer has been cut off as much as possible without losing any picture detail, there will still be some borders because the cropping that needs to be done is different for the first and second half of each episode however the final encode can only be one resolution. To minimise this problem I have averaged the cropped resolution of each episode and used that as the basis for calculating the final resolution.
8. The Funimation dub with the Bruce Faulconer music has been transplanted from the remastered sets into the final encode and have (to the best of my ability) been synced up with the dragon box video. The audio tracks were encoded with 128 Kb/s AAC and the sound amplitude has been doubled. This is the only audio track in the final encode.
9. I have added a Contour filter that makes all lines appear more defined or bold, however the real purpose of this filter was to remove blur, the next filter I added counter-acts the bold effect.
10. I added a Sharpen filter that makes lines thinner and gives the image a sharper cleaner look, this can make super thin lines disappear entirely but with the effect of Contour, this should not happen at all. I have yet to see a line disappear compared with the Dragon Box rip and I have very picky eyes.
11. Perhaps to your dismay, I have applied Noise Reduction. This was a hard choice, I did two encodes of the first episode, one with NR and one without and I came to the conclusion that the NR one was better. The benefit of NR is that the small 'dots' or 'grain' that appears everywhere on the screen with the dvd rip is blended together to smoothen out the picture. In this picture the left segment is what the grain looks like and the right segment is what it looks like with NR applied. The downside to NR is that very small tiny detail is potentially lost when it is surrounded by a different colour. I have seen the effect of this but it is very minor and is something I'm willing to accept as the price of the smoother looking image.
12. The video has been encoded with a 2 pass variable bit rate between 570 - 620 Kb/s depending on the length of the episode. This makes every episode fit almost exactly 100 Mb which would mean the whole series would take up 29.1 Gb.
13. I am also looking to buy a new CPU because a 3 hour encode per episode is extremely painful. I also need a new HDD to store the rips of Dragon Box and the Remastered Sets (700+ Gb together) because I dont have enough space atm :/[/COLLAPSE]
