Forum - View topicThe domestic Fate/Stay Night Vol 2 DVD is messed up
|
Goto page 1, 2, 3 Next |
| Author | Message | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Porcupine
 Posts: 1033 |
|
|||||
|
Geneon already had a couple of fiascos with their domestic release of Fate/Stay Night Vol 1 (awful subtitle text, riddled with typos and grammatical errors, like a HK DVD...plus loose, scratched discs in 50% of the boxsets). Volume 2 just released officially yesterday so I picked up a copy, and they've screwed up yet again. The subtitles are better now...there are "only" 2 typos this time. But something is wrong with the video quality. It's really obvious in the opening and ending sequences if you look around the credit text. Artifacting and blocking everywhere, almost like typical fansub quality. The show itself doesn't seem to be as badly impacted but I still think it is suffering from a significant loss of quality due to awful encoding methods.
Something is wrong with both the English and Japanese audio tracks as well, which only reinforces the fact that the DVD authoring of this title was botched. Quality-wise they sound okay but the volume level is a lot lower than in Fate Vol 1 (which was at a normal volume level for Geneon releases). The volume level is okay though, some other studios (Funimation) naturally author DVDs at this volume level...but for Geneon it is abnormal and inconsistent with their other releases. Anyone else noticed these issues with Fate Vol 2? I think it's time for me to go looking for some HK DVDs or fansubs of Fate/Stay Night or something. Geneon doesn't deserve my money if they can't release watchable DVDs. |
||||||
|
||||||
forever_young
 Posts: 52 Location: SoCal |
|
|||||
|
Me too! I had the same open/end credits video quality issue as well. I also thought I was looking at a fansub that had been smuggled into a DVD package.
What is up with this? I figured that they would have made the necessary changes after Vol 1. I'm very surprised... |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Porcupine
Posts: 1033 |
|
|||||
|
I'm glad you noticed what I did. Yeah, they actually managed to get worse this time around (even though they fixed the subtitles somewhat). It's obvious that something is wrong with Geneon's entire Fate/Stay Night "team" at this point. I think we fans need to make a lot of noise and shoot Geneon down for this. Two botched releases in a row is not acceptable. They should be forced to re-release the whole Fate series from scratch, and do it right this time.
[snip] [EDIT: I don't mind you ranting about botched production efforts, but please don't go around asking, telling, or implying some kind of sarcasm about downloading the fansubs (or whatever you were getting at). It is what it is, a botched production. You can look all you want for your own version, just don't encourage it on these forums as a result of your dissatisfaction. Thanks. -TK] |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Sakura Shinguji
Posts: 199 |
|
|||||
|
To assist you in directing your ire, specific blame for the quality of the opening and ending credits sequences for Fate/stay night should be aimed at Bang Zoom!, the company contracted to produce the English adaptation.
Why, you ask? Because, in addition to obviously producing the dub, Bang Zoom!, like other English adaptation companies such as New Generation Pictures and Ocean Studios, is also in charge of things like subtitles, as well as the production of English credits sequences, whether they have someone in-house to do that work, or further subcontract that work out to an individual or company of their choosing. Geneon has to obviously approve the work, and so are thus complicit in the appearance of things like spelling errors in subtitles or substandard video quality, but blame for the actual work needs to go to the actual people responsible. Now, that being the case, I should point out that Bang Zoom! has been producing notably substandard English credit sequences for a while now, though thankfully it's not been an across-the-board phenomenon. Bandai titles for which Bang Zoom! did English production work have largely escaped such problems, simply because of Bandai's tendency to not alter the original Japanese credit sequences. You can, however, witness the Bang Zoom! effect by viewing the batch English credits that run at the end of the discs for series like Please Twins, Scrapped Princess, Planetes, and so on. For a current example, the English credit sequences for Eureka seveN provide excellent examples of the botched video problems. To bring it back to Geneon, Fafner and Tenjho Tenge feature examples of botched