US DVD Subtitles

[zalas]

Originally Posted by Sanjuronord

Well, my own programming experience is limitied to what I've learned in college, and sadly it's not a lot for a csc student. Unfamiliar with any programming needing to be done to do that, but from what I do know of programming if you can get it to work once it's just a matter of copy and paste and then modifying it to work again. Unfamiliar with the KareKano discs (not even 100% sure i know the series... ) Anyway you can post a pic, I'd love to see what they did since it's the first I've heard of a company doing that. I only used the dogma disc as an example of something neat that can be done. Creating two different english subtitles isn't as difficult, at least i wouldn't imagine it to be. Heck, you can keep all the text at the bottom of the screen and just put the extra junk in a couple paranthesis.

Programming a DVD's subtitle layer is not as easy as programming in a high level language. There's a lot more restrictions on what you can do, mostly because of the DVD spec. You can probably get a similar feel for the type of programming involved if you try to do actual coding on a realtime system based on a very small embedded chip.
Putting notes in parentheses will really clutter the screen if you stick everything on the bottom.
With notes, though, ADV has done an excellent job in Excel Saga by putting in ADVidnotes. They've also done so in Abenobashi, though there are a few unnecessary ones. AD Vidnotes are optional, so you can watch it once without the notes and once with the notes, since they do add clutter when they are shown.
Frankly, a paper version of the notes would be nice also, since you can look at it at your leisure. (Our anime club showed Excel Saga with vid notes off, but someone would summarize the gist of them in the newsletter)

[Sanjuronord]

Originally Posted by zalas

Programming a DVD's subtitle layer is not as easy as programming in a high level language. There's a lot more restrictions on what you can do, mostly because of the DVD spec. You can probably get a similar feel for the type of programming involved if you try to do actual coding on a realtime system based on a very small embedded chip.

Okay, call me a dork cause now I'll go off topic completely since you got me curious and you seem to know what you're talking about (especially in that typesetting topic in the fansub forum you just replied to). What language is used to do the subtitle layer? Any decent sites or books on doing something like that? My hasty google search didn't reveal alot except for a few overpriced tapes that i have no intention of buying.

[zalas]

Originally Posted by Sanjuronord

Okay, call me a dork cause now I'll go off topic completely since you got me curious and you seem to know what you're talking about (especially in that typesetting topic in the fansub forum you just replied to). What language is used to do the subtitle layer? Any decent sites or books on doing something like that? My hasty google search didn't reveal alot except for a few overpriced tapes that i have no intention of buying.

The subtitle layer has its own 'language.' It's more like machine language than anything. Basically telling it when to put something on screen. However, there's a lot of limitations on colors, number of things you can put on simultaneously. Most people don't actually do this by hand, but use DVD authoring software like DVD Studio Pro or Scenarist. However, you would still have to be keep in mind the limitations.

[Tsu]

Originally Posted by AvatarADV

Seriously, as far as subtitle appearance, the difference in "easy on the eyes" between DVD subtitles and fansubs is anti-aliasing. The borders of the subtitles are subtly blended into the picture so there's not that razor-sharp divide. This is easy to do when you're actually editing the video stream, and impossible to do without. (Well, I say impossible, but you could do it - even on the fly - with enough computing horsepower. However, within the DVD spec, it is -absolutely- impossible.)

Hmm... I do recall the subtitles in the Dutch DVD release of The One having anti-aliassing. I doubt a GPU capable of blitting 60 (relatively) hi-res full-colour images per second would have any trouble with an alpha channel.
Of course, they could've also done the same thing that's done with transparant GIFs a lot; adjusting the outer-border colour to that of the picture in the background, creating somewhat the 'illusion' of anti-aliassing.

[AvatarADV]

Originally Posted by Tsu

Hmm... I do recall the subtitles in the Dutch DVD release of The One having anti-aliassing. I doubt a GPU capable of blitting 60 (relatively) hi-res full-colour images per second would have any trouble with an alpha channel.
Of course, they could've also done the same thing that's done with transparant GIFs a lot; adjusting the outer-border colour to that of the picture in the background, creating somewhat the 'illusion' of anti-aliassing.

