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NEWS: Maquia DVDs Incorrectly List Japanese Language Track


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hissatsu01



Joined: 08 May 2006
Posts: 963
Location: NYC
PostPosted: Tue Feb 12, 2019 11:49 pm Reply with quote
kotomikun wrote:

They might have actually gone so far as to "burn" them into the video, instead of just locking the subtitle option and not putting it in the menu; not sure if there's an easy way to tell without ripping the disc. Though, once you do that, all you have to do is play the English video with the Japanese audio, and no more subtitles.


It's easy for anyone with a PC running AnyDVD or something similar to play the disc and see whatever tracks are there. Or just run a utility like BDInfo and it will tell you what tracks are there without even playing it. But to get the English video/Japanese audio without English subs you'd have to rip both versions then remux. It's enough to put off any "casual" viewers. It's also totally paranoid and releases like this are garbage.
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Zalis116
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Joined: 31 Mar 2005
Posts: 6900
Location: Kazune City
PostPosted: Wed Feb 13, 2019 2:01 am Reply with quote
Animegomaniac wrote:


I thought Dual layer and dual sided were interchangeable and that Dual sided was the outmoded version once manufacturers got the hang of the tech.

Regular DVD: 4 GBs.
Dual- regardless I believe: 8 GBs.

They're not the same. Layers refer to how much data can be stored on each side of the disc, i.e. the amounts you specified. Dual-layer discs can be watched from start to end with only a minor hangup at the layer change point. With dual-sided discs, you have to remove the disc and physically flip it over to access the additional content. This means sacrificing printed artwork/labels, as both sides have to be laser-readable. Dual-sided discs are comparatively rare, but they can store up to ~17 GB if both sides are dual-layer. They could've included both languages of Maquia on one DVD if they'd used dual-sided discs.

Quote:
This has been an unfortunate fact I've learned myself with many sub only DVDs being sold these that are in fact hard coded... though it'd be nice if they were labeled as such.
Have there really been that many sub-only DVDs with hardsubs, as opposed to merely locked subs? I haven't heard of any in recent times, and when rips of them appear in the download scene, they're softsubbed. Media-Blasters' most recent Strawberry Panic release was hardsubbed, but that was Blu-Ray, not DVD. The DVDs have locked subtitles, but (as confirmed via VLC Media Player) aren't hardsubbed -- though why they programmed in a completely-useless "Setup" menu is beyond me.
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jsevakis
Former ANN Editor in Chief


Joined: 28 Jul 2003
Posts: 1684
Location: Los Angeles, CA
PostPosted: Wed Feb 13, 2019 3:14 am Reply with quote
AtoMan wrote:
No, not everyone has BluRay players. If anything, people are moving away from physical discs to streaming (or pirated content). Disc releases are a niche already, and BluRays are, globally, a niche within a niche. Sales of BDs are falling faster than DVDs.


Dunno where you got that factoid from, but it’s completely wrong. DVD sales are pretty much dead for anime, Blu-Ray is quite healthy these days.
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GeorgeC



Joined: 22 Nov 2008
Posts: 795
PostPosted: Wed Feb 13, 2019 5:27 am Reply with quote
AtoMan wrote:


This is so wrong on many levels, really.

No, not everyone has BluRay players. If anything, people are moving away from physical discs to streaming (or pirated content). Disc releases are a niche already, and BluRays are, globally, a niche within a niche. Sales of BDs are falling faster than DVDs.

Not to mention it's much more expensive to author and release a BluRay - the process is more complicated, requires different technology and there are pretty big license fees attached to BluRay pressing. Which is why smaller releases rely on professionally copied BD-Rs which can be produced cheaper and in smaller amounts.



Look --

We get it.

You DON'T have a Blu ray player.
Check.
That doesn't mean you're right about sales or the reality of the situation.
The Blu ray disc is THE dominant format for anime releases now.

The good news is YOU DON'T have to buy a 4K player if you don't want to but in all honestly unless you're hard up for money (and apparently you are) you can get a cheap Blu ray play in store for under $100. Someone reported seeing a BD player online in the $53 range.

At this point, it's dumb to stick with a DVD player and you might as well upgrade to at least BD (1080p) standard. If you can save some extra money, go ahead and buy a 4K Blu ray player. That will play virtually everything. You can get a 4K BD model now for $150. I spent twice that much for my first DVD player 19 years ago!

