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Not too long ago, I went through and re-edited the entire original (pre-Z) Dragon Ball series, removing as much filler as I possibly could. In this case, "filler" meant anything that wasn't in the original comics. It's kind of like Kai, but of the first series.
I call it Dragon Ball Recut.
It is dual audio with priority given to the original Japanese track. By that I mean that I edited around the Japanese track first, and then edited the English track accordingly. I did so for a couple of reasons, the first of which is that the Japanese track is in mono, making it very difficult to manipulate in any significant way, so whatever edits I made had to accommodate the Japanese track first and foremost . The second reason is that I personally don't much care for the English dub as Funimation didn't dub it very accurately. For that reason, there may be a line inconsistency or two found on the English track due to Funimation constantly changing the dialog entirely from what it originally was supposed to be (if they hadn't done that so frequently, it wouldn't have been an issue). That said, I've received no complaints so far from people who have watched the English dub, so maybe I'm exaggerating a bit.
I used the Japanese Dragon Box for the video and Japanese audio, and the blue brick season sets from Funimation for the English track and English translated subtitles.
So I've removed as much filler as I possibly can. However, as I said before, given that the Japanese track is only available in mono, I had to work around that when editing. As a result, some filler could not be edited out due to the limitations of working with a mono audio track. This issue mainly comes into play whenever there is music playing, as that makes it incredibly difficult to cut anything out.
Episode lengths (and file sizes) vary, due to the nature of the editing process. I tried to keep the episodes around 24 minutes or so, but it was really a matter of finding a good ending point for each episode. For that reason, some episodes run for about 18 minutes while others can go for as long as 32 minutes. I tried not to go much longer than 30 minutes per episode, but sometimes it couldn't be helped.
Total Amount of Footage Cut:
I recently did some number crunching in order to give me a rough estimate of just how much footage I cut from the show, and here's what I came up with.
You'll notice that I still included the recaps in that estimate which isn't completely fair, but the reason I did so is because some episodes towards the beginning didn't really have recaps, and I didn't always cut them anyway (it wasn't until sometime during the RRA arc that I finally decided to cut the recaps completely). For those reasons, it would have been difficult for me to calculate. Even so, that added recap time would probably only result in about a 2 or 3 hour difference tops, which still leaves around 20 to 21 hours of filler cut, and that is certainly nothing to scoff at. That saves you almost an entire day!
So that's it! I know this is the "in-the-works" forum, but I am actually 100% finished with this project. Matter of fact, some of you may have already seen it at this point. Anyway, it took me a very long time to do and I'm proud of how it turned out.
I call it Dragon Ball Recut.
It is dual audio with priority given to the original Japanese track. By that I mean that I edited around the Japanese track first, and then edited the English track accordingly. I did so for a couple of reasons, the first of which is that the Japanese track is in mono, making it very difficult to manipulate in any significant way, so whatever edits I made had to accommodate the Japanese track first and foremost . The second reason is that I personally don't much care for the English dub as Funimation didn't dub it very accurately. For that reason, there may be a line inconsistency or two found on the English track due to Funimation constantly changing the dialog entirely from what it originally was supposed to be (if they hadn't done that so frequently, it wouldn't have been an issue). That said, I've received no complaints so far from people who have watched the English dub, so maybe I'm exaggerating a bit.
I used the Japanese Dragon Box for the video and Japanese audio, and the blue brick season sets from Funimation for the English track and English translated subtitles.
So I've removed as much filler as I possibly can. However, as I said before, given that the Japanese track is only available in mono, I had to work around that when editing. As a result, some filler could not be edited out due to the limitations of working with a mono audio track. This issue mainly comes into play whenever there is music playing, as that makes it incredibly difficult to cut anything out.
Episode lengths (and file sizes) vary, due to the nature of the editing process. I tried to keep the episodes around 24 minutes or so, but it was really a matter of finding a good ending point for each episode. For that reason, some episodes run for about 18 minutes while others can go for as long as 32 minutes. I tried not to go much longer than 30 minutes per episode, but sometimes it couldn't be helped.
Total Amount of Footage Cut:
I recently did some number crunching in order to give me a rough estimate of just how much footage I cut from the show, and here's what I came up with.
- Disregarding the OP and ED themes, eyecatchers, title cards, and NEPs, that leaves each episode BEFORE EDITING at about 20 minutes and 26 seconds of actual show time.
- Multiply that number by 153 episodes total, and you're left with 52 hours, 6 minutes and 18 seconds.
- My recut of the show (again disregarding OP, ED, eyecatchers, title cards, and NEPs) comes out to about 29 hours, 5 minutes and 3 seconds
- That leaves us with a grand total of 23 hours, 1 minute and 15 seconds worth of actual show footage cut, all of which was filler in one way or another.
You'll notice that I still included the recaps in that estimate which isn't completely fair, but the reason I did so is because some episodes towards the beginning didn't really have recaps, and I didn't always cut them anyway (it wasn't until sometime during the RRA arc that I finally decided to cut the recaps completely). For those reasons, it would have been difficult for me to calculate. Even so, that added recap time would probably only result in about a 2 or 3 hour difference tops, which still leaves around 20 to 21 hours of filler cut, and that is certainly nothing to scoff at. That saves you almost an entire day!
So that's it! I know this is the "in-the-works" forum, but I am actually 100% finished with this project. Matter of fact, some of you may have already seen it at this point. Anyway, it took me a very long time to do and I'm proud of how it turned out.