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Old 2008-01-27, 22:25   Link #41
Tofusensei
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mentar View Post
Off-topic too, and just curious, Tofusensei.

Have YOU been buying the R1s to all those shows which you have graced with this screen?
We bought R2s and laser discs for probably 90% of the shows we subtitled, not counting the ones that were airing on TV. Does that count? We're talking thousands of dollars worth of LDs and DVDs.

-Tofu
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Old 2008-01-28, 01:55   Link #42
Mentar
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Tofusensei View Post
We bought R2s and laser discs for probably 90% of the shows we subtitled, not counting the ones that were airing on TV. Does that count? We're talking thousands of dollars worth of LDs and DVDs.
"We", hm?

I mean, does that count? You tell me, since _you're_ the one who has been attaching the strings. It's been an interesting observation for me that many (if not most) of those people who do so tend to make the rules for OTHERS and don't practice themselves what they preach. Therefore I always find it interesting to ask them about that.

If you want my _personal_ opinion - yep, that does count. The goal should be to encourage the fans to financially support the anime industry by buying their products, in return for their work for our entertainment. I'm just doubtful that it's helpful to assume a _demanding_ stance like this, but that's just my personal opinion either. On a legal-technical angle, what we fansubbers/rippers are doing is a form of piracy, and based on this I feel hesitant to act like we have any kind of authority over how our creations are being used. But all this is drifting away into a different kind of issue.
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Old 2008-01-28, 03:24   Link #43
JediNight
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Tofu: What titles had less than 1000 copies sold in R1? Anything good, or are we just talking B-titles like Daphne in the Brilliant Blue, Gravion, etc. that you knew were crap to begin with?

I think the current problems come down to a couple factors:
- The average fan gets to watch more and more anime on TV, so they don't feel the need as much to buy stuff on DVD to watch anime

- Sorta the opposite way ... we don't get enough shows on commonly available channels to let your Joe Every Fan see stuff. (The large majority of anime fans still don't watch fansubs) Whereas in Japan you get to see basically everything on TV beforehand. (How are the DVD sales on stuff like IY, Bleach, Death Note, etc?)

- Even in Japan I don't believe most of the money is made from DVD sales ... it's the merchandising that counts. Or money from broadcasting itself.

- US barely has any of the merchandising that goes along with shows in Japan.

- The average anime fan is in the age bracket with the least amount of disposable income, in comparison to Japan where most of your DVDs will be bought by Otaku who are out of school.


Aaaand we're way off topic now lol...
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Old 2008-01-28, 03:54   Link #44
cyth
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@JediNight: I think it's because the R1 licensees don't know how to sell niche anime, specifically anime series that have no mainstream appeal and are by definition bad (or just average) even in the eyes of us niche anime enthusiasts. Some of the titles simply had no business doing the U.S., some of the better niche titles with little or no mainstream appeal were marketed to the casual viewer that included expensive dubbing, and some were so niche or old or specific that they didn't turn out any profit even among the "broader" niche fandom. What they should've been doing was finding good niche titles and market those specifically to the niche--to fansub watchers (no dub to cut costs)--and market mainstream titles to everyone (but mainstream successes are hard to come by; basically Weekly Shounen Jump titles by Toei, orz). All this failure because they wanted to push anime out of the niche, because they thought anime was "cool" enough for the mainstream NA consumer. All this because of the few exceptional mainstream successes that fueled unrealistic optimism and expectations.

Offtopic is good. :P
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Old 2008-01-28, 05:03   Link #45
JediNight
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Actually I don't see the niche titles dying off totally. As internet downloads become more mainstream, I expect them to basically release them as Pay-Downloads with subs only online. Cutting out the dubbing and production costs would drastically reduce the overall costs associated with releasing a title. Maybe offer an option to pay a few bucks extra for a pressed disk, or at least provide printable DVD covers that you could print from home to line your own DVD cases. Hell, then they could even do their own styling/karaoke effects if they were allowed.

The only catch to that of course then is it really comes across as a direct "competitor" to fansubs and the fairweather fans might not be willing to pay for a digital file. I would, but I like to think the worst of my fellow fan lol...
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Old 2008-01-28, 05:19   Link #46
lamer_de
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Quote:
- The average fan gets to watch more and more anime on TV, so they don't feel the need as much to buy stuff on DVD to watch anime
I have no industry insight, but i was always under the impression that TV airings help DVD sales tremendously because they reach a much, much, much bigger audience outside the "freak" circles and therefore open new target groups.

