| I don't get it. You have an uncompressed DTS track or Dolby TrueHD or a high quality PCM and then you re-encode it for FLAC. Why?? Encoding from uncompressed audio to another uncompressed audio format won't make it sound better, and most multichannel home theater equipment works better with DTS and TrueHD. No Blu-rays use FLAC. When I try to play a 5.1 FLAC track with MPC-HC, my receiver only plays it in 2.0. I don't remember what I did the last time in MPC to fix it, but I wouldn't have to bother if they had just left the audio alone. The anime movie that I'm rewatching right now as I pause to type this is my own rip. I've simply remuxed the two videos (one is storyboards) and both audio tracks into an MKV without any compression. I wish most fansubbers left the quality alone too. Still begs the question. Why FLAC? |
| Because it's the best alternative for lossless audio: It's free and open source, it's actively developed, it's supported by players and devices. Groups want to have archive grade versions, and lossless audio is a must here given the rather small data volume of audio. There are very few alternatives. From the open formats, Monkey's Audio and Wavepack are fairly obscure. And the vendor and standardization group formats aren't free as in use and source code: Apple Audio, MPEG4-ALS, Microsoft Audio Lossless, Dolby TrueHD, and DTS-HD are all a vendor lock in of sorts. Once you decided you want a lossless audio version for long term archival, FLAC is a natural choice (speaking with my techie hat on). |
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| I'm not an expert but some people say that FLAC sounds better, I really can't say, I see no problems with AAC and it's less bloated than FLAC |
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Catalano said: It can't sound better than the original audio, which is my point. I'm not an expert but some people say that FLAC sounds better, I really can't say, I see no problems with AAC and it's less bloated than FLAC inim said: What does this mean? Compatibility issues? For what devices? Any media player from MPC-HC to VLC can play TrueHD, DTS and PCM just fine. There are very few alternatives. From the open formats, Monkey's Audio and Wavepack are fairly obscure. And the vendor and standardization group formats aren't free as in use and source code: Apple Audio, MPEG4-ALS, Microsoft Audio Lossless, Dolby TrueHD, and DTS-HD are all a vendor lock in of sorts. |
| Basically because S U P E R I O R A U D I O Q U A L I T Y. And this is why I hate audiophiles. |
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| By the way, does anyone know how to get 5.1 FLAC tracks to play in 5.1 in MPC? I don't wanna mess with Output Speaker Configuration in Audio Decoder > Mixing because I also use headphones. I thought there was another way to do it, but I can't remember what I did the last time. |
Ezekiel said: That may be the case, they are all still covered by patents and license terms. VLC is a EU research, tax money backed flagship product which can afford the lawyers to deal with that. Cheap electronics may simply ignore patent laws (hello China!). Yet, why bother with it when there is no technical reason? FLAC does the job and comes with an open source license. You will be able to modify that codec in 100 years still if you run into an old archive, I doubt this holds for any of the others.inim said: What does this mean? Compatibility issues? For what devices? Any media player from MPC-HC to VLC can play TrueHD, DTS and PCM just fine. And the vendor and standardization group formats aren't free as in use and source code: Apple Audio, MPEG4-ALS, Microsoft Audio Lossless, Dolby TrueHD, and DTS-HD are all a vendor lock in of sorts. Safe long term archival and consumer electronic support are different goals, and I can see why groups have the priorities they have. The logic here is that once sufficient material is available and consumers ask for a codec, electronic vendors (especially cheapo Chinese gear ones) will implement them. Even more so if that comes at zero legal and financial cost. If some brand vendors don't, that's clearly politics trying to establish commercial advantages, something fan subbers shouldn't want to support. EDIT: And PCM isn't useful as it does zero compression, it's the raw wave form and gains you nothing. |
inimOct 18, 2020 4:41 AM
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| I've seen encodes where the FLAC audio size surpasses the video size... But then again if you have money to spend on a hi-fi system, storage and bandwidth is not an issue for you. Also, you're likely to have a device with great display rather than great audio. If the average episode size is between 300-500MB and audio is FLAC, chances are it's a shitty encode and the person has no idea what he's doing. OPUS is great for majority of audience. |
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salarx said: OPUS is great but not lossless, thus not suited for long term archival. It also isn't free of patents and license terms, even if they are very liberal: https://opus-codec.org/license/OPUS is great for majority of audience. Opus has a freely available specification, a BSD-licensed, high-quality reference encoder and decoder, and protective, royalty-free licenses for the required patents. The copyright and patent licenses for Opus are automatically granted to everyone and do not require application or approval. The Opus FAQ has more information on why Opus is freely licensed. "freely licensed" is just an euphemism for "not fully free and open source" ... This is the problem with all those commerical codecs discussed earlier, too. |