Except you can't, really. You only have four colors to work with in your subtitle stream, and while you can vary the transparency, you can only vary it for the entire color - i.e. one of them had better be 100% transparent if you want to watch the show! One color is black, one color is yellow, one color is white (for captions and overlapping subtitles)... and that's it, you've exhausted the flexibility of the spec. Even if you didn't use white caption subtitles, a single extra 50% is not enough for anti-aliasing.

I mean, nowadays you could doubtless program on-the-fly anti-aliasing into a DVD successor, but remember the spec was engineered in the mid-90s. ^_^;

I've said around the office (after having gone through the hell of Excel Saga) that anybody suggesting adding an extra subtitle track would thenceforth be put to death. It's NOT trivial; not rocket science either, but it's a very picky procedure and you can break a disc if you forget to dot your Is and cross your Ts at every step. The added complexity is not just double. (And proofing virtually identical subtitle tracks is REALLY tough!)

I don't like "explanatory text"; it breaks up the flow of the viewing. Occasionally there's absolutely no way around it (a totally untranslatable pun, say), but liner notes are going to be better for most situations. I definitely don't agree with leaving little bits of Japanese in the subtitles for flavor. Yes, if it's an untranslatable term (especially for food, heh.) But I'd rather say "entry" than "genkan" to describe where you drop off your shoes, even if the connotation isn't quite exact. Remember, if a viewer already knows the relevant Japanese cultural term, and you use a close translation, they still grok what's going on. But if the viewer DOESN'T know the term, and you leave it in Japanese, they've got no flippin' idea what you're talking about. That's baaaad.

[Tsu]

Originally Posted by AvatarADV

Except you can't, really. You only have four colors to work with in your subtitle stream, and while you can vary the transparency, you can only vary it for the entire color - i.e. one of them had better be 100% transparent if you want to watch the show! One color is black, one color is yellow, one color is white (for captions and overlapping subtitles)... and that's it, you've exhausted the flexibility of the spec. Even if you didn't use white caption subtitles, a single extra 50% is not enough for anti-aliasing.

Hmm... well, the subtitles on the The One DVD were completely white, as in, no borders. So, that's one colour for the text, one colour for the colourkey and two colours for the anti-aliassing, which, as you can see, is enough.

(Note that even though 3 colours were used for the AA, one of them is barely visible and I doubt that it'd make much difference in something the size of subtitles played on something that makes the image fuzzier anyway)
Of course, the moment you use borders, you can't use AA, since you have one colour less, while you actually need twice as much as you'd need without borders. And since in animation, you can't really make subtitles clear and readable without using borders... argueing your statement seems so pointless now ^^;;

[DrWho2002]

Just my two cents, if anime DVD producers took some ideas from the BBC Doctor Who DVD releases (those are some mighty fine products) maybe that would be good. ^_^

[raikage]

Originally Posted by Melazoma

I'm pretty sure there are R1's out there with the original seiyuu interviews... Noir for one. These interview are quite borings anyways. They ususally contain one of a few conventional blurbs like: "The character is really interesting" or "This is the first time I've done a character like this," "Yoroshiku onegaishimasu," or "Please support our show."--or something like that...

The GTO DVD's had a 3 (4?) - part interview with the mangaka Tohru Fujisawa, which I thought was pretty cool.

On-topic: Subtitles...eh...it's understandable and common enough that it honestly doesn't bother me anymore. If it REALLY bothers you, there are a couple of options avaliable to you:

• Buy the DVD's and continue to watch the fansubs. Support the US anime company but continue to watch what you consider to be the superior product.

• Don't buy the DVD's. (Sorry, AvatarADV.) Buy the R2 DVD's and continue to watch your fansubs. Support the Japanese production studio (but not the US company that, these days, helps fund the anime before it even gets on TV)

• Don't buy the DVD's. (Sorry, AvatarADV.) Buy the mangas and continue to watch your fansubs.

• (This is what I do) Buy and watch the DVD's. Prior to watching the DVD's, learn enough Japanese to the point where you don't need to watch the subtitles religously, just the occasional glance for words/terms you don't know.