Quote:
- Sorta the opposite way ... we don't get enough shows on commonly available channels to let your Joe Every Fan see stuff. (The large majority of anime fans still don't watch fansubs) Whereas in Japan you get to see basically everything on TV beforehand. (How are the DVD sales on stuff like IY, Bleach, Death Note, etc?)
They suck. The first Shounen Jump related thing is OP on place 33 (combined sales in 2007 for animated material), but it's a movie. Followed by the bleach movie. The first DVD with episodes of such series is indeed Death note at place 45. See http://forums.animesuki.com/showpost...5&postcount=53 It's also a misconception that "in Japan you get to see basically everything on TV." A lot of it airs on pay-tv (AT-X, WOWOW just to name the 2 most common ones) or on UHF, which is broadcasted only locally, so if you don't live in Tokyo or another megacity, you won't receive it.

Quote:
- Even in Japan I don't believe most of the money is made from DVD sales ... it's the merchandising that counts. Or money from broadcasting itself.
I'd agree on the merchandising part. However, usually no/extremly little money is made from broadcasting (as opposed to the US, and if you exclude the 18:00 shounen jump stuff). All those "airs in the middle of the night anime" don't have any sponsoring besides the manga/soundtrack/producing company affiliated with the anime anyway. And iirc the airtime costs something, so the TV airings are percieved soley as promotion for the related merchandise (DVD, CD, toys, games).

Quote:
- US barely has any of the merchandising that goes along with shows in Japan.
Probably true. But then, how many people would buy hug pillows or character CDs of US voice actors?

Quote:
- The average anime fan is in the age bracket with the least amount of disposable income, in comparison to Japan where most of your DVDs will be bought by Otaku who are out of school.
I'd say that is one of the core problems of the industry. Nobody but the über-hardcore fan buys stuff, which is why DVD sales even in Japan average in the single thouthands per month. Which in turn leads to an even stronger concentration on the "crowd that buys everything", i.e. moe/visual novel/erogame/PS2 game lovers. Unfortunately, those genres don't sell ouside Japan, because no-one plays the games. So there's a huge load of material that is only interesting to "freaks", and those have already seen on fansubs for free. Which in turn leads to the fact that out of the limited "freak" population, only a small fraction in the US keeps buying DVDs. And who would've thought, companies can't survive on that alone. See also the interview with the CEO of Funimation, who states that "Dragonball Z still remains a big pillar to the company", a title that has been marketeted to hell and back but apparently has mass appeal due to the broadcasting (Page 2 on http://www.icv2.com/articles/home/11935.html)
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Old 2008-01-28, 05:24   Link #47
cyth
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JediNight View Post
The only catch to that of course then is it really comes across as a direct "competitor" to fansubs and the fairweather fans might not be willing to pay for a digital file. I would, but I like to think the worst of my fellow fan lol...
Yeah, you got that right. I think paying for downloads is actually the last stage before newer generations take over, generations that won't feel an ounce of debt to creators of content available on the Internet. This is already quite apparent, so the entertainment industries will have to think of something else, perhaps take it up to their governments to enforce taxes on entertainment, lol. I firmly believe that the Internet won't drastically help the anime industry eat into the share of other entertainment industries because of the content it offers (no mainstream appeal, even in Japan), which is exactly why the majority of anime titles have stayed in the niche for the past 40 years.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lamer_de View Post
Probably true. But then, how many people would buy hug pillows or character CDs of US voice actors?
Oh, people buy those, they just don't buy from anime licensees.