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inim said: EDIT: And PCM isn't useful as it does zero compression, it's the raw wave form and gains you nothing. What do you mean "useful?" I'm not talking about re-encoding it in PCM, I'm talking about keeping the PCM that was on the Blu-ray or DVD. |
Ezekiel said: Flac achives precisely that, but on top of it only requires 40-50% of the PCM data volume. From FLAC, a bitwise identical PCM can be recovered, thus the name "lossless". Smaller = better in archival, right?inim said: What do you mean "useful?" I'm not talking about re-encoding it in PCM, I'm talking about keeping the PCM that was on the Blu-ray or DVD. EDIT: And PCM isn't useful as it does zero compression, it's the raw wave form and gains you nothing. EDIT: In my lifetime, I've seen countless media codecs come and go. I'd argue that most views of a fansub happen via some form of streaming service long term. Streaming services re-encode the material to what is the latest and greatest popular codec combo anyway. When I started it was DIVX, now it's x.264 mostly, with x.265 slowly replacing it. The x.266 standard is finalized and will hit end consumer devices and software in 1-2 years. FLAC will support it all, because it is just the original PCM, and can be re-encoded as needed and as the current device chip set technology supports. That's the mindset behind using robust, open codecs rather than the latest industry hype. Early in the life cycle of a codec that means some problems, but the planned life cycle usually is decades and not years. What you did, re-encoding of a high quality source, is intended berhavior. It's a feature that you can do that and lose no quality, not a bug. |
inimOct 18, 2020 5:03 AM
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inim said: OPUS is great but not lossless, thus not suited for long term archival. Well if I'm looking for long term archival, I'd rather grab a BDMV release. FLAC is great for archival, and maybe you'll archive a few favorites. But for most of times, I'm either gonna stream a video, or just download-watch-delete. Both have their use case and can't act as replacement of each other. Although OPUS is patented, but royalty-free. So, device manufactures can provide OPUS support without paying a single penny. On the other hand, AAC has royalty fees. Same problem is with x265; hence it has seen a slow adoption and no native support even on windows or ios till date. That's why AV1 has seen faster adoption and soon will replace x265 in anime, or streaming in general. |
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inim said: Ezekiel said: Flac achives precisely that, but on top of it only requires 40-50% of the PCM data volume. From FLAC, a bitwise identical PCM can be recovered, thus the name "lossless". Smaller = better in archival, right?What do you mean "useful?" I'm not talking about re-encoding it in PCM, I'm talking about keeping the PCM that was on the Blu-ray or DVD. EDIT: In my lifetime, I've seen countless media codecs come and go. I'd argue that most views of a fansub happen via some form of streaming service long term. Streaming services re-encode the material to what is the latest and greatest popular codec combo anyway. When I started it was DIVX, now it's x.264 mostly, with x.265 slowly replacing it. The x.266 standard is finalized and will hit end consumer devices and software in 1-2 years. FLAC will support it all, because it is just the original PCM, and can be re-encoded as needed and as the current device chip set technology supports. That's the mindset behind using robust, open codecs rather than the latest industry hype. Early in the life cycle of a codec that means some problems, but the planned life cycle usually is decades and not years. What you did, re-encoding of a high quality source, is intended berhavior. It's a feature that you can do that and lose no quality, not a bug. I haven't found any old codecs that I've been unable to play. Even the new Dolby Atmos and DTS:X are still TrueHD and DTS at their core, so I can imagine TrueHD and DTS being supported for a very, very long time. Dolby Digital (AC3) is huge too. It's still used by new discs and I don't see it becoming incompatible any time soon. I feel like people should be doing that with their existing files if the time comes, not now, because in the meantime it just makes things more complicated. Still can't play 5.1 FLAC files in 5.1. I could just play them like this (2.0) and then set the receiver to surround, but I'm sure it won't sound right. I can't play 5.1 PCM in 5.1 either. I could before I reinstalled MPC-HC and my codecs. Thankfully, almost no Blu-rays or DVDs use 5.1 PCM. For surround, it's always AC3, TrueHD or DTS. I think Apocalypto is my only movie with 5.1 PCM. |
EzekielOct 18, 2020 7:48 AM