[Suikun]

About the subtitle limitations:

Any reason you can't just use a second video track - one video track that's raw (which the DVD defaults to when the English audio track is selected) and a second video track with the subtitles hard-encoded on the video itself, thus allowing anti-aliased text, any font and size you could possibly want, and an entire rainbow of colors at any given time (basically how fansubs are done)? Most DVDs with about 4 episodes should be able to accommodate a second video track and I don't see how typesetting and timing the subtitles onto a DVD would be any different from the way fansubbers do it - the only additional work would be encoding the second video track onto the DVD.

It might be much more work than I realized (so far, everything in the DVD production business turns out to be) but other companies have two video tracks on their discs (FUNimation, Disney/Miramax, Tokyopop's Initial D discs, etc.) and the only problem I can think of is that it might be a tad confusing to viewers who wish to turn on and off subtitles during the show as they'd have to do so by pressing the "alternate video track" key as opposed to what I'm sure they'd logically go for first - the subtitle track.

You could, as a (mildly annoying) solution, do what Disney did with their release of Kiki's Delivery Service and disable the use of "on-the-fly" selection and rather make everything entirely selectable only from the menu (maybe have three options - the first giving you the raw video track with the English dub, the second giving you the subtitled track with Japanese audio, and maybe a third allowing Japanese audio and the raw video track). But even without disabling the "on the fly" selection, it wouldn't be that bad....

[zalas]

Originally Posted by Suikun

About the subtitle limitations:

Any reason you can't just use a second video track - one video track that's raw (which the DVD defaults to when the English audio track is selected) and a second video track with the subtitles hard-encoded on the video itself, thus allowing anti-aliased text, any font and size you could possibly want, and an entire rainbow of colors at any given time (basically how fansubs are done)? Most DVDs with about 4 episodes should be able to accommodate a second video track and I don't see how typesetting and timing the subtitles onto a DVD would be any different from the way fansubbers do it - the only additional work would be encoding the second video track onto the DVD.

Putting in multiple angles halves your bitrate. Even without multiple angles, you're essentially nearly wasting half of the disc with video that is identical. With multiple angles, you'd get the same number of episodes, but at crappier video quality. With multiple programs, you'd get half the number of episodes at the same video quality, or a compromise.

It might be much more work than I realized (so far, everything in the DVD production business turns out to be) but other companies have two video tracks on their discs (FUNimation, Disney/Miramax, Tokyopop's Initial D discs, etc.) and the only problem I can think of is that it might be a tad confusing to viewers who wish to turn on and off subtitles during the show as they'd have to do so by pressing the "alternate video track" key as opposed to what I'm sure they'd logically go for first - the subtitle track.

The opening and endings for FUNimation's Fruits Basket end up not looking as gorgeous as the rest of the episode, because they have to fit two copies of the video into the same amount of bitrate.

[Panon]

Originally Posted by AvatarADV

I've said around the office (after having gone through the hell of Excel Saga) that anybody suggesting adding an extra subtitle track would thenceforth be put to death. It's NOT trivial; not rocket science either, but it's a very picky procedure and you can break a disc if you forget to dot your Is and cross your Ts at every step. The added complexity is not just double. (And proofing virtually identical subtitle tracks is REALLY tough!)

Doesn't seem to be proving very hard for Funimation.

I don't like "explanatory text"; it breaks up the flow of the viewing. Occasionally there's absolutely no way around it (a totally untranslatable pun, say), but liner notes are going to be better for most situations. I definitely don't agree with leaving little bits of Japanese in the subtitles for flavor. Yes, if it's an untranslatable term (especially for food, heh.) But I'd rather say "entry" than "genkan" to describe where you drop off your shoes, even if the connotation isn't quite exact.

Quite an agree to disagree issue.

I personally can't stand dumbing down subtitles for a lowest common denominator (mainly because I find it questionable that that kind of person would be watching a cartoon in Japanese with English subtitles anyway).

A liner note is useless to people who did understand it, since they'll be stuck with reading the dumbed down subtitles whenever they watch it.

In a printed manga maybe that would be acceptable, since you're dealing with a fixed media... but definately not on the dvd format which can support multiple subtitles tracks and cater to BOTH audiences.

