Happy 30th Anniversary, Dragon Ball GT! This torrent includes episodes 1-64 and the special for Dragon Ball GT broadcasted on Animax in 2013 in HD (1440x1080i), which is a **pre-Dragon Box cut of the film scan**. It retains greater color depth than the DVDs (particularly dark scenes) and finer details from the original animation cels. The goal of this project was to release something as close to the film source, with as much of the original grain and original qualities of the film source as possible. I did not include English subtitles, but the timings should be very close to the R2 DVDs. The video files in this torrent came from the first BS Animax broadcast of Dragon Ball GT after the switch to HD. This run aired from June 18 to September 13, 2013. Shortly before the Animax broadcast, Dragon Ball GT was aired for the first time in the HDTV era on BS Fuji every Sunday at 10:00am between June 24, 2012 and September 22 2013. This means that, technically, Animax was the first station to rebroadcast episodes 63 and 64 on HDTV, and to date it is the only station that has rebroadcasted the Dragon Ball GT special. GT also reaired on Tokyo MX and FujiTWO, from the BS Fuji source. It was a tough choice between BS Fuji and Animax, but in the end I chose to move forward with this one because it was the most complete, in the highest quality, with the least amount of killed scenes. In addition, a different version was broadcast on Animax before the TV networks switched to HD, and it was a completely different source, so **please do not get this confused with older Animax video collections**. Project Overview: - This Animax source received no color correction and I attempted to preserve as much of the original quality as I could. -- The DVD footage I used to replace the broken parts were color corrected to better match the Animax source. - This is _not_ an upscale, but reducing the resolution below 960x720 yielded visible loss of detail, so it's not exactly SD either. - I used the Dragon Box R2 DVDs to restore the broken aspects of the Animax 2013 broadcast, but that only accounts for 2-3% of the overall content - the vast majority of which being flashing scenes. - I inserted the preview for the DBGT special at the end of episode 41, and the preview for episode 42 at the end of the DBGT special -- The special aired originally on March 26, 1997, in between episodes 41 and 42. I could find no evidence of the time slot, so I have to assume it was from 7:00-8:00pm JST on that Wednesday --- A preview for the special exists ONLY on the DVD. Animax DID NOT air the preview for this special in its broadcast. Animax only aired the special one time (January 1, 2014), so it was not a part of the standard programming. ---- I provided alternate sources for episode 41 and the special that maintain the originality of the Animax broadcast in a separate folder. You can choose how you watch it. This rebroadcast was significant to Dragon Ball GT for a number of reasons, but the community focused on its usage of the original broadcast audio. However, I feel that the preservation of the original film video is just as, if not more, important. **The Challenge** Unlike the Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z untouched film source broadcasts from Animax, the Dragon Ball GT broadcast had some major alterations to address photosensitivity, as well as some other issues. - High-motion or flashing scenes were either heavily blended or had their frame rate reduced to 3 to 4 fps - Freeze frames of neighboring frames were used very sparingly when there were severe defects in the film frame, which has the side effect of heavy aliasing (like pausing a tape) - One of every 4 frames (at 23.976 fps) is blended with either the frame before it or the frame after it Blown out scene from BS Fuji example: https://slow.pics/c/MFoClPH5 *Examples of frames that were in BS Fuji, but not in Animax: - https://slow.pics/c/5FkyECdN - https://slow.pics/c/hme6LFcm **Problems with the Dragon Box R2 DVDs** - Film grain was smoothed during the remastering process and then reapplied synthetically at a heavier density (look specifically at line edges and it is obvious) - Black lines around characters and other objects were thinned slightly with added grain to boost sharpness - Colors are slightly off hue, probably from the analog to digital conversion process for the DVDs (We're talking very minimal - after the Rec.709 conversion, close to a +1 shift on both U and V chroma components was consistent through all episodes). - Dark shades and blacks have a tendency to be crushed, losing fine detail - The image has a few pixels more than Animax on the left and right, and was stretched vertically compared to Animax by 8 pixels. -- Conversely, BS Fuji matches the DVD crop quite closely, so we lose a few pixels with the Animax source overall. Comparisons to the R2 Dragon Box DVDs (first pic is Animax, and click the image for DVD): https://slow.pics/c/OqAFXemA https://slow.pics/c/2PKcaqJ3 