Opinions on karaoke in fansubs

[jfs]

I consider making karaoke as a kind of "sculpting animated art with program code", it's part envisioning something I want to create and try to make it using the tools available, and experimenting with different things and see how it actually turns out. I don't see how that's really any different from other creative hobbies such as painting or writing prose. Today, writing program code that generates visual effects is an art form in itself, and if the resultant rendered graphics (whether it's text synchronised to a song, a silent film, or just something abstract) isn't art I don't know what it is.
Look at the demo scene for countless more examples of software art.

@exedore: Don't call it "keying in per frame effects" when you (should) know that it's simply wrong. Generating karaoke effects is writing algorithms that calculate effects per frame to some regular timing, it's quite rare you need to actually control things directly at a per-frame level.
(In other words, don't say one thing that's technically totally off the line if you really mean something else. It makes you look extremely ignorant/stupid.)
I'll leave that part of the discussion here.

As for why I do karaoke and not really anything else:
I made some attempts at translating, my Japanese skill isn't really up to it and I quickly tire from it. For the same reason I don't want to check.
I just don't have the patience to do timing. I don't consider my English good enough for editing. I find typesetting rather boring, really, and tire from it. Also see my opinions on that in another thread.
Getting raws, well, I can do that but other people tend to be faster at finding the good ones than me And my encoding skills never truly got to the "able to build a good filter chain" stage.
Programming is what I'm good at and what I enjoy doing, and to me, karaoke effects is a great way of exercising myself. It's in demand so I do it, and since I don't do anything, and since the only thing that can be held back by a missing karaoke is encoding, it can be done in parallel with almost everything else. So in most cases it doesn't actually delay a release.
(Yes, I just argued that you can't use the "karaoke delays release" argument for not making karaoke.)

[getfresh]

I have been a long time fan of the concept of doing 3 diff opening/endings for shows. First set being raw openings with no credits, no afx titles, no karaoke or translations of any kind. Second set having only the title, credits, and {\k,\K} karaoke with eng, roma, and kanji. Third set being the full thing, effected karaoke, titles, credits, logos, etc... . Then just rotate the sets every episode.

EPI-01 First set
EPI-02 Second set
EPI-03 Third set
EPI-04 First set
EPI-05 Second set
EPI-06 Third set
EPI-07 First set

and so on...

That way pretty much every type of viewer gets to see one opening the way they want to. If ppl bitch about that they are just bitching to bitch.

[Shouta]

I don't do it. Would use up too much of my time and wouldn't be worth it.

On the whole, I don't think it's necessary. Folks that can sing it will be able to after a few times listening to it anyway so it's just wasted time/space.

[sangofe]

Well done karaokes are sexy.

[shinjipierre]

Opinions are like ***holes, everyone has one.

I'd suggest doing something actually creative if you want to learn how to be creative... Styling karaoke isn't exactly what I'd call "creative work".

Creative people are creative with anything. Be it a brush, a pen, toilet paper, pieces of metal or forks. I guess you're not creative enough .

getfresh, you're awfully right, there will always be someone to bitch. Just stick with what you think is right .

[Daiz]

Originally Posted by shinjipierre

Creative people are creative with anything. Be it a brush, a pen, toilet paper, pieces of metal or forks. I guess you're not creative enough .

I know, I was only half-serious when I said that. But seriously speaking, in the end, styling text and creating text effects is still just styling text and creating text effects. Things like writing / drawing / composing / game developing / other will give you a lot more "creative freedom", so to say. Of course, more creative freedom generally means more work too.

[/offtopic]

[dj_tjerk]

i feel like i'm limited by the sound of the instruments when i compose a song, or the limits of the language and the words when i'm writing a book, or that i can only see a fraction of the spectrum when i'm drawing and i that i can't actually draw 3d, and that i have to account for the system specs when designing a computer game. Everything has limits, some people don't even get close to them, some try to overcome them. It's up to you >_>

[Lonestar9]

I enjoy the fancy, colored karaoke graphics, to me it gives a show a unique look and feel, so I'm all for them.

[ReAn]

Karaoke I feel is like crossing your 7's, it's more like the neat frill that some people (groups) add on for completeness.

Personally I like it, I don't really see any major harm in having it but it's not something I'd delay a release longer than say... 1 day for (not even that long in most cases).

Karaoke is nice, and being that I'm an ex-karaoke timer&stylist it's one of the neater aspects of fansubbing.

[pichu]

It's really up to you, how you define "Fanciness" of the karaoke.

To me, if you're just matching the song and rhythms, you can do it very simply. In this case, you're just making a karaoke that's easy to 'sing along.'

However, in other cases, when the background (i.e., your opening video) is flashed with fancy effects or special effects, even your simple karaoke would look horrid on top of the scenes, no matter how watchable can your karaoke be on plain videos. In this case, you can make your karaoke "fancier" by matching exactly what appears on the scene, in which it won't destroy the viewing experience of the viewer. So, this type of karaoke can be extremely fancy depending on the scenes.