Ezekiel said: I haven't found any old codecs that I've been unable to play. You think like an end consumer, not like a creator or archiver. Of course you can still play 320x200 hard-subbed movies from the early 2000s. Eye cancer included. Commercial codecs are a dead end, as their patents and license terms pretty much block community driven improvements. You forever are at the mercy of the commercial entity holding the rights. Some of those companies abandon codecs or worse, sell them to patent shark companies. Do you remember the tragedy of the GIF format, which prevented progress in media content for many years due to a silly US patent which needed to expire first? Ezekiel said: I create digital content for over 40 years, and frankly I can't read most of what I created more than 20 years ago anymore. The operating systems and the authoring software don't work on current hardware anymore easily.Even the new Dolby Atmos and DTS:X are still TrueHD and DTS at their core, so I can imagine TrueHD and DTS being supported for a very, very long time. Dolby Digital (AC3) is huge too. It's still used by new discs and I don't see it becoming incompatible any time soon. Fansub groups are like miners, they create a raw material. No derived work will ever surpass the original quality they release. There is no real need to re-process most fansubs for decades when they are done properly. Which means: lossless audio, soft subs, and good video codec. The latter can be fairly simply replaced with more modern video over time by simply remuxing with a better stream. End consumers and device specific convenience encodings are of minor interest, they are consumer grade only. An own class of groups meanwhile has sprung into life doing the convenience recodings. But the genuine source material must be optimized for longlivity and re-encodability, because anything else is a waste of work. When you as end consumer use archival versions, it's your job to do convenience conversations, or look for release channels which carry them. salarx said: You too describe end consumer usage patterns. Streaming portals and archival sites need to store long term, and best quality. And a terabyte costs per month in the cloud. Or who you think offers all the seeding, streaming, and download sites? Those people don't share your reality, but they set the standard for the formats. You too should accept that end consumer re-encodings to meet latest hard- and software consumer electronics is nothing they really care about. That's the job of end consumer portals and distribution channels.inim said: Well if I'm looking for long term archival, I'd rather grab a BDMV release. FLAC is great for archival, and maybe you'll archive a few favorites. But for most of times, I'm either gonna stream a video, or just download-watch-delete.OPUS is great but not lossless, thus not suited for long term archival. salarx said: That's only half the truth. The patents prevent you from modifying and optimizing many codecs. They prevent forks and progress. Even some more sophisticated tricks and optimizations for better quality and speed are not covered. What you are granted is basically the right to use a reference implementation of mediocre code, encoding quality and speed without significant changes. See PNG/GIF experience for why that is not an option.Although OPUS is patented, but royalty-free. So, device manufactures can provide OPUS support without paying a single penny. salarx said: BDMV is a high end authoring format with encryption and huge file sizes. It's meant for authoring environments and will completely overwhelm consumer grade devices and network connections easily. It's also not easily available, because that format is actually the master and companies protect it. End consumers need BDAV or even lesser formats, anything else is overkill. Also, BDMV is part of a commercial standard (BD family) and already outdated, as x.266 is done and currently chip vendors work on the silicon codecs. It's also covered by patents and uses lossy codecs by default.I'd rather grab a BDMV release tl;dr: Content creators' main goal aren't end consumer devices, but longevity and re-process ability of their creation. Which is the sub, the timings, and the highest reasonably possible streams at the time of creation. Anything else is an end consumer problem, not theirs. If end consumers use archival versions (i.e. genuine fansub group releases), they have to live and deal with recoding - anything else would hurt the quality of the original releases. |
inimOct 18, 2020 8:43 AM
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inim said: Fansub groups are like miners, they create a raw material. No derived work will ever surpass the original quality they release. There is no real need to re-process most fansubs for decades when they are done properly. Which means: lossless audio, soft subs, and good video codec. The latter can be fairly simply replaced with more modern video over time by simply remuxing with a better stream. I'm not sure what era of fansubbing you're describing here, but these days it's not like that. Most fansubbers grab their release from online streaming sites like Funimation, Netflix, Prime and just do the subs. Sometimes the stream is re-encoded or just remuxed with the subs. "No derived work will ever surpass the original quality the release" is also not true, since they mostly do the web releases which are already horrible quality in terms of video and audio, so subs are the only thing that can be improved at time of airing. Now some improve their subs when bluray comes, but it's generally not the case now. So, there