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the last point oh so reminds me of gatchaman crows, where the fansub lyrics were completely made up because of the high amount of engrish.

I don't get why people continue to use those shitty streaming sites. If your gonna do something illegal, at least do it right.

I'm always surprised at how many people watch fansubs when I go on Tumblr to look up stuff about shows. A lot of the screencaps people post are from fansubs. It's sad.

About translating songs - they translate the songs in Love Live! (probably not much of a rights issue because the songs are pretty much part of the show), and they use pink subtitles on them. That makes me so happy Anime smile

;

Fujoshi fanservice... it's nice to see more of that. I like how Kamigami no Asobi was just like, okay, bath scene in episode 2, swimsuits in episode 3. Right off the bat.

I think they should remake Code Geass, but with more Suzaku fanservice. The part where he and Kallen are on the island naked? Make that whole fishing thing look like Free. ... honestly, a ton of Suzaku and "Julius" fanservice is the only way to save that Akito series at this point. It's boring and completely devoid of everything that made the original series great. Too much angst.

LavenderMintRose wrote:

I'm always surprised at how many people watch fansubs when I go on Tumblr to look up stuff about shows. A lot of the screencaps people post are from fansubs. It's sad.

They might do that because it's easier to take screenshots with 'em. With a video file, you just need to hit a quick key command and then boom! With a legal streaming site, you'd have to hit Print Screen, paste it into something, and then crop the image.

I wonder if legit streaming sites could implement a screenshot function?

Quote:

The (sometimes ridiculous) karaoke effects that fansubs have are not really possible with streaming video, where most subtitles are added to the video by the Flash-based software that's run on the user's computer.

I don't think this is entirely correct. I don't know the details of how Crunchyroll's flash player works but I have a sneaking suspicion they use Aegisub to design and time their subs (I've seen a number of their shows, especially some of the earlier ones, that use the Aegisub default font settings) , which is the same program fansubbers use for their fancy subs. If the player is designed to use these subtitle files the same way media players do I don't see why they couldn't have fancy karaoke subs if they wanted to.

But it's really a moot point since I haven't seen ridiculous karaoke subs on fansubs in many years. They've gone out of style I think. Though I still like to make them for fun sometimes, and then never show anybody.

Found this week's Answerman to be interesting. I like to give my input if that's all right:

About Macross being gone from Hulu: Yeah it was sad to see the show gone from Hulu (and I haven't got chance to finish it Crying or Very sad

)

About Google searching which lead you to illegal stream: Well that's the drawback of searching.

Just one addition to the lyrics issue--an increasing amount of late night shows display the song lyrics in the OP/ED, so fansubbers are not just doing it by ear all the time. Well, either way it's sort of a compromise so if you actually care about this stuff, just check back when the single gets released or whatever.

GVman wrote:

LavenderMintRose wrote:

I'm always surprised at how many people watch fansubs when I go on Tumblr to look up stuff about shows. A lot of the screencaps people post are from fansubs. It's sad.

They might do that because it's easier to take screenshots with 'em. With a video file, you just need to hit a quick key command and then boom! With a legal streaming site, you'd have to hit Print Screen, paste it into something, and then crop the image.

It's worse than that. For example, on FUNi's site you can't really take a screen shot by pausing the video because it has an overlay when you pause it. So it becomes incredibly difficult especially since seeking video on a stream is sometimes very difficult to do, now it's nearly impossible with two barriers, if you are looking for a specific frame.

I forget how Hulu works but if I remember it's something similar, as I had a similar problem trying to do it years ago.

I would think it's really easy to come up with a way to not have this problem? Is there someone we should be complaining to?

I still enjoy buying & watching movies on Laserdisc.

rizuchan wrote:

I don't think this is entirely correct. I don't know the details of how Crunchyroll's flash player works but I have a sneaking suspicion they use Aegisub to design and time their subs (I've seen a number of their shows, especially some of the earlier ones, that use the Aegisub default font settings) , which is the same program fansubbers use for their fancy subs. If the player is designed to use these subtitle files the same way media players do I don't see why they couldn't have fancy karaoke subs if they wanted to.

CR does, in fact, use Aegisub, but they had to code their own renderer in Flash themselves (which, honestly, is quite an impressive technical feat). Most of the more insane karaoke animation in fansubs is pre-rendered because it'd be too much to do in real-time. (Some fansubbers even use After Effects.) So if it's too much to render in real-time with actual decent software, you can imagine how poorly that would work in Flash. Lots of limitations, so animation effects have to be kept pretty minimalist.

Shit- I can remember that lame translation of the Devil Survivor 2's ending. Almost two months passed until we got the right lyrics.

Even I could understand that engurishu better than them D:

LavenderMintRose wrote:

I'm always surprised at how many people watch fansubs when I go on Tumblr to look up stuff about shows. A lot of the screencaps people post are from fansubs. It's sad.

To be fair, it's a little easier to take screencaps from fansubs than from legal streams and occasionally the picture quality is better too. Sometimes people make use of both sources for different reasons, including but not limited to simple convenience.

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About translating songs - they translate the songs in Love Live! (probably not much of a rights issue because the songs are pretty much part of the show), and they use pink subtitles on them. That makes me so happy Anime smile

;

I'm not too concerned with such effects...but it's a shame that even on some official DVD/BD releases there's no absolute guarantee song subtitles will be provided. It's certainly what usually happens, thankfully, but there's a small yet persistent number of exceptions. Which makes me ever so slightly annoyed.

Quote:

I think they should remake Code Geass, but with more Suzaku fanservice. The part where he and Kallen are on the island naked? Make that whole fishing thing look like Free. ... honestly, a ton of Suzaku and "Julius" fanservice is the only way to save that Akito series at this point. It's boring and completely devoid of everything that made the original series great. Too much angst.

