A friendly reminder...

[Harry Paratesticles]

I think there's one major thing that's going unsaid here, and it's mostly to keep from hurting anyone's feelings, but it needs to be said to end the petty arguing going on in here. Quite possibly the biggest reason complete cooperation in fansubbing will never happen is because groups produce encodes of varying quality at varying times, which is the reason for oversubbing as well as for the advent of brands such as 'speedsub.' Now, should a group that releases at higher quality than another simply drop a series because they aren't as fast as the other? Equally, should the group that releases faster feel pressured to quit even though they get lots of downloads? Communication really is the key to remedying this. I mean, realistically, if the two groups merged, something good would be bound to happen. However, often times in groups people actually enjoy working with one another, leaving no reason to fix something that isn't technically broken. This begs another question: what's more important, getting every series subbed or enjoying the process? There are shades of gray inbetween, but those are the two ends of the spectrum.

[Starks]

Originally Posted by LytHka

Do you even know who Killshok was?

Yeah, I do... I worked for him as a distro in Anime-Junkies back in 2003 for .hack//LoTB. My IRC alias was "Onii-chan".

I also did an episode of Marmalade Boy with him in Anime-Pinnacle in 2004.

[TheFluff]

Oh noes, more codec ignoramuses.

FUN FACTS ABOUT H.264/AVC DECODERS:
- The only two ones that can be considered complete are libavcodec (used in ffdshow) and Nero Digital. For libavcodec you need a version that's newer than about november-december 2005, older ones are a bit unsafe to use (but should work for most stuff). The CoreAVC alpha doesn't support lossless, and seems either buggy or slightly incomplete.
- The only H.264 feature not supported by the above-mentioned two is, IIRC, interlaced encoding (which noone uses, since no encoders support it either). EVERYTHING ELSE HAS BEEN SUPPORTED FOR AGES. The last feature to get implemented in libavcodec was custom quantization matrices, and that was back in november or so IIRC. But almost noone save Zero1 uses those anyway.
- H.264 in VfW mode (AVI) is NOT specs-compliant, and no decoders are in any way required to support it. They kinda do anyway due to encoder-side hacks, but that's beside the point.

Face it: there are no H.264 features left to implement except interlaced encoding. Not for the decoders, not for the encoders. All current x264 changes are changes to the way the encoders computes stuff - the output format is frozen.

Add two and two and you realize that the problem is a PEBKAC, not the fault of the decoder developers nor the encoders (of course, occasionally the encoder screws up and creates something unplayable, but that's pretty rare). Just use CCCP, that's guaranteed to work for all sane encodes and a good bunch of the insane ones.

[ladholyman]

I think I'm cooperating with others just fine. Triple joints for the win. You can't get everything you want, of course. But as long as I know that there are all kinds of people in this world, I feel content. This idea of a nice cohesive community does sound good on paper, but there will always be exceptions and there will always be outliers. Just sub what you like, no one's going to stop you.

[Starks]

Originally Posted by ladholyman

I think I'm cooperating with others just fine. Triple joints for the win. You can't get everything you want, of course. But as long as I know that there are all kinds of people in this world, I feel content. This idea of a nice cohesive community does sound good on paper, but there will always be exceptions and there will always be outliers. Just sub what you like, no one's going to stop you.

That's exactly the point I am trying to make. Groups will depend on and help each other, but each group will regulate itself in the manner of what they sub.

[Tommy Feb6]

Oh no. My version of FFDshow is from september! I'm so out of date.

[Starks]

Originally Posted by Tommy Feb6

Oh no. My version of FFDshow is from september! I'm so out of date.

That's cool.

Don't let people push their agendas on the you or the community. The community moves forward by gradually adopting trends, not by imposing mandates. If you don't want to use Codec Pack A, that's your choice. If you want to sub Series G, that is your choice. If you want to encode in Format J, that is your choice. What's best for one person, may not be best for another.

[Kenji Ikari]

Dude, Killshok was a great guy. I mean, really. He provided lot's of anime to the masses at good speed, and not always bad quality.


...wow. I'm not sure if I was joking there.

[Srin Tuar]

Its an exciting time.

Raws seem to have higher availability than ever before.

The main HQ subbing groups are moving to mkv softsubs en masse, which has
proven to be a massive improvement all around.

There are so many groups contributing now, that some popular shows get subbed
by dozens of groups. More participation is better no matter what, imo.

Non-US centric groups are growing far more numerous. Its fun to notice when you are collaborating with people from all over the world.

All around, I'd say things are just better than ever before

[zalas]

Originally Posted by Srin Tuar

Raws seem to have higher availability than ever before.

The availability of raws I see for series hasn't risen significantly in the past year or so. I'd venture to say that we are actually not going to get any more significant growth in the availability, but probably better quality ones as encodes improve.

[DryFire]

Originally Posted by Srin Tuar

The main HQ subbing groups are moving to mkv softsubs en masse, which has proven to be a massive improvement all around.