The major companies are NOT going back in time and re-adopting DVD to make you or anybody else happy because you don't want to spend another $5 or $10 for the Blu ray copy. That's fine-- your choice but the reality is the market is NOT going back to DVD for most releases and Blu ray is rapidly becoming the lower-end format in the market. At this point, there are many sub-$10 Blu ray releases. They're not anime releases but it's nonsense to say that aren't budget Blu rays out there. Heck, I've seen an increasing number of $15 4K BD releases, too.
Upgrade soon if you intend to continue collecting physical home video releases because the number of DVD releases on anime are going down rapidly starting this year. Discotek and Sentai already announced they're on the verge of phasing out DVDs except in cases where shows haven't been remastered for high-definition. Even in cases of SD-only series, Discotek is bundling quite a few series on Blu ray because it takes up less physical space to put 20 or more SD episodes on 1 Blu ray versus having to spread that content on at least 3 DVDs to have any kind of quality.
Funimation itself is looking at phasing out the dual BD/DVD format, too. In fact, most Funi reprints are DELETING the DVD altogether. The Anime Select/Classic/whatever they call it "violet-blue line" (that replaced the older SAVE "puke green line") have been turning up in stores and online and NONE of them have DVDs. Those are the budget reprints of titles that are at least a year old.
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professorwho



Joined: 11 Aug 2017
Posts: 74
PostPosted: Wed Feb 13, 2019 9:45 am Reply with quote
Thanks for making my discovery into an article.

Also, Shout are just dumb. Unless the licensor said to specifically hardsub it (on the BD), why not use locked subtitles like every NA anime release outside of Aniplex? That would save space and would’ve allowed for a way higher Bitrate. The 2 1080p film files are less than 20 mbps, when via hardsubbing, they could’ve had a solid 35+ mbps encode.
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Animegomaniac



Joined: 16 Feb 2012
Posts: 4157
PostPosted: Wed Feb 13, 2019 9:46 am Reply with quote
Zalis116 wrote:

Quote:
This has been an unfortunate fact I've learned myself with many sub only DVDs being sold these that are in fact hard coded... though it'd be nice if they were labeled as such.
Have there really been that many sub-only DVDs with hardsubs, as opposed to merely locked subs? I haven't heard of any in recent times, and when rips of them appear in the download scene, they're softsubbed. Media-Blasters' most recent Strawberry Panic release was hardsubbed, but that was Blu-Ray, not DVD. The DVDs have locked subtitles, but (as confirmed via VLC Media Player) aren't hardsubbed -- though why they programmed in a completely-useless "Setup" menu is beyond me.


Thanks for the info as while I have VLC on my PC, I usually don't use it for physical playback as it's terrible for BDs. So my home theater set up doesn't recognize subs on these DVDs, my PC BD software doesn't recognize any subs but VLC does and it allows me to turn them off. That's handy to know.

This does seem like something that would promote piracy rather than prevent it.
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Sakura Shinguji



Joined: 09 Feb 2005
Posts: 197
PostPosted: Wed Feb 13, 2019 11:48 am Reply with quote
professorwho wrote:
Also, Shout are just dumb. Unless the licensor said to specifically hardsub it (on the BD), why not use locked subtitles like every NA anime release outside of Aniplex?


At this point I'm starting to feel like this whole Maquia situation happened because Shout is new to anime, and thus new to the ever-increasingly-common anime licensor requirement of locked subtitles, and so they badly misinterpreted what the licensor was asking.

I'd be willing to put $20 on the licensor simply requiring the "typical" locked subtitles to go along with the Japanese audio, and Shout wrongly interpreting that to mean two separate video files, either because they made a misinformed decision in-house or because they attempted to reach out for clarification and got miscommunication. And now Shout has made the situation look worse by simply saying "this is what the licensor wanted" when in reality it's only what they *thought* the licensor wanted.

Having said all that, that thought process only really applies to the Blu-ray version, and doesn't work as a potential explanation for the DVD version. As I mentioned in my previous post, there's no reason why they couldn't have just done the same thing they did with the Blu-ray: hardsub (either via subtitle coding or burning the subtitles in) the Japanese version in a duplicate video file, and put both on the disc. Just handwaving at it, the domestic studios have regularly put 2 movies' worth of content on a single DVD-9. It's not ideal, but it's also not egregiously bad.

So, it feels like Shout just messed up, but that the worst part is that they don't know why they messed up so their explanations are unhelpful. Which is a shame, because they do good work generally.
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digidragon
ANN Past Staff


Joined: 08 Jun 2005
Posts: 173
PostPosted: Wed Feb 13, 2019 12:45 pm Reply with quote
Kazemon15 wrote:
So no subtitle for hearing impaired for the dub-only DVD and locked in the BD. Once again, hard of hearing and deaf fans are left out.

And before people once again start saying "just watch it in Japanese", I should have a say in how I watch my anime and I perfer english dub eith caption or subtitles on. Wanted to see this, but I guess Im passing.


I heard one account saying that the blu-ray has cc subtitle options on the dub track. Might be true of DVD as well.
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