Bang Zoom! credits sequences, Here I should mention that the issues with those particular titles generated some significant discussion in the Anime on DVD.com forums, and were subsequently brought to Geneon's attention. At this point, the continuance of those issues suggests some intransigence on Bang Zoom!'s part as far as preventing such problems, despite knowing about them. All in all, the credits for Fate/stay night aren't nearly as bad as some of the other examples I cited. And the subtitles aren't nearly as bad as the mistakes made by other dub production studios for other R1 studios, whether in the past or present. Neither of those statements is meant to justify the quality of Fate/stay night's release, but it does seem you''re being a bit unfair and biased against Geneon, or perhaps just feeling overly hyperbolic about this title. If you think the video issues with Fate/stay night's credits sequences are bad, you must not be buying anything from FUNimation these days, as equally or more significant video issues are present for the entirety of their discs. Blocking and minor rainbowing during credits sequences, more blocking and some aliasing throughout the episode content, gradient issues, and some minimal edge enhancement that affects the video as a whole. And, I've come across glaring spelling errors and grammar errors in a variety of recent titles from Geneon, ADV, FUNi, Bandai, Right Stuf, Viz, and Media Blasters. Heck, the subtitles for the first volume of ADV's release of Best Student Council are missing three whole words. It's your money, but if you're planning to look to other series or other studios for anime to watch, you're most likely going to run into the same issues, and in some cases, ones that are far worse. |
||||||
|
||||||
Randall Miyashiro
 Posts: 2451 Location: A block away from Golden Gate Park |
|
|||||
I think this is exactly why it is such a big deal. Geneon in my opinion has the best encoded DVDs (although Manga, and the few Honneamise titles are also really good) for both video and audio, so it's disappointing when they miss the mark. I completely agree with the newer Funimation discs being awful. Every time there is a dark scene in Basilisk or Trinity Blood the colors get all fuzzy and splotchy. They really have problems with dark scenes. What's up with the LFE on Funimation's 5.1 English mixes? It's fun for a few minutes, but I always end up turning my sub down a few notches mid-episode. I don't even know where to begin with the awful Media Blasters discs. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Porcupine
Posts: 1033 |
|
|||||
|
Sakura, I don't think you are correct in most of the things you talked about.
Bang Zoom Entertainment is only responsible for the English dub I believe, which is quite good for Fate/Stay Night. The subtitle track translation is completely different from the Bang Zoom dub, and contains numerous typos and bad English (not so bad in volume 2, but record-setting awfulness in volume 1). I'm not completely certain who is responsible for the sub but I suspect it is not Bang Zoom. I believe 342media is to blame for this one, they are the DVD authoring studio responsible for Fate/Stay Night. Usually they do an acceptable job though, it is just Fate/Stay Night Vol 2 that is totally messed up in more ways than one. It is true that DVD compression is not perfect and artifacting is noticeable on almost any OP/ED credits sequence, but I doubt the titles you mention are bad as Fate/Stay Night Vol 2 (not Volume 1), which is awful to an extreme. I will do some checking up on those other titles you mentioned though on AnimeonDVD forums, thanks for the pointer. Also, it is not just the OP/ED sequence of Fate Vol 2 that is messed up, I think. The whole show is worse than normal, it is just that it is most noticeable on the OP/ED credits because they generally display at least minor artifacting no matter who does the encoding. Finally, to say that Geneon deserves the blame for this is accurate as well, since they are the ones that contract 342media to do the DVD authoring for them, they also inherit the responsibility to ensure they put out an acceptable product. But Bang Zoom is not to blame if they are only responsible for the dubbing, which I believe is the case. Last edited by Porcupine on Thu Feb 22, 2007 8:33 pm; edited 2 times in total |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Malintex Terek
Guest
|
|
|||||
I wish I had heard about this before I ordered volume one. 
... My purchase was for the dub, though, so...no harm done? |
||||||
|
Porcupine
Posts: 1033 |
|
|||||
|
Did you get it yet? Did you order the boxset or something?
