Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z Classic Movies - Seed of Might White Balance

[vanner64]

Seed of Might is proud to present our version of Dragon Ball movies 1 to 4, and Dragon Ball Z movies 1 to 13 (the classic movies). We've even included the two OVAs for free! In this fan-created work you'll get the current best efforts when it comes to:

Video
While initially advertised as a full color correction, our team eventually realized that they needed to step back from a full cc in order to make this release happen within any kind of acceptable timeline - therefore, each movie is presented with white balance corrections only. While not a full cc, the white balance corrections were done shot-by-shot and still improve the overall look of the films. We are still hopeful that we will be able to release fully color corrected movies in the future.

In addition, several video improvements were made over the original sources. For movies sourced from WEB-DLs, the dark details were merged from the AVC and HEVC versions of the films in a similar process to our DBZ DBOX merge. All movies also received some basic CDNR to remove artifacting caused by the compressed sources. As usual color adjustments also cause the size of the movies to expand as higher settings are necessary to retain the new details.

(Before then after format)

Spoiler:

Audio
The most complete collection of Japanese and English audio tracks for these movies. We're using the Japanese Blu-Rays for Japanese audio. After extensive testing over many years we determined that the JPBD offered the best presentation of the original Japanese audio. Each JP track was cleaned and balanced by Team-Mirolo and Krycek7o2. The English tracks are EXTENSIVE. You'll get Funimations 5.1 dub with Kikuchi scores, the same dub with replacement (rock) scores, the original Funimation dubs, and when available, the Pioneer/Ocean dubs, Speedy Dub, "Big Green" dub, Harmony Gold, BLT, and so much more to include commentary tracks and isolated music scores.

Subtitles
All subs are "soft" so they can be disabled or changed as you see fit. We have stylized subtitles designed to mimic the look of the original Japanese text, signs only subtitles, basic subs, English "dubtitles", and even Japanese subtitles!

FAQs

Let me take this time to answer some questions I anticipate people may have.

Q1. Why didn’t Seed of Might use any 4:3 or "fullscreen" versions
A1. The best looking HD versions of these movies are widescreen. The movies were made for both film and television and the "correct" aspect ratio mostly boils down to personal preference. You do see more image in the fullscreen version but occasionally that exposes some drawing errors. Check out Dragon Ball Movie 2 by Kineko for a good fullscreen version of these films.

Q2. What else have you done besides besides the movies?
A2. We colored corrected Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball GT, with Dragon Ball Z to follow.

Q3. Where can I find out about future projects like these?
A3. We have a Twitter/X https://x.com/seedofmight
BlueSky https://bsky.app/profile/seedofmight.bsky.social
Discord https://discord.com/invite/5HuFcx5msE

[ZeBenko]

You love to see it. Amazing work.

[Captain Awesome]

Absolutely incredible work as always - did some spot checking myself this morning and they look amazing on my 4K OLED using the custom mpv Mac build I got from your discord.

To anyone not wanting to muck around with stuff like that they also look superb running on infuse on my Apple TV 4K.

[lansing]

The before and after improvement in color is minimum. I couldn't even tell the difference for most of the comparison shots. Why all the works just to make a 5 out of 10 color into a 5.5 out of 10?

[vanner64]

Forgot to share this earlier, but here's one example of the different subtitle options you can use.
1. No subs

2. Stylized subs

3. English movie "dubtitles"

[DonCanjas]

The before and after improvement in color is minimum. I couldn't even tell the difference for most of the comparison shots. Why all the works just to make a 5 out of 10 color into a 5.5 out of 10?

You can clearly see the difference on the images posted on this thread tho?

[lansing]

The before and after improvement in color is minimum. I couldn't even tell the difference for most of the comparison shots. Why all the works just to make a 5 out of 10 color into a 5.5 out of 10?

You can clearly see the difference on the images posted on this thread tho?

Check out this 30+ comparison shots that they'd posted. Look at anyone of them, flip the before/after images multiple times and you wouldn't able to tell which one is before and which one is after.

[dragonmagico]

sir, those are clear as day different. I must express my worry as to if your monitor has been scamming you out of colour calibration

[lansing]

sir, those are clear as day different. I must express my worry as to if your monitor has been scamming you out of colour calibration

Clear as day? Are you sure?