is always the need to sync or improve the fansubs when the Bluray comes. Now there are different types of groups, some release BDMV, others release encodes of BDMV, and there are some who re-encode. The best being the lossless video and lossless audio encodes, but you'll generally find lossy video and lossless audio encodes most of the times. The combination of lossy video and lossless audio doesn't make sense for archiving purpose. Even if you waste time producing a lossless video, you're not gonna get significant compression from the source which is bluray in this case. What I mean to say the term 'fansubbing' has been literally reduced to subbing. They blurays are released as it is, some groups encode from bluray and mux the subs released by fansubbers, and different groups use different codecs. x264 is still used, while some have moved on to x265. Others are adopting AV1 now, and x266 has no significant advantage over that. Most fansubbers, release groups or re-release groups need not to encode audio to FLAC, especially the ones releasing small-medium size lossy video encodes. For archival purpose, there are BDMV, and on Bittorent network, disk space is not an issue. Even I can grab Blurays of my favorite series and seed them for a few years. And I'm talking about consumer end since fansubs are intended for consumer, that's why they are shared. And it's not like video and audio is available separately. When you grab a lossless release, you can audio and video streams in a single container. So even if you plan to replace the existing video or audio with the remastered one, you'll have to grab the complete file (generally the source is bluray). That again makes the encoding to FLAC useless. So, let me say that again, fansubbing is not for archiving but for sharing, hence it needs to be done keeping in mind the consumer, who doesn't need FLAC (well majority don't). For those who are not consumers, can easily get untouched Bluray and keep it for the next generation to re-encode, or share. Regarding OPUS, it the best choice available right now when it comes to lossy audio. There's no one stopping you from forking and improving libopus, but then the issue of compatibility comes. You're fast and speedy version is useless if it can't run on all the devices, hence some standardization is required. Regarding patents, xiph holds patents of opus, who also created FLAC. There are other patent holders of OPUS like Microsoft and Broadcom, but I don't see an issue in that as long as it remains royalty free. |
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salarx said: First of all, thanks a lot for the insightful review of current practice, very pragmatic and educational. We indeed talk about different scenarios and come to different solutions, and both are probably "the best" for what we both have in mind.inim said: I'm not sure what era of fansubbing you're describing here, but these days it's not like that. Most fansubbers grab their release from online streaming sites like Funimation, Netflix, Prime and just do the subs.Fansub groups are like miners, they create a raw material. No derived work will ever surpass the original quality they release. There is no real need to re-process most fansubs for decades when they are done properly. Which means: lossless audio, soft subs, and good video codec. The latter can be fairly simply replaced with more modern video over time by simply remuxing with a better stream. I describe the same era as you do, but not the same type of anime. When I say "fan sub" I mean Orphan Subs, when you use it you mean Erai-raws. The former uses high end, custom hardware to scrape LD and VHS sources, and translates from the Japanese audio and screen text. This can not be easily done by everybody. The latter rips streams from the net and redistributes, along with the existing subs from the commercial streamers. A third class of group rips DVD/BD and maybe plays a bit with the subs before releasing, but without real need as today there should be commercially translated subs on each DVD/BD. Another difference is that I'm mainly talking about German fan-subs, which are less mainstream on the big torrent sites and portals. Recent anime are grabbed and recoded, there is no translation needed. Wakamin, Funimation, Netflix or Amazon did that already. There may be groups which work on improved versions, but I guess that's a minor thing. For the bulk of modern anime, it's little more than re-distributing existing lossy streams pirated from a commerical streams or DVD, with or without recoding. I personally wouldn't call that "fan subbing", it's just vanilla piracy as usual. salarx said: Sorry to nitpick, but there is no such thing as lossless video. Maybe in fringe use cases such as scientific high speed cameras or some high-end Hollywood equipment. But even a single anime episode of true raw video would be multiple terabytes. No x.26X encoding is lossless. Yet, given anime is produced in 720p mostly still, it's snake oil to talk about 1080p "sources". But even 4K is lossy compression, which hurts anime a lot less than live action for obvious reasons.The best being the lossless video and lossless audio encodes, but [...] Even if you waste time producing a lossless video, you're not gonna get significant compression from the source which is bluray salarx said: Bittorent is not the place where I