[AvatarADV]

Originally Posted by Panon

In a printed manga maybe that would be acceptable, since you're dealing with a fixed media... but definately not on the dvd format which can support multiple subtitles tracks and cater to BOTH audiences.

Except that, while it's possible, it's not -worth it-. Frankly, if you're talking about leaving in little bits of Japanese that do translate, that's just stupid; I wasn't too happy to have "hai" and "ecchi" left in my Mahoro manga that I just picked up last weekend. Do I know what those words mean? Well, duh, yes. But at the same time, it's the sort of thing that betrays an incomplete translation process, and is definitely going to crimp the style of somebody who doesn't already know the term.

There's a big difference between a close approximation and just changing it 'cause you don't want to deal with the issue. The latter is easy; the former can be hellishly difficult to find just the "right" way to say something, to preserve the original meaning while avoiding unwanted American connotations. Sometimes you find something that's absolutely perfect, and there's no problem after that; sometimes you can get pretty close; sometimes it won't come to you even after you've added another set of bumps in the office walls at head height. But just leaving it alone isn't a solution, it's punting to the viewer, hoping they get it or don't get it.

A subtitle track should be comprehensible on first viewing, because that's how 99% of the people who watch it are gonna see it. Things like cultural notes or liner notes are great for somebody who's just watched the show and is now going back over it for greater enjoyment; however, if you HAVE to read the notes in order to understand what's going on in the show, you've probably done a poor job on translation (or the show is just that bizarre, and that does happen... I mean, if the entire episode presupposes you know what former prime minister Mori looks like, but they never actually spell it out in the show...)

Puns are another good example. Literal pun translations are terrible, because usually it's virtually impossible for the viewer to know that a pun has in fact been perpetrated upon the unsuspecting characters. I'm willing to accept a much wider variance in the translation of puns simply because part of that translation should be to keep it -punny-. If your translation is not punny - that is to say, if the viewer sees nothing but a total non sequitur - then you've failed in your translation. (It also makes it difficult to distinguish said circumstances from ACTUAL non sequiturs... think Osaka in Azumanga, who occasionally bizarrely changes the topic. If your show is already full of incomprehensible nonsense, how do you separate out Osaka's special charm from the background babble?)

You also can't say "both" audiences, because frankly, even dedicated anime fans are hardly a solid bloc. There are a lot of people who watch subtitles and get things like suffix usage (although to varying degrees; some of them might not get the significance behind nonstandard usage!), but are they all going to know everything about the ins and outs of the Japanese high school system? About college exams and admission into Toudai? (Do they even know what Toudai is?) About the Tokyo subway system or the bullet trains? Do you even translate "bullet train" from "shinkansen"? People may know "itadakimasu", but do they know "tadaima" and "okaeri" and their variances? Do they know why you don't stick your chopsticks in your rice bowl? What's that funny box in the corner of the apartment? How come that table has a funny blanket comin' out from under it? What's the significance of red and white teams on TV at New Year's? The various holidays of the Japanese year? What is "key money" and why is it so bloody much? What do you do with military ranks, leave 'em alone or translate 'em? What about abbreviations in general, as Japanese is chock full of 'em?

A subtitle track that assumed that the viewer was either Japanese or really up on their Japanese culture would be -chock full- of things that are, essentially, trivia. There are probably a few viewers that could follow all that stuff, but there are a lot of people who couldn't, even among those who consider themselves well-informed anime fans and students of Japanese culture. So it's not really -useful- to anybody; the guys who already knew everything, well, they already knew everything; the guys who didn't get some of the references, well, they didn't get the references, and perhaps didn't understand the show thereby. How is that useful?

I like the idea of using cultural notes or liner notes because there are people who are interested in this stuff and would like to learn it. But I'm not a Japanese culture instructor, and we don't sell Japanese culture instruction DVDs; they are there first and foremost to be entertaining. If you can't understand the subtitle track, that is pretty much by definition not entertaining...

[Ranko]

Personaly i've only once had issues with DVD sub titles, on the Nadisco movie it does the ending music in romanji unless you turn off the subtitles.

I've had other DVD issues but rarely subtitle issues, i also tend to keep around any fansubs i do have so i can compair, (reminds self go buy kiddy grade).