https://slow.pics/c/gZrCkBA5 https://slow.pics/c/U4YA4ljw https://slow.pics/c/ynGlLxtn https://slow.pics/c/w7ESdICA https://slow.pics/c/rm0A0zQ9 https://slow.pics/c/KW6zZm5Y https://slow.pics/c/1aueKQMX *Note: The screen shots in the above comparisons were captured as-is from Media Player Classic. I adjusted the frame size of the DVD images to match the screen size of the Animax footage. The actual MP4s in the torrent color correct the DVD footage to better match the Animax source. So, what did I do to attempt to save this broken source? - Removed the logo - Utilized two different custom decimation sequences and switched between them for hundreds (thousands?) of trims for each episode to significantly reduce blending -- In every 10 frame sequence deinterlaced to 59.97fps, 6 of these are "good" frames, 2 of them are "good" blended frames, and 2 of them are bad frames --- 3 of the 6 "good" frames are easy enough to select, I almost always chose the first of the two for each --- Of the 2 "good" blended frames, one of them blends with the frame before it, and one of them blends with the frame after it ---- I manually selected the correct blend every 4 frames based on the motion of the actual animation. Automated methods always selected borked frames or blends. - To handle the aliasing and preserve original line fidelity, I used a custom QTGMC command prompt that specifically retains grain to match the Animax source to the best of my ability - There were two scenes that were broken in both the Dragon Box and Animax -- In episode 16, there is a panning scene when Goku tries to bite into a metal apple that jerks up due to a series of duped frames (presumably because the film frames were irrecoverable) -- In the DBGT special, there is a panning scene of the school building that also jerks upward due to a 136-frame segment with random dupe frames in a similar manner --- I fixed these by creating new frames based on the actual frames before and after the dupes to restore the smoothness of the pan sequence. Created them as PNGs in Photoshop, then loaded them into the video sequence manually. --- I also did my best to restore the original 23.976 fps of the Dragon Ball GT special, but it was decidedly difficult because even the Animax broadcast was from an aged source (presumably digital tapes given to the TV stations of the original SD broadcast) - Also, I fixed the frame order in the preview/episode/recaps of episodes 12-14 where Luud is introduced (that picture snapshot effect - the original had the same error as the R2 DVDs). - Episodes 27-50 have low-quality openings for Dan Dan Kokoro Hikareteku from old, pre-HD sources. Interestingly, each of these intros has slight differences, so they probably also came from tapes of the original SD broadcast in 1997. -- As such, I replaced these aged sources with the high-quality intro of episode 56 as a base for these episodes, and overlayed key differences from the _actual_ pre-HD source with color correction to better match the HD source material while retaining all original content of the intro for each episode - Episodes 1-4 also have low quality intros from an old, pre-HD source -- Episodes 1-3 contained the animation error when Pan is holding the ladybug with the flower, episode 4 did not --- Since no HD version of the animation error exists on an official source, I borrowed Kineko Video's film scan ---- Note: Kineko Video was not involved in this project, and I do sincerely appreciate them making the film scan available in HD for us all. Thank you! --- Episode 4 did not have the animation error, so I mixed in the Animax source for this scene to preserve the original way episode 4 was broadcasted. - I didn't crop the edges of the Dragon Box replacement video, so if the extra pixels on the sides bother you, I suggest adding a few pixels of overscan on playback. - X265 and 10-bit do not handle grainy sources well, so I used the film preset on X264 under the "slow" or "very slow" settings, depending on the episode Total frames: 2,333,692 (27 hours, 2 minutes and 14.404 seconds) Total replaced frames: 59,812 (2.56% (41 minutes and 34.659 seconds)) This was a passion project that I've wanted to take on for years, and I am so happy I was finally able to do it. Thank you to all who supported me over the past few months while I was working on writing/troubleshooting scripts for this project 6-10 hours a day and encoding another 12-14 hours a day, every day. Thanks to Kineko Video for scanning the DBGT intro film reel with the animation error that only lasted 3 episodes before it got fixed. Thanks everyone!! I really hope you all like it, and can enjoy watching Dragon Ball GT in a new way. Who knows, maybe you'll see the show in a new light! Please try to help seed. Links to my Animax encodes of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z can be found below. Dragon Ball: https://nyaa.iss.one/view/1961120 Dragon Ball Z: https://nyaa.iss.one/view/1787563 Happy Birthday, Dragon Ball GT!