There are cases when you may want to hybrid this: sing along karaoke (simple) and scene-match karaoke (fancy).

It's really up to how you define 'fancy.' This is purely subjective.

There are cases where people try theme-based karaoke, as if it pertains to the story rather than the song or the scenes. But I would avoid this, because it will be hard to get it done correctly.

[Haruyasha]

I personally hate (hardsubbed) karaoke. I mean, it's ok for op and ed.. but I can't stand it when fansubbers add karaoke into the middle of an episode when some sorta music starts up. It ruins everything because now I have hardsubbed karaoke on 3 sides of the screen flying around taking my eyes off whatever is happening in the center..

I mean.. just a bit of common sense.. I really doubt anyone cares about what the lyrics say when there's action happening..

The recent school days dvd episode.. I appreciate the fansubber's hard work.. but it's painful to see karaoke flying all over the scene which I specifically downloaded the episode for.

[Koroku]

Whenever I karaoke inserts, I always make it plain \k and try to hide it off in a corner as best as I can. >_>

But I like karaoke, it's fun to make and for the most part, it gives a pretty nice looking final product~

[Xanas]

I generally like karaoke, though I think it'd be cool to have the ability to copy the subs for use with the R1 released DVDs since we usually get better video quality there. Also the ability to enable/disable at times would be very good. Couldn't a container format be made (or extended) to support some kind of overlay video rendering? Is this because cpus aren't capable of rendering one video over another with alpha blending in real time?

[Kristen]

I personally despise all karaoke in all forms, finding it nothing but a clutter on the screen. The OP/ED should be in clean and pure form, not with some text flying around jumping out at you. And then sometimes the Karaoke and Fansubbers Credits get to be so much, you see the text, and the OP just becomes a background action.
There have only been two instances of karaoke that I've ever liked, and since both shows are liscenced, I can't talk about it. But really, one of them I liked just because it added to the effect already given by the ED by adding a snowfall to an ED that already had snow on the ground.

[Zalis]

I generally like karaoke in fansubs, but I wouldn't cry if it were gone. I spent about a year and a half watching anime on R1 DVD only before I started watching fansubs, and I never felt like karaoke was "missing." When I started seeing it, I thought, "Oh hey, that's a nice bonus." I've never thought "omg that release doesn't have karaoke must not DL!" While I have no problem with groups like Triad and a.f.k. doing simple song translations with no effects, I don't have a problem with average fansub karaoke, as long as it doesn't clutter the screen with stupid effects or forget about its #1 mission: to provide a readable translation of the song for people who don't understand the audio. (The same could be said for main dialogue subs tbh.) Karaoke subs don't have to "match" the color of the backgrounds, that's for sure. And really, I'm perfectly satisfied with older, simpler effects, like in AI&A-F's Kanon 2002 release.

The only thing that really bugs with with karaoke is softsubbed karaoke. It's pointless and it just creates lag for a good number of viewers. I'd rather groups just hardsubbed the karaoke even on otherwise softsubbed releases, if they're going to do karaoke effects. People can look for clean OP/ED online if they really need it, and it's not like we're entitled to 100% pristine untouched files free of hardsubs/logos/etc. If they really need that, they can get the raws. Or if 100% softsub is the goal, just do simple song TL with no effects, like Hauu~'s Higurashi Kai release.

[edogawaconan]

Originally Posted by Zalis

The only thing that really bugs with with karaoke is softsubbed karaoke. It's pointless and it just creates lag for a good number of viewers. I'd rather groups just hardsubbed the karaoke even on otherwise softsubbed releases, if they're going to do karaoke effects. People can look for clean OP/ED online if they really need it, and it's not like we're entitled to 100% pristine untouched files free of hardsubs/logos/etc. If they really need that, they can get the raws. Or if 100% softsub is the goal, just do simple song TL with no effects, like Hauu~'s Higurashi Kai release.

you can turn on pre-buffer subpictures to turn off \k tags on vsfilter

[Bot1]

if its just a simple \k karaoke then it wont be noticeably slower than a normal line.

[_Anakyn_]

Karaokes like The Triad's or a.f.k's are the most useful. Losers like me spend hours in postedition programs like AE to entertain a bunch of leechers and have some fun ourselves playing with the effects. I think it's useless, but I'll keep doing them. Why? Don't ask me, ask the blonde girl.

[furato]

I think karaoke is not necessary and is just dead weight on my CPU with no added value.
But if the fansubbers like doing it, who am I to say they can't do it?

[cyth]

Originally Posted by furato

I think karaoke is not necessary and is just dead weight on my CPU with no added value.

If you're talking about softsubbed \k karaoke, you can just turn on Pre-buffer subpictures in VSFilter's DirectVobSub (green arrowy taskbar icon during softsubbed video playback). It will get rid of pretty effects, but subs will take less CPU power.