That's a matter of personal preference, I suppose, but you don't need CG to start copying Free in order to provide something that fangirls will find appealing. In fact, you could argue there's already enough crossover appeal in that show to cover the bases.

I also definitely disagree with you about that whole last part though. It's a rather different approach, which not everyone will enjoy, but that doesn't mean it's bad. I've found it quite interesting myself. Since this has nothing to do with the column, however, I'll just leave it at that.

GVman wrote:

I don't get why people continue to use those shitty streaming sites. If your gonna do something illegal, at least do it right.

Ikr, they should at least find the illegal streaming site that offers high quality streams Laughing

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Personally I have to resort to fansubs because of where I live. If CR offered me the same amount of shows that Americans get I would start subscribing right away. But since the chances of that happening anytime soon are very slim I have wholeheartedly embraced fansubs.

Haha. This is the perks of fansubbing a children's show. They tend to give the kids a karaoke-like transcription of the opening and ending at the bottom of the screen. None of the translators had a problem there. ~_^

That said, unless a song is really obscure with how its lyrics are (ENGRISH GOD HELP ME), I can usually pick out what it's saying just by the context of the song and my knowledge of Japanese grammar and linguistics. There are occasionally small particles or words that are drowned out by the music itself, though, and those can be particularly tricky, even when you have a group of people fluent in the language trying to figure it out. Particles, in particular, can sometimes sound similar and be interchangeable grammatically, despite giving out completely different meanings. Not even native Japanese can always understand the lyrics of the songs they hear. It's like when I hear a song in English, my native language, on the radio and I debate whether the lyrics were saying one thing or another in my head.

Then again, I've seen some minor mistakes like that come from official releases, too. You'd think they had the lyrics available, but obviously, SOMEONE in the company just didn't have the time or whatever to look it up.

Last edited by sakuragtin on Fri May 09, 2014 1:34 pm; edited 1 time in total

Hey now, Meganebu actually was a pretty decent and adorable show. It was honestly surprising how Soubi Yamamoto managed to craft heart into such an odd story with a cast of tropes (Just to clarify, I'm not being sarcastic. I really do enjoy Meganebu but perfectly realize its cast is a bunch of pretty boy character types made endearing by her quirky directorial style).

I think a better example of garbage manservice would be Diabolik Lovers or Amnesia which were downright offensive (in some parts in Amnesia's case) but chock full of pretty boys doing pretty (horrible) things.

That being said I do appreciate the growing number of female oriented fanservice shows. This summer is just bursting at the seams with them and I cannot wait!

I'm going to drop Sam's old statement about simulcast lyrics here because it contains actual examples and is still highly relevant:

Samuel Pinansky wrote:

This is a combination of annoyance and inane copyright law. But not usually laziness on the translator’s part. I can use my translations of Fairy Tail and Tegami Bachi and Shugo Chara as an example. Let me state first that I translate the songs for all those shows immediately. But the lyrics to the music are controlled by a different company than the licensor in almost all cases, therefore the translation needs to be approved by the music company before it can be included. That is the big problem. Under Japanese law the lyricist always retains rights to any translation of his/her lyrics, therefore it can easily take weeks and weeks for song translations to be approved because Japanese music companies move SLOW.
I finally got translations for the fairy tail opening and ending approved and retroactively added them into my subtitles for all previous episodes around episode 8, and then 4 episodes later they went and changed both the opening and ending. I’ve already translated them and submitted them for approval, but it’ll probably be another 10 weeks until they come back. Tegami Bachi’s songs are even more difficult because of the high profile artists involved. The singer wrote the lyrics to the opening himself and so theoretically he would have had to personally approve the translation… I suppose that’s why my translation still hasn’t been approved, even though there’s already a NEW opening and ending.
Shugo Chara is considerably easier, because the groups that sing the songs are owned completely by the investors of the show (both Buono! Shugo Chara Egg! and the Guardian 4! all were created specifically for Shugo Chara), therefore approvals are able to be done far more smoothly. For most translators and translation companies, they don’t even bother to submit translations because it gives more work to the Japanese, and is a bit “annoying” to the licensors. I go the extra mile to translate them promptly, but it’s really the hard work of the people at Medianet (TV Tokyo) in tracking down the rights holders and getting approvals that at least some of the shows I translate have translated lyrics.

maximilianjenus wrote:

the last point oh so reminds me of gatchaman crows, where the fansub lyrics were completely made up because of the high amount of engrish.

It was fun seeing fansubbers try to tackle the Hellsing TV OP. Then the official lyrics were released and they made even less sense.

rizuchan wrote:

I don't think this is entirely correct. I don't know the details of how Crunchyroll's flash player works but I have a sneaking suspicion they use Aegisub to design and time their subs (I've seen a number of their shows, especially some of the earlier ones, that use the Aegisub default font settings) , which is the same program fansubbers use for their fancy subs. If the player is designed to use these subtitle files the same way media players do I don't see why they couldn't have fancy karaoke subs if they wanted to.

I know the player makes things difficult in terms of positioning; they had problems with all the onscreen text in Durarara. I'm pretty sure there's no way of doing animation without erasing and redrawing (with the accompanying flicker).

omoikane wrote:

It's worse than that. For example, on FUNi's site you can't really take a screen shot by pausing the video because it has an overlay when you pause it. So it becomes incredibly difficult especially since seeking video on a stream is sometimes very difficult to do, now it's nearly impossible with two barriers, if you are looking for a specific frame.

Crunchyroll is actually the most friendly for screencapping - there is no permanent overlay when paused and the seeking (with the left and right keyboard buttons) works quite well. I used to keep Picasa running since it automatically saves any screengrabs.
Now that I use my PS3 and Smart TV for most streaming though it is pretty moot.