find a lot of the anime I look for. It's good for contemporary mainstream stuff, but almost 1 in 3 anime I've completed is pre-2000. There are no seeders for those, even less so for their German fansubs. Most fansubbers, release groups or re-release groups need not to encode audio to FLAC, especially the ones releasing small-medium size lossy video encodes. For archival purpose, there are BDMV, and on Bittorent network, disk space is not an issue. I see your argument is valid for bulk anime from the 2010s. But you need a long term archival concept for those too at some point. A lot of work was lost by being careless, e.g. there are only low-res DivX hard-subbed versions of Nana, Texhnolyze and Serial Experiments Lain in German and I don't think anybody still has the masters to change that. Most groups from that era disbanded, their masters are lost. And: Full HD will be the same eye cancer as 320x200 is today in 20 years. Time is a cruel master. salarx said: Similar to the argument on "lossless video", a source from a network stream never had lossless audio. Only DVD/BD has, and if the work is invested to rip them, that should be preserved. Even more so if the source is VHS and LD, as it is for Orphan Fansubs. There is no real alternative for FLAC here, it's both technically and legally unsurpassed.So, let me say that again, fansubbing is not for archiving but for sharing, hence it needs to be done keeping in mind the consumer, who doesn't need FLAC (well majority don't). For those who are not consumers, can easily get untouched Bluray and keep it for the next generation to re-encode, or share. salarx said: Well, I'm old enough to know that at some point greed and lawyers take over. There is no blessing on proprietary formats when it comes to long time periods.There are other patent holders of OPUS like Microsoft and Broadcom, but I don't see an issue in that as long as it remains royalty free. |
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inim said: Similar to the argument on "lossless video", a source from a network stream never had lossless audio. Only DVD/BD has, and if the work is invested to rip them, that should be preserved. Even more so if the source is VHS and LD, as it is for Orphan Fansubs. There is no real alternative for FLAC here, it's both technically and legally unsurpassed. You're right there's nothing lossless, but let's take the Bluray Video to be lossless, since it's the highest quality available out there publicly, and anything derived from it is lossy. The animation studios probably have higher quality source with them, but don't think any fansubber can get hands on those, not matter how much influence they may have. You mentioned Erai-raws, though they are not doing any fansubs, but man they are fast and they have my respect. I was referring to more established groups like GJM, DDY, and other which do really good stuff. But that's the state of anime now as compared to past. Shows are simulcasted, subs are available, so there's no need for fansubs from scratch, just to improve it. The VHS era was analog, while the bluray is digital. So, it's was really hard to archive them, preserve them. When you encoded it digitally, it was lossy, and reencoding it further will result in further loss. But such is not the case with bluray. You can just copy it, without reencoding, and it will run fine. So archiving VHS digitally was always lossy (thanks to bad encoders), but archiving bluray is lossless process. But from your perspective, I see there is not alternative to FLAC. It's best to use FLAC when coming from an analog source. The video should be encoded to as near to lossless as possible, maybe remastered too. But for the anime of digital era, no such process is required. Today the focus of Fansubbing has changed, now they focus on making the subtitles more immersive, using different techniques to compensate for the loss in quality during encoding process. A few years ago, I remember remastered version of Cardcaptor Sakura was released, in which they the rescanned the original hand draw frames in 4k, and then scaled it down to 1080p and released it. Sad thing only popular shows get remastered like that. These days fansubbing is more about compressing rather preserving, since preservation is just copying the bits. But guess we are from different times, and I'm only watching anime for a few years, so I didn't realize what you were talking about. Regarding OPUS, I'd say it has better licensing terms than other lossy codecs available out there. Even if it dies, the Bluray archives will still have the PCM audio. So, it doesn't make sense to reencode the PCM audio. But for VHS, no doubt FLAC should be used when archiving and nothing else. |