[kujoe]

The two most noteworthy R1 releases for me at the moment are The Twelve Kingdoms and RahXephon. (Especially Twelve Kingdoms, but it makes me wonder if using the formal title, "Queen" is indeed more suitable than "Empress." Then again, "Kingdoms" is already used in the title.) Those two releases just went beyond my expectations, and my expectations are usually very high for titles that I think are worth every penny I have. I have also been impressed with the work some fansubbing groups have done--such as NLA's work on Tsukihime and Kraze's good job on Monster.

Perhaps the only issue I have with regard to fansubs and dvd releases are how correct translations are worded out in English--an issue which is subject to different opinions, interpretations and valuations. Personally, I think it's also a translator's job to provide some notes worth mentioning somewhere. (For a dvd release, on paper or on a small booklet if need be. That way, it won't bother the viewers who don't care for such things.) After all, English and Japanese are two distinct languages which rest on separate socio-cultural foundations of their own.

I think a translator's job is tough, albeit enjoyable nonetheless.

[Lone Wolf]

... some players have problems keeping up ...

that's because everyone is making, and buying, the cheapest players they can. no $h1t your $10 player is not going to play the really complex script well. on the other hand, i'm willing to bet that the really expensive players will play all those 'extras' just fine.

lonewolf

[Mr_Paper]

Originally Posted by Lone Wolf

that's because everyone is making, and buying, the cheapest players they can. no $h1t your $10 player is not going to play the really complex script well. on the other hand, i'm willing to bet that the really expensive players will play all those 'extras' just fine.

lonewolf

Umm.. No.

That really complex script on the KKnJ volume 1 DVD locked up a $300 Sony DVD player. Out of the 12 DVD players I've tried it on, oddly, only the $50 Electrohome DVD player didn't have any problems. Simply because a DVD player is more expensive doesn't mean it'll fair any better, especially since nearly all DVD players use similar parts and components.

[Lone Wolf]

Originally Posted by Mr_Paper

Umm.. No.

That really complex script on the KKnJ volume 1 DVD locked up a $300 Sony DVD player. Out of the 12 DVD players I've tried it on, oddly, only the $50 Electrohome DVD player didn't have any problems. Simply because a DVD player is more expensive doesn't mean it'll fair any better, especially since nearly all DVD players use similar parts and components.

are the ones that locked new models or old originals (and thus the high cost) ?

if you mean they all use plastic and silicon, then yes, they all have similar parts. if they all used similar parts, then there would not be so many different playback issues, model lines, and price ranges.

lonewolf

[Mr_Paper]

Originally Posted by Lone Wolf

are the ones that locked new models or old originals (and thus the high cost) ?

if you mean they all use plastic and silicon, then yes, they all have similar parts. if they all used similar parts, then there would not be so many different playback issues, model lines, and price ranges.

lonewolf

The Sony was a 2003 model, the Electrohome was a 2001. The model years ranged between 2000 and 2003 covering most major brands (most expensive and the cheapest).

Open up a couple DVD players, you'll notice they almost all use the same type, brand and make of Flash ROM, EPROM and control processors which handle the computational tasks (eg: the subtitle layer) and drive contol. The only real and major difference between brands is the type of DVD reader they use and the coding they put on the ROM chips.

[SirCanealot]

Originally Posted by zalas

Putting in multiple angles halves your bitrate. Even without multiple angles, you're essentially nearly wasting half of the disc with video that is identical. With multiple angles, you'd get the same number of episodes, but at crappier video quality. With multiple programs, you'd get half the number of episodes at the same video quality, or a compromise.

It was mentioned in another topic that it does not HALF your bitrate, just reduce it. You only neeed enough bits to buffer a tinybit of the next track, so you can skip across to it.
I can't say I know this for a fact though, so as AvatarADV seems to be the man in the know, I'm sure he can answer :P

[Hikari Tennyo]

Speaking of extras on a DVD, I think some of the most enjoyable for me were the "screw-up" or "ad-lib" extras available on the Berserk DVD's. Hearing the voice actors go on a tangent was priceless. Or hearing then screw up and try to keep it going while laughing their butts off :-)