Creating Fansubs - Questions and Answers

[Arm]

Originally Posted by crash-kun

Yea I agree that soft-subbing them is a bad idea, depending since each file is 5-15mb give or take. I have no idea what fonts you have been looking at twc, but JP fonts are no different than any other kind, other than the fact that they have characters along with the normal roman letters.

He's trolling.

[jfs]

Now, it's not all cases where the latin letters in Japanese fonts really do match the style of the kana and kanji in it. Rather, it's somewhat common that not much work was put into designing the latin letters and that they just don't have the same visual quality as the rest. You can often get better results by picking a well-designed western font.

This is maybe not the best example, but compare these two fonts:

The upper font is DFGSoGei-W7, a Japanese font.
The lower is Briem Akademi Semibold.
They're somewhat similar, but Briem Akademi is more compressed and generally easier on the eyes to read.
This was the font combo used for the first two Mendoi-Conclave Gundam 00 openings (the karaoke).

[LelouchVII]

Hm..I get your point. Guess I will have to find always the best visual result. Didn't know that much about fonts though! Thought they were always the same. Thanx jfs.

[Arm]

Originally Posted by jfs

Now, it's not all cases where the latin letters in Japanese fonts really do match the style of the kana and kanji in it. Rather, it's somewhat common that not much work was put into designing the latin letters and that they just don't have the same visual quality as the rest. You can often get better results by picking a well-designed western font.

This is maybe not the best example, but compare these two fonts:

The upper font is DFGSoGei-W7, a Japanese font.
The lower is Briem Akademi Semibold.
They're somewhat similar, but Briem Akademi is more compressed and generally easier on the eyes to read.
This was the font combo used for the first two Mendoi-Conclave Gundam 00 openings (the karaoke).

I'd just like to fix the bolded parts.

"Somewhat common" and "often" are quite subjective, but from my interpretation and experience, I'd say it's more on the rare side that a western font matches better than the original.

[Plorkyeran]

The point of using a western font instead isn't to get a better match, it's to get a font that wasn't half-assed by a font designer who felt obligated to throw in latin characters but didn't care about them. Most of the time the best you get is a copy and paste from a western font that happens to be a fairly good match, and in those cases you might as well just use the original font.

[Arm]

Originally Posted by Plorkyeran

The point of using a western font instead isn't to get a better match, it's to get a font that wasn't half-assed by a font designer who felt obligated to throw in latin characters but didn't care about them. Most of the time the best you get is a copy and paste from a western font that happens to be a fairly good match, and in those cases you might as well just use the original font.

I guess the key question is what jfs meant by "better results".

I consider better results (or best results) a 100% matching font (ie: the exact font). Perhaps you & jfs pride yourselves on providing the closest match while trying to also find a "good-looking" font (which is always subjective)? For example, as jfs said, Briem Akademi is easier on the eyes, so even if he knows it's not the exact font, he'd choose that.

[jfs]

This is just some personal idea I have, but I think the Latin characters in Japanese specialty fonts are all designed for rare use in advertising contexts, and as such it's more important that they catch the eye than being readable. (The above DFGSoGei is an example of this.) For fonts meant for longer running texts, it's more important to have something readable for the cases where some Latin lettering is required, but whether it looks good isn't nearly as important.

Bringing out another sample:

From top to bottom: Times New Roman, Adobe Garamond, MingLiU (Chinese font), MS Mincho (Japanese font)
The Asian fonts are clearly designed more to just "work" and fit into a context of CJK text, being "half-width" text. The letter forms become more pleasing if using full-width text, but then the inter-character spacing becomes atrocious.

[TheFluff]

Originally Posted by Arm

I guess the key question is what jfs meant by "better results".

I consider better results (or best results) a 100% matching font (ie: the exact font). Perhaps you & jfs pride yourselves on providing the closest match while trying to also find a "good-looking" font (which is always subjective)? For example, as jfs said, Briem Akademi is easier on the eyes, so even if he knows it's not the exact font, he'd choose that.

I guess you only sub shows like bakemonogatari where the studio is nice enough to tell you what font they used, then

or are you seriously claiming to be able to use the exact same font as the studio used in a majority of signs

e: also re: the hurf blurf font bloat debate, there are programs that can strip all glyphs you aren't using

[Arm]

Originally Posted by TheFluff

I guess you only sub shows like bakemonogatari where the studio is nice enough to tell you what font they used, then

or are you seriously claiming to be able to use the exact same font as the studio used in a majority of signs

e: also re: the hurf blurf font bloat debate, there are programs that can strip all glyphs you aren't using

I'll quote myself here for you.

Originally Posted by Arm

I guess the key question is what jfs meant by "better results".

I consider better results (or best results) a 100% matching font (ie: the exact font).

Nowhere did I say I get the best results for all my signs.

That said, quite a few studios recycle the same fonts over and over, so it's usually not very hard anyway, just time consuming and tedious.

[Zergrinch]

Hah, if font bloat was such an issue, why not have a section on your website saying, these are the fonts we used for softsubs. Click here to download them...

[twc]

Because then your users would have to download and install a bunch of worthless fonts nobody likes, cares about, or otherwise wants.

[j0x]

sorry if this is the wrong section to post this but i thought i post this here anyway

i cant seem to find this "Fansub Block" font in google
can anyone give it to me thanks

[Mio]

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=fansub+block

first result............?

[j0x]

nah i already google it the font name is not fansub block on that link

[D404]

Originally Posted by ckmox

nah i already google it the font name is not fansub block on that link

http://217.199.228.76/video/Devochka...ansubBlock.ttf

2 seconds in google.

[j0x]

Originally Posted by D404

http://217.199.228.76/video/Devochka...ansubBlock.ttf

2 seconds in google.

thanks google results in our country didnt give me that

[cjlmaster]

hi! everyone!
a few days ago, i knew about ass.
before that time. i just know smi. lrc..etc.
so after seeing ass. i'm very surprised.
i really tried to get information about ass.
but here(in korea) i can't find information about ass.
plz. tell me about ass.

1. who makes ass format?
2. can i get sample ass file?
3. i heard that there are ass2,3,4... really?
4. i got some ass files. but "MPC" can't supprt "realtime rendering" (like "move")
what's the reason?

i'm sorry. as you know. i'm poor at english.
i hope you can understand my question.
have a nice day!

[jfs]

You can use Aegisub to make ASS subtitles.

Actually there is nobody who "controls" the format, it was created by anime fansubbers a long time ago, originally as the SSA (SubStation Alpha) format and since then it has been extended many times by many different people. In practice, nobody uses the older SSA formats any longer.

MPC (and VSFilter) by default don't display animations because they have an option enabled, that makes drawing the subtitles use less CPU but makes animations not work. The option is "prebuffering", in MPC you must set "Number of subpictures to buffer ahead" to 0.

[Sub-zero 4ever]

so regarding mpeg4 issues. Since the times MPEG4-part 2 was introduced the official container was supposed to be .mp4 right? and yet (for some reason) people kept encoding asp videos in the avi container (which is known to have to have the b-frames lag).

So which encoder was used to produce the mpeg4 asp streams that wasnt specified to produce avi compliant files but rather .mp4 files? (aka didnt need patchs needed for asp-in-avi files)

[TheFluff]

You can encode native ASP with xvid_encraw, or you can encode an AVI as usual and then unpack the bitstream by muxing it to mkv with mkvmerge using the --engage native_mpeg4 flag.