I hope they do, unfortunately, I don't see that happening atm.

As for the quality of raws it seem to vary wildly form series to series.

Japanese cappers still do some odd stuff (like keeping 192kbps aac with 650kbps video, or making 24 fps cfr material 120fps just for the heck of it).

[Starks]

Originally Posted by zalas

The availability of raws I see for series hasn't risen significantly in the past year or so. I'd venture to say that we are actually not going to get any more significant growth in the availability, but probably better quality ones as encodes improve.

Raw availability is in a minor flux right now... A well-known P2P such as Winny will have more raws, but a newer P2P like Share will have better raws.

[Quarkboy]

Originally Posted by Starks

Raw availability is in a minor flux right now... A well-known P2P such as Winny will have more raws, but a newer P2P like Share will have better raws.

Is that really the case? From my experience, anything on Share is also on winny. And things tend to appear on Share a couple of days after winny. Are there really raws that you can only find on one or the other?

[Starks]

Originally Posted by Quarkboy

Is that really the case? From my experience, anything on Share is also on winny. And things tend to appear on Share a couple of days after winny. Are there really raws that you can only find on one or the other?

Yes. Raws for Mai-Otome would be an example of such. The difference in availabilty can range from minutes to hours. The quality raws exist mostly on Share.

[xat]

Originally Posted by Quarkboy

Is that really the case? From my experience, anything on Share is also on winny. And things tend to appear on Share a couple of days after winny. Are there really raws that you can only find on one or the other?

Newer releases that make it to Share, from my experience, generally propagate *very* quickly. I'm not sure if there's a correlation, but Share also tends to have new content more quickly than winny. On that note, I've found that winny is -very- reliable for older (even if only by a few days) content. Not quite sure how it works, but I'm led to believe that some winny content also makes it to Share; it isn't uncommon to see a winny ID listed in a hit.

Whether or not content appears on either network is solely dependent on the user base. It may seem as though, for example, you might be able to get X raw from Share alone, but inevitably it's possible for a user to share it over winny (no pun intended).

In any case, with regards to the topic at hand, I had actually wanted to jump the band wagon for disgaea, completely not taking into account the oversubbing issue.

There are definitely many shows that seem to be worth looking into though--hopefully this season will show better turn out in variety.

[zalas]

Originally Posted by Starks

Yes. Raws for Mai-Otome would be an example of such. The difference in availabilty can range from minutes to hours. The quality raws exist mostly on Share.

That might be due to the particular cloud of peers you happen to be connected to. Now if you were connected to same people in both Winny and Share and got the quality raws faster, then it would be a valid observation. However, Share has a less stringent limit on the number of concurrent downloads than Winny, so it might be spreading faster across people who upload less and you might be able to download it faster.

Originally Posted by xat

In any case, with regards to the topic at hand, I had actually wanted to jump the band wagon for disgaea, completely not taking into account the oversubbing issue.

There are rumors that it is prelicensed by Geneon, but it's unconfirmed at the moment.

[Quarkboy]

Originally Posted by zalas

That might be due to the particular cloud of peers you happen to be connected to. Now if you were connected to same people in both Winny and Share and got the quality raws faster, then it would be a valid observation. However, Share has a less stringent limit on the number of concurrent downloads than Winny, so it might be spreading faster across people who upload less and you might be able to download it faster.

I'm going to admit it publicalyl right now: I use a hacked winny that gets around the concurrent download limit. Hell, my very presence on the network with my assymetrical connection hurts stability so better that I stay on it less, right? Well, in any case, I use both share and winny, although primarily winny so far for raw getting.
For ginban kaleidoscope, for example, there were 12 different raws on winny. On share, I found 6, all 6 of which were the same as one of the ones on winny. This was a few days after airing.

[Schneizel]

Share gets Winny's sloppy seconds.

[TheFluff]

Originally Posted by Tommy Feb6

Oh no. My version of FFDshow is from september! I'm so out of date.

I said "might be unsafe", not "will bork" (IIRC, september 05 is before the CQM patch, so that won't work - but noone uses that). After all, libavcodec has had functional (if incomplete) h264 support for at least 10-12 months now. As long as it works, the only thing you can gain by updating is decoding optimizations and the like.

[DaFool]

1.) Fansubbers may damn well decide what they want to sub. It even takes effort to watch an anime episode 4 times for a show you absolutely love
2.) 50 anime series doesn't mean same budget spread over more shows, thus more sucking shows. Watched Hantsuki lately? 6-episode anime series are in, baby!. So instead of one 24-epper series, we can get 4 for the price of one timeslot. So if we tally it up it just means more series, not more episodes. Thus the crap / quality argument nowadays does not hold.
3.) Thank goodness there are more raw groups doing the hunting for us. I dislike using P2P other than BT and irc in general. I may not understand a show if it's raw, but if its good its quality will show even in the raw and I'll be collecting it in case no subber subs it.