I tried to post up my findings for Vol 1 as early as I could, but yeah most people (including me!) won't check the Internet for this kind of stuff before buying. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Malintex Terek
Guest
|
|
|||||
No, it's still in the mail. I'm not in any hurry to watch it since I'm overburdened right now balancing work, my education and university activities, but I'll be sure to check out the subs when it arrives. As for which product I purchased, it's just the normal DVD, not the limited-time box version. |
||||||
|
Porcupine
Posts: 1033 |
|
|||||
|
Well, I wouldn't say the subs problem is fatal, but it was extremely unprofessional. At least the dub was pretty good. If you didn't get the boxset you should be fine...I think scratched discs are worse. Then again some people don't care about scratched discs (usually scratched discs play fine has been my experience, they just look bad).
I think Vol 2 is worse. Then again, if you don't want to get Geneon's Vol 2 release you probably would regret buying their Vol 1 release, too. |
||||||
|
||||||
Kruszer
 Posts: 7995 Location: Minnesota, USA |
|
|||||
|
Just checked mine. Nothing wrong with my copy, and it came more than a week early too.
My volume 1 has some strange but minor artifacting behind on the subs for the opening sequence though which was corrected for volume 2 it seems. Anyhow, I watch it dubbed (since the dub is great and my first viewing of the series was in fansub form) so even if it was crappy it wouldn't matter much to me. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Sakura Shinguji
Posts: 199 |
|
|||||
Yes, actually, I am. (That makes me sound like a jerk, and I don't mean it that way, so I hope that's not how it's taken.)
David Fleming is responsible for both the original translation and the subtitle script for Fate/stay night. David has been in this line of business for over a decade, first doing work for Animaze in the '90s before adding Bang Zoom! and other studios to his resume. I'm not entirely sure, but I don't believe he's technically a Bang Zoom! employee, but rather simply an independent whose services are made use of by dub production studios in L.A. on a regular basis. So, because Bang Zoom! and others keep hiring him, they must think he's doing something right. Yes, dub production studios are responsible for subtitles and translations. They may subcontract that work out to other companies or independent individuals if they either don't have anyone in-house to do it or run into a scheduling issue, but it's their responsibility to take care of it.
The other examples I mention are as bad, if not worse, if you're finding the Fate/stay night credits to be such a problem. Again, I'm very strongly inclined to believe it's due to lackluster efforts by Bang Zoom!, not 342Media, as there's a track record to consider. Yes, dub production studios are responsible for English credits sequences. As with subtitling and translation duties, it falls to them whether they have someone in-house to do the work or if they have to outsource it, but either way they are the ones assigned the work and responsible for delivering a finished product to be approved by Geneon and sent to the authoring house. Individuals who do such work are credited different ways be different studios, whether falling under a general "production assistant" credit, or being specified as a video editor or online editor, or some other such title. New Generation also credits the studio site used for the actual video editing. In the interest of full disclosure, and clarification for a couple of folks, I do post and moderate over at the Anime On DVD.com forums, using the same username as I do here. As a final note, I received my copy of Fate/stay night volume 2, and checked the volume issue you mentioned. While it's a shade on the quiet side relative to a number of other DVDs, it's not as significantly lower as it is on FUNimation's DVDs, and certainly no different from volume 1. For comparison purposes, I tried it in two computers, a cheap standalone player with a crappy TV (which I keep around for such comparison purposes, among other things), and on my primary living room setup. I put volume 1 in, listened to the menu audio, audio for several openings and endings, and skipped around to various points in the episodes just to get some normal dialogue and high action stuff. Without adjusting computer volume, TV volume, or any audio settings on the harmon/kardon receiver that controls the living room setup audio, I then ran the same listening checklist for volume 2, and noticed zero appreciable difference. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6903 Location: Kazune City |
|
|||||
|
Well, reading this thread inspired me to check out the DVD version of FSN episode 1. I ran a side-by-side comparison with a fansub, and to be honest, I didn't notice much of what could be called glaring errors in the subtitles. Of course, I was trying to read two sets of subtitles at once and follow the episode, which I'd never seen before, so maybe I missed a few things. Can anybody cite/quote some of these subtitle mistakes? I'll have to take a look at a few more episodes to see more.