Spoiler:

[ikaos]

sir, those are clear as day different. I must express my worry as to if your monitor has been scamming you out of colour calibration

Clear as day? Are you sure?

Spoiler:

Not all movies have bad white balance which is why we chose images from each one for comparison purposes. I will give you the first two looking similar but I definitely find it worrying that you can't see the difference in the latter two that you posted. Also again keep in mind this is just a white balance not any kind of serious color correction, as explained in the initial post. We believe the results for the movies that had worse colors is worth the shot by shot white balance corrections that we did for each movie.

[johnny1132]

sir, those are clear as day different. I must express my worry as to if your monitor has been scamming you out of colour calibration

Clear as day? Are you sure?

Spoiler:

sir, bulma's hair goes from green to blue in that third comparison. i think you need to calibrate your eyes with those color charts.

[lansing]

sir, those are clear as day different. I must express my worry as to if your monitor has been scamming you out of colour calibration

Clear as day? Are you sure?

Spoiler:

Not all movies have bad white balance which is why we chose images from each one for comparison purposes. I will give you the first two looking similar but I definitely find it worrying that you can't see the difference in the latter two that you posted. Also again keep in mind this is just a white balance not any kind of serious color correction, as explained in the initial post. We believe the results for the movies that had worse colors is worth the shot by shot white balance corrections that we did for each movie.

The latter two are examples of what I called going from a 5 out of 10 to a 5.5 out of 10. All I see is a tiny bit of color shift and nothing was changed. The before looks bad and the after looks bad as well. For the 3rd one I can even argue that the before looks better than the after because Bulma's hair color is obviously wrong in the latter one.

[jjgp1112]

The before and after improvement in color is minimum. I couldn't even tell the difference for most of the comparison shots. Why all the works just to make a 5 out of 10 color into a 5.5 out of 10?

You can clearly see the difference on the images posted on this thread tho?

Check out this 30+ comparison shots that they'd posted. Look at anyone of them, flip the before/after images multiple times and you wouldn't able to tell which one is before and which one is after.

There's a clear difference in the vast majority of them, particularly the ones that Toei Yellow-blasted. I dunno what to tell you. Like,

Spoiler:

The skies are damn near two different colors breh

[lansing]

You can clearly see the difference on the images posted on this thread tho?

Check out this 30+ comparison shots that they'd posted. Look at anyone of them, flip the before/after images multiple times and you wouldn't able to tell which one is before and which one is after.

There's a clear difference in the vast majority of them, particularly the ones that Toei Yellow-blasted. I dunno what to tell you. Like,

Spoiler:

The skies are damn near two different colors breh

That makes it 2 or 3 out of the 36 samples that you can see moderate differences, which was what I said. For the rest it was like nothing. For example, look at this Goku one that they used for the banner.

Spoiler:

You started out with Goku with some yellow cast on top, then after the process, we have Goku with a little bit less of yellow on top, while none of his color is correct or even close to correct. There is no visible improvement.

[johnny1132]

Check out this 30+ comparison shots that they'd posted. Look at anyone of them, flip the before/after images multiple times and you wouldn't able to tell which one is before and which one is after.

There's a clear difference in the vast majority of them, particularly the ones that Toei Yellow-blasted. I dunno what to tell you. Like,

Spoiler:

The skies are damn near two different colors breh

That makes it 2 or 3 out of the 36 samples that you can see moderate differences, which was what I said. For the rest it was like nothing. For example, look at this Goku one that they used for the banner.

Spoiler:

You started out with Goku with some yellow cast on top, then after the process, we have Goku with a little bit less of yellow on top, while none of his color is correct or even close to correct. There is no visible improvement.

i think you're just being overly nitpicky. while some of the movies don't really show much difference(like db movie 1(?)), others like android 13 or cooler's revenge show considerably less yellow. i don't know about you, but seeing what is supposed to be white, as white, makes for a much better viewing experience. i hope to see them release the actual full CC in the future(hey why don't you show them how it's done if you know so much?).

Spoiler:

this is so much better

[jjgp1112]

Check out this 30+ comparison shots that they'd posted. Look at anyone of them, flip the before/after images multiple times and you wouldn't able to tell which one is before and which one is after.