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| @salarx I'm not completely sure we share a common understanding of what a "fansub" is. You seem to assume that all anime are available on DVD/BD, or at some streaming service. The point is that this is only fraction of anime. You also think that digital disribution and codecs are "new", but Laserdisk (DVD predecessor) was first introduced 1978. PCM was already used as audio format then, it's old as dirt. LD had an analog, but very high quality video track. And I personally bought my first DVD player in the late 80s early 2000s. Digital is neither a problem nor a solution. The issue with "fansub" is that 1000s of anime were never translated or even sold outside Japan. You only look at recent (2010+) and mainstream anime. That bulk stuff doesn't need fansubs. The 1000s of old titles, small new ones (e.g. some OVA), and movie previews not released outside Japan still need fansub. What codecs you use is not really important and recoding is easy enough any 12 year old can do it. The much harder work is to actually TRANSLATE from Japanese, get your hands on old and new disks (Japanese export DVDs are expensive and not totally trivial to get your hands on). For older formats such as Laserdisk, players and digitizers are also rare and expensive. Fan-subbing is about all that. You talk about piracy of modern streams, and distribution channels. But that's not fansub. |
inimOct 19, 2020 4:28 AM
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inim said: @salarx I'm not completely sure we share a common understanding of what a "fansub" is. You seem to assume that all anime are available on DVD/BD, or at some streaming service. The point is that this is only fraction of anime. You also think that digital disribution and codecs are "new", but Laserdisk (DVD predecessor) was first introduced 1978. PCM was already used as audio format then, it's old as dirt. LD had an analog, but very high quality video track. And I personally bought my first DVD player in the late 80s. Digital is neither a problem nor a solution. The issue with "fansub" is that 1000s of anime were never translated or even sold outside Japan. You only look at recent (2010+) and mainstream anime. That bulk stuff doesn't need fansubs. The 1000s of old titles, small new ones (e.g. some OVA), and movie previews not released outside Japan still need fansub. What codecs you use is not really important and recoding is easy enough any 12 year old can do it. The much harder work is to actually TRANSLATE from Japanese, get your hands on old and new disks (Japanese export DVDs are expensive and not totally trivial to get your hands on). For older formats such as Laserdisk, players and digitizers are also rare and expensive. Fan-subbing is about all that. You talk about piracy of modern streams, and distribution channels. But that's not fansub. Well as I said I've been watching anime for a couple of years, and only a fews shows that I've watched date back pre-2000. But the first anime dvd was released until 1997. Laserdisc was analog format. You say you got your first dvd player in 80s, but the internet says Sony created the first over dvd player in 1997. Even the VCD format wasn't available until late 90s,and DVD wasn't affordable until 2000s. Maybe you're talking about something else... And though the encoder may have not been bad, but they produced bad output, because the file size was limited due to expensive storage and slow hardware. Now you can get a decent full HD movie in 700mb, while you couldn't get the same with old encoders, because the hardware wasn't fast enough to decode more efficient compression, more colors and higher resolution. I'm pretty sure nothing like 10 bit xvid exists. Everything else you said about Fansub is true though, the subtitles weren't easily available, dubs removed / censored episodes. Only a few were brought to west from Japan, and they are popular ones (Sailor Moon is one example, and I know that before I got into anime). There's no incentive in doing old shows since they are hard to get, video quality is bad, and the target audience is small. The studio that made them probably shut down, and probably the source material (original hand drawn) doesn't even exist. Now you may not call the modern fansubbers the real 'fansubbers', but they do what they can and some do it very well. Now the anime is so popular that you can watch it legally on youtube, there's even less need of fansubbers. But that's only for new anime. The old anime isn't subbed because only a few are interested in them. The popular ones have already been mastered to bluray quality. The lesser known titles will be lost in the history, and I appreciate some fansubbers are still doing them, but I'm really not interested in them currently, like the majority of anime audience. |
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salarx said: Today the focus of Fansubbing has changed, now they focus on making the subtitles more immersive, using different techniques to compensate for the loss in quality during encoding process. Which is funny to me, because 90 percent of the time I find the PGS subtitles that come with Blu-rays more immersive than the fancy, cute stylized subs that fansubbers alter them to. Also, changing kanji signs to English is the very opposite of immersive. Why would I want to think the characters are in America? Just translate the sign at the bottom, as any official release would.  Horrible! I want to be able to tell what is part of the original image and what isn't. I also hate when they push subtitles almost to the corners of the frame or use a single line with long sentences instead of two lines. Official subs are usually farther away from the edges, so that you don't have to move your eyes as much. |