Last edited by cyth; 2008-01-28 at 05:40.
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Old 2008-01-28, 07:51   Link #48
Schneizel
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The only way to beat piracy is to be more convenient than warez. Kthx.
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Old 2008-01-28, 08:30   Link #49
xris
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The thread has drifted off-topic so a reminder that any further posts will need to be on-topic to the original subject otherwise they will be deleted.
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Old 2008-01-28, 10:55   Link #50
danomac
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Nicholi View Post
Which releases were those?
I believe it was Ureshii's Sola 14/15 that had the overlap problem. Ayako was the other group in question, their Nagasarete Airantou had the timing problems.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Nicholi View Post
On a platform which only gets better from user feedback you would think you might look into the problem a little more to make your applications better.
I normally do. Right now life is so busy that I don't have time to delve into troubleshooting problems. I barely have enough time to fansub as it is. Maybe in about 5 months when things should calm down I will - but I'll probably forget.
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Old 2008-01-29, 06:32   Link #51
Nicholi
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Quote:
Originally Posted by danomac
I believe it was Ureshii's Sola 14/15 that had the overlap problem. Ayako was the other group in question, their Nagasarete Airantou had the timing problems.
/me will check this out
Not good for me to recommend things which are not fully working anymore . The last few mplayer builds I did are many months old now, though I never noticed any serious errors. Was it constantly overlapping I am guessing, instead of just minor annoyances?
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Old 2008-01-29, 12:41   Link #52
danomac
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Yes, it was constantly overlapping. Sometime full words would overlap. It was unwatchable.
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Old 2008-01-29, 13:08   Link #53
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Quote:
Originally Posted by danomac View Post
Yes, it was constantly overlapping. Sometime full words would overlap. It was unwatchable.
yea, I've been able to reproduce it.
Code:
MPlayer dev-SVN-r22096-4.3.0 (C) 2000-2007 MPlayer Team
celticdruid's build. (and old one to boot, LOL)
Apparently there's problem with its font scaling engine.
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Old 2008-01-29, 13:55   Link #54
Miles Teg
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Quote:
Originally Posted by danomac View Post
Yes, it was constantly overlapping. Sometime full words would overlap. It was unwatchable.
The last SVN version of mplayer still do that, the first time the effect happen is at 4:55.

MPlayer dev-SVN-r25913-4.1.3 (C) 2000-2008 MPlayer Team
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Old 2008-01-29, 20:13   Link #55
Nicholi
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Quote:
Originally Posted by edogawaconan
celticdruid's build. (and old one to boot, LOL)
Apparently there's problem with its font scaling engine.
Just for everyone that wanted to go testing on win32, afaik my builds are the only ones which include "full SSA support"...which means linking freetype, fontconfig, and turning on libass in mplayer. Last I checked neither celtic_druid nor sherpya linked fontconfig. And those are the only other two major public mplayer win32 builds I know of besides the official one (which also does not come with fontconfig). My build is ancient as hell though too, just laziness on my part .

P.S. fontconfig is what is required if you want to be able to see the fonts in the Styles. Overlapping subs though shouldn't have anything to do with fontconfig, just some possible bug in libass. /me still has to get files
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Old 2008-01-30, 00:10   Link #56
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Nicholi View Post
Just for everyone that wanted to go testing on win32, afaik my builds are the only ones which include "full SSA support"...which means linking freetype, fontconfig, and turning on libass in mplayer. Last I checked neither celtic_druid nor sherpya linked fontconfig. And those are the only other two major public mplayer win32 builds I know of besides the official one (which also does not come with fontconfig). My build is ancient as hell though too, just laziness on my part .

P.S. fontconfig is what is required if you want to be able to see the fonts in the Styles. Overlapping subs though shouldn't have anything to do with fontconfig, just some possible bug in libass. /me still has to get files
huh? the sub is styled just as it should on my mplayer...
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Old 2008-02-04, 20:23   Link #57
Dark Shikari
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One thing you might notice if you stuff a hardsubbed anime in a stream analyzer is that a huge portion of the bits are actually spent on the subtitles. This is slightly less of a problem when using a modern adaptive quantization scheme, but its still an atrocious waste of bits.
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Old 2008-02-06, 15:15   Link #58
shirohamada
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dark Shikari View Post
One thing you might notice if you stuff a hardsubbed anime in a stream analyzer is that a huge portion of the bits are actually spent on the subtitles. This is slightly less of a problem when using a modern adaptive quantization scheme, but its still an atrocious waste of bits.
and we have a winning post!
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Old 2008-02-06, 16:28   Link #59
Dark Shikari
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Quote:
Originally Posted by shirohamada View Post
and we have a winning post!
To emphasize this more with a good visual:



White = most bits, black = least bits. Image is from an I-frame in a 1.25 megabit Stage6 DivX encode of "Bokusatsu Tenshi Dokuro-chan" that I happened to have lying around. Bitmap generated with Elecard Streameye.

Notice the bit cost for the subtitles at the bottom. In particular, each white block is roughly 1300-1500 bits each.
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Old 2008-02-06, 18:08   Link #60
leetdood
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As an anime viewer, I usually watch anime on my television- Some releases use a small font size (because they're usually viewed on a monitor at a close distance) so softsubs make it MUCH easier for me to view anime, because i can easily resize the font to a suitable size.
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