There's a clear difference in the vast majority of them, particularly the ones that Toei Yellow-blasted. I dunno what to tell you. Like,

Spoiler:

The skies are damn near two different colors breh

That makes it 2 or 3 out of the 36 samples that you can see moderate differences, which was what I said. For the rest it was like nothing. For example, look at this Goku one that they used for the banner.

Spoiler:

You started out with Goku with some yellow cast on top, then after the process, we have Goku with a little bit less of yellow on top, while none of his color is correct or even close to correct. There is no visible improvement.

I know you got an axe to grind but 1) it has clearly been stated multiple times that this isn't a full blown CC, just a white balance and 2) we have eyes. It's far more than "just 2 out of 36." The screenshot you posted is a significant improvement. This is a lot more than "a little bit less yellow"



Even on my janky monitor there's a clear difference
There's no need to front on this when the clear intention wasn't a color correction.

[ikaos]

Check out this 30+ comparison shots that they'd posted. Look at anyone of them, flip the before/after images multiple times and you wouldn't able to tell which one is before and which one is after.

There's a clear difference in the vast majority of them, particularly the ones that Toei Yellow-blasted. I dunno what to tell you. Like,

Spoiler:

The skies are damn near two different colors breh

That makes it 2 or 3 out of the 36 samples that you can see moderate differences, which was what I said. For the rest it was like nothing. For example, look at this Goku one that they used for the banner.

Spoiler:

You started out with Goku with some yellow cast on top, then after the process, we have Goku with a little bit less of yellow on top, while none of his color is correct or even close to correct. There is no visible improvement.

Once again it is just a white balance NOT A FULL color correction, not sure how much more clear we need to be. We made no attempt to adjust the colors to what they "should" be for this release, we simply removed the various tints that the movies have. If you don't find there to be an improvement well that's fine I guess but at no point did we say "these are the what the colors should be". We are still working on a full cc but we have no timeline so we felt it was better to release what we have at this point so people have something. We are very well aware that the colors are not 100% correct and we do not claim they are such.

[Vegard Aune]

Once again it is just a white balance NOT A FULL color correction, not sure how much more clear we need to be. We made no attempt to adjust the colors to what they "should" be for this release, we simply removed the various tints that the movies have. If you don't find there to be an improvement well that's fine I guess but at no point did we say "these are the what the colors should be". We are still working on a full cc but we have no timeline so we felt it was better to release what we have at this point so people have something. We are very well aware that the colors are not 100% correct and we do not claim they are such.

Which, when stuff is taking far longer than anticipated or what you yourself think is acceptable, seems to me at least to be a very reasonable approach. This is still a step up from what we had before, and for anyone who thinks it's still not enough, well... the full color correction is coming eventually, and I reckon releasing this won't have delayed that in any meaningful way?

[hembro]

great job SoM team! they look fantastic! I also really appreciate the inclusion of all the various English dubs. as someone who grew up seeing more than one version of a lot of these it's really nice to be able to watch whichever one I'm in the mood for, compare and contrast the dubs I personally owned with the ones I had only seen once or twice, and check out the couple I never have. all of the SoM releases have been excellent and it makes me really happy as an English speaking Dragon Ball fan to through them get definitive releases of the franchise. Everything about them rules from the picture quality, the color work, the subs, the dubs. Also big shoutout to the adjacent guys who have put up syncs of the blue water and Westwood dubs for the shows too.

[jjgp1112]

Once again it is just a white balance NOT A FULL color correction, not sure how much more clear we need to be. We made no attempt to adjust the colors to what they "should" be for this release, we simply removed the various tints that the movies have. If you don't find there to be an improvement well that's fine I guess but at no point did we say "these are the what the colors should be". We are still working on a full cc but we have no timeline so we felt it was better to release what we have at this point so people have something. We are very well aware that the colors are not 100% correct and we do not claim they are such.

Which, when stuff is taking far longer than anticipated or what you yourself think is acceptable, seems to me at least to be a very reasonable approach. This is still a step up from what we had before, and for anyone who thinks it's still not enough, well... the full color correction is coming eventually, and I reckon releasing this won't have delayed that in any meaningful way?

The white balance is the first step of the color correction so no, I don't think this is delaying it or anything; it's just a leaked alpha build so to speak