Ezekiel said: Which is funny to me, because 90 percent of the time I find the PGS subtitles that come with Blu-rays more immersive than the fancy, cute stylized subs that fansubbers alter them to. Horrible! I want to be able to tell what is part of the original image and what isn't. That's weird preference. I don't prefer when text covers 30-40% of screen area, it's just distracting. And if you can't tell which one is original image and which isn't, that means the work is done well, looks cleans and blends well. The official release won't do it because the subtitle format isn't well supported, and doing it is time consuming. |
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salarx said: Ezekiel said: Which is funny to me, because 90 percent of the time I find the PGS subtitles that come with Blu-rays more immersive than the fancy, cute stylized subs that fansubbers alter them to. Horrible! I want to be able to tell what is part of the original image and what isn't. That's weird preference. I don't prefer when text covers 30-40% of screen area, it's just distracting. And if you can't tell which one is original image and which isn't, that means the work is done well, looks cleans and blends well. The official release won't do it because the subtitle format isn't well supported, and doing it is time consuming. No, it's horrible. Why would you want to change the artwork? The original kanji is part of the artwork. Most of the fansubbers do this, which makes no sense, because the characters don't live in an English speaking country. Leave the signs alone. I'm 90 percent sure most official subs wouldn't alter the artwork with these graphics either if they could. I don't know what you mean with text covering 30 to 40 percent of the screen. Official subs don't do that. But, subs shouldn't be on the edge of the screen (because it requires more eye movement) or use single lines for long sentences.   This is a screenshot comparison I did before I replaced Ghost in the Shell with the 2018 4K. Second screenshot shows my own override of the fansubs. I use Arial now, but I still haven't decided on a font I like best. I no longer have that fansub. But here's a screenshot of the 4K with original PGS subs.  Like any normal offical sub, they were smart enough to use two rows and not push the subs to the corners. (The subs are actually white when played on an HDR display, not grey like that.) |
EzekielOct 19, 2020 12:15 PM
Ezekiel said: No, it's horrible. Why would you want to change the artwork? The original kanji is part of the artwork. Most of the fansubbers do this, which makes no sense, because the characters don't live in an English speaking country. Leave the signs alone. I'm 90 percent sure most official subs wouldn't alter the artwork with these graphics either if they could. I don't know what you mean with text covering 30 to 40 percent of the screen. Official subs don't do that. But, subs shouldn't be on the edge of the screen (because it requires more eye movement) or use single lines for long sentences. Well it's not set in stones, so you can always switch to alternate plain sub-tracks. I don't have example right now, but in any scenes with lots of signs, the screen gets filled with white text top to bottom, and it gets hard to know which one is dialog, which one is sign. When the signs are done to match the artwork, they are less distracting and I can focus on dialog translation. The example you gave above is bad example of fansubbing, and someone inexperienced did it. |
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salarx said: Ezekiel said: No, it's horrible. Why would you want to change the artwork? The original kanji is part of the artwork. Most of the fansubbers do this, which makes no sense, because the characters don't live in an English speaking country. Leave the signs alone. I'm 90 percent sure most official subs wouldn't alter the artwork with these graphics either if they could. I don't know what you mean with text covering 30 to 40 percent of the screen. Official subs don't do that. But, subs shouldn't be on the edge of the screen (because it requires more eye movement) or use single lines for long sentences. Well it's not set in stones, so you can always switch to alternate plain sub-tracks. I don't have example right now, but in any scenes with lots of signs, the screen gets filled with white text top to bottom, and it gets hard to know which one is dialog, which one is sign. When the signs are done to match the artwork, they are less distracting and I can focus on dialog translation. The example you gave above is bad example of fansubbing, and someone inexperienced did it. That should never be a problem. You simply place the translation of the long text over two or three time codes instead of one, as any official sub would. It's also not necessary to sub everything. If there are signs in the background and the characters are talking, chances are the Japanese viewers aren't paying much attention to the background text either. I don't need to know what every single sign says or what people in the background are talking about. Usually, you translate what's important. It's sometimes impossible for anyone to read all the stuff fansubbers put on the screen without pausing the video. Too much information. |
EzekielOct 19, 2020 1:57 PM
Catalano said: I'm not an expert but some people say that FLAC sounds better That's really BS. Humans will not hear the difference. Anyone claiming otherwise is either experiencing flaceebo (placeebo for FLAC) or is just bullshitting. |
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