[iKaos] [SoM] Dragon Ball - COMPLETE (001-153) v2 - [R2J Dragon Box] Multi-Audio [Broadcast JPN+ENG FUNi+BLT+HG Dubs][480p][x264][8bit]

SEE TOP COMMENT FOR v2 CHANGES

Thanks to AnimeAjay for the banner.

It's time to give the OG series some love. This complete release of Dragon Ball is the result of months of effort from multiple people, and it is my pleasure to share it with all of you. Let's get into it.

Video

Additional quality control and suggestions provided by Romao and TODO. PAR research and analysis done by JySzE and Romao.

Notes:

1. Despite being the highest quality release available, the Dragon Boxes have many well-documented flaws to the image due to both how and when it was authored. This includes chroma noise, haloing, random interlaced shots and scenes (including half of episodes 26 and 41), inaccurate Pixel Aspect Ratio (PAR), and random shots in the wrong frame rate. Remuxes of the Dragon Box and any encodes based on them will all carry these same issues.
2. To fix these issues JySzE applied the following fixes: IVTC, decimation, PAR correction, chromatic aberration reduction, and chroma noise reduction. Chroma reconstruction was also applied to episodes 26 and 41 (See examples here: (1), (2)). No other filtering was applied and all grain has been left intact. The video has been re-encoded to remux-size and quality.
3. About PAR: It was determined after testing and research that Dragon Ball follows the SMPTE RP 187 Standard, and therefore the correct PAR for Dragon Ball is 177:160. The following calculation was used to determine the proper resolution of 708x531: (PAR Info)
4. The Z Preview has been added to episode 153.

Comparison Pics

No color correction has been done at this point, although it is being planned for a future release by others at SoM.

Audio

1. Japanese Broadcast Audio has been video-synced by Team Mirolo, except episode 4 which uses Dougo13's tape as a source since we determined it's of higher quality.
2. The "Remastered" Dub is FUNi's main dub of the series. There are minor differences between it and the original dub released on the Saga Sets, but unlike with Z it's nothing major and no re-dubbing occured, therefore the Saga Sets audio has not been synced at this time.
3. Unlike with Z, it was determined through multiple tests that Dragon-Radar created the best video-sync for the FUNimation dub, and so it was chosen over the sync done for Volitank's remux. Since English NEPs don't exist for DB, I added Japanese NEPs to the end of each episode.
4. I re-added and properly re-mixed insert songs into episodes 28-30, 33, 35, 43, 48, 87, 95, and 130. I also reduced excessive narration that played during those songs along with songs that were kept in the dub in 65, 78, and 76. Episode 19 and 86's inserts were left in by FUNi and had little narration and so were left untouched.
5. The Dragon Box audio was mostly left untouched, however 4 episodes (55, 56, 131, and 138) were very poorly synced on the official DVD and were fixed by Team Mirolo as part of their BA project, and so they are included here.
6. The BLT dub uses Hi-Fi VHS audio captured by supamesican. While these 13 episodes were released on DVD, the audio quality on the DVDs is compressed compared to the quality that can be attained through properly done analog VHS audio. In addition, despite being 2.0, the BLT dub was authored in Dolby Surround (basically 4 channels matrixed into 2.0 stereo) that carries over here. Because the dub was edited, gaps are filled in with the FUNi dub. I also extended the BLT OP and ED to fit with the JPN OP and ED video.
7. The Harmony Gold dub was a lost dub until a few months ago when 5 episodes were recovered. The audio was captured and remastered by Tom Servo and Notelu and synced by me. Because the dub was edited, gaps are filled in with the FUNi dub.

Subtitles

OP and ED styling assistance from Scoped and AnimeAjay. OP credits timed and stylized by dubudavid. Names and romanization contributions from AnimeAjay, dubudavid, professorwho, hikaritenchi, TODO, Herms, and SaiyaJedi. Timings contributed by Team Mirolo. Signs originally created by Evoshare.

Notes:

1. As you can see from the credits list, the subtitles ended up being quite involved. The dialogue subs are based on Cylde Mandelin's official FUNi translation, however extensive changes were made to OP and ED song translations and name romanizations and translations in an effort to preserve accuracy and puns/double meanings. Any name changes made here will also carry over the Z subtitles.
2. corre has done extensive work on stylizing the OP, ED, episode titles and signs to look similar to the Japanese text. See here
3. If stylized subs aren't your thing, I have included more basic subs for those who want them. These have the same name and romanization changes as the stylized subs. Additionally the original SRT subs video-synced by Team Mirolo are included in the Extras folder, with no changes.
4. For best stylized sub viewing, please use the VSFilter renderer on MPC-HC, or MPV. Link for VSFilter.

Extras

I've collected a few supplemental things, although it is by no means completely exhaustive. Nyaa has a character limit so please see the comment below for info on the extras.

Possible Questions

Why is this an encode instead of a remux? In order to properly apply the video filters necessary for fixing the video, an encode must be made. Due to the fixes we believe that the video is at least remux quality, if not better.

If this is an encode, why is it so big? Again, the intention was to retain video quality so as to essentially replace remuxes as a source. Given the overall quality of this release, and that further encoding can render the fixes less useful, we did not want to compromise on video size. That being said I will likely do another release that is more in line with the sizes of my previous encodes. There is no time-table for this release at this time.

Will it be 200MB per episode? Nah dude. Get a bigger hard drive.

Why didn't you use Selecta Vision's 1080p release? It's HD! Because it's not really HD. It's a poor upscale that has reduced details and heavy DNR usage. If you don't believe me go to the comments of any recent DB torrent, I'm sure Impakt has mentioned it. If your device has a decent enough upscaler then this release will look better than SV's.

Where is your Z batch? I thought you said it would be released at the end of summer? I and the rest of the team switched gears to Dragon Ball once Team Mirolo released their Broadcast Audio sync back in July. Personally I've always felt that Dragon Ball was in desperate need of a completed, quality release, and so that became a priority for me. Now that I'm done with this I will go back and continue work on making refinements to Dragon Ball Z for the batch release.

Why is there aliasing? MPC has a poor upscaler, try using MPV with spline36.

The subtitles don't look right! Make sure you're using MPC with VSFilter, or MPV. You can find VSFilter here. While other players or configurations may work, different players handle blur differently and so your results may look different than those presented in the example.

Where's muh Faulconer?

In Summary

tl;dr If you're a fan of DBZ and for some reason haven't seen DB then you need to download this and watch it because it's more than an "optional prequel", it's literally part 1 of the story and this is the best way to watch it.

Thanks to JySzE, HKB, TeamMirolo, AnimeAjay, dubudavid, corre, Scoped, supamesican, Tom Servo, Notelu, Romao, TODO, professorwho, hikaritenchi, and JohnnyOak, who all actively contributed to this release.

See y'all in a few months.