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
Porcupine
Posts: 1033 |
|
|||||
|
Just to clarify, the original topic of this thread is about the bad quality of the credits sequences for FSN Vol 2 (not Vol 1, which is fine), which is a different issue from the subtitles in Vol 1 issue, but both are issues. Kruszer, subs in DVDs never have any artifacting around them because they are computer-generated overlayed text. The opening credits subtitles are fine. It's the credits text themselves that display artifacting since they are directly encoded into the video, and these credits texts are present regardless of whether you watch the dub or the sub.
Sakura, I'm still not 100% convinced the blame lies with Bang Zoom but you made some good points so I'll say I'm half convinced. Regardless, the blame ends up on Geneon since they subcontract out everyone else but it's useful to know which subcontractors messed up as well. I already did the exact same audio check you did and felt there was a significant difference between vol 1 and vol 2 of Fate/Stay Night. (Make sure you turn off dynamic audio compression, enabled by default on most DVD players). However, yes I agree the volume level of vol 2 is still above the in-show volume level of Funimation products (not the menus, their menus are much louder than the actual show). So I have no problem with the Fate Vol 2 volume level, I am only using the change as additional evidence that the DVD mastering was changed for this volume. Also, I forgot to reply to this earlier, but I have seen a number of Funimation products recently and while I did notice OP/ED credits issues, they were not nearly as bad as what I saw on Fate Vol 2. I would call the issues on Fate Vol 2 4x worse than the issues on for example Moonphase ED credits (most obvious example I've seen in the past 2 years...other semi-recent Funi DVDs I've seen include Basilisk, Samurai 7, Burst Angel...). Zalis, I'm too lazy sorry. I'm not super irritated at the subtitles issue myself (though I do mind it a bit), to me it's the least of the 3 evils regarding the Geneon USA Fate/Stay Night releases. If I watch FSN Vol 1 again I'll try to remember some (but that might not be for a while). Since I just recently watched Vol 2 though, I can clearly recall the only 2 grammatical errors I noticed on 1 watchthrough (generally I catch every mistake and mispelling cause my vision is pretty fast)...they once wrote something like "XXX XXX XXX,XXX XXX" so the grammatical error was with the comma not having a space after it. The other error was they wrote the word...men's'... with two apostrophes like that, which is not correct. Both are minor compared to what I saw in Vol 1 though. You shouldn't try to watch Vol 1 alongside some subs. Just watch Geneon's Vol 1 carefully and always check for correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Sakura Shinguji
Posts: 199 |
|
|||||
I didn't notice anything major in terms of mistakes in translation/transliteration as I was watching (i.e., listening to the Japanese dialogue and translating in my head versus what the subtitles were saying), if that's what you were looking for, assuming of course that the fansub folks didn't make any significant mistakes. I think what Porcupine is talking about, and which I agree with, is spelling and grammar problems. Some of the folks hired by Bang Zoom!, both past and present, to adapt the raw translation for their subtitles, have done questionable-at-best jobs of it. As I'm sure many of us realize, the bar for good grammar skills is set lower than it should be sometimes (in the U.S.), and it shows up in places where it shouldn't. David Fleming, the individual who both translated and wrote the sub script for Fate/stay night, generally does a good job. I can't think of any specific Fate/stay night examples, though I do recall thinking there were a few iffy sentences here and there in volume 1 that could've been constructed differently. I can make note of others I find in volume 2 and post them, if anyone's curious. If you want examples of really badly written subtitles, take a look at the subs for Fafner, Stellvia, Tenjho Tenge, or Tsukihime. These and a couple of other titles released throughout 2004-2006 were contracted out by Bang Zoom! to a company whose name escapes me at the moment, and stand as an excellent example of how people with middle-school-level grammar skills can pass themselves off as a company that deals in a line of work that you'd think and hope would require a much higher level of competence in that area. The fact that no less than three people are credited for subtitles on all the aforementioned titles is also baffling, because it's implying one of two things: 1) there are multiple people working for this company who lack grammar skills, or 2) too many cooks in the kitchen, so to speak, leading to a botched result. Bang Zoom!, thankfully, has not hired these people for any titles starting new in 2006 through now, so hopefully we've seen the last of them. |
||||||
|
||||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group