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Old 2007-11-30, 06:46   Link #1
Potatochobit
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Xvid or Veoh?

As streaming quality gets better and faster you have to ask yourself, when will fansubs move to streaming?

In reality, I don't see this happening anytime soon, (mainly because your ISP and user names are logged by some 3rd party corp. ) but as technology pushes ahead it seems more feasible.

In the old days running a forum website was cutting edge and could not be done by most people, yet today we have animesuki. Once the streaming technology is easily accessible as user run venues I think more people will be interested in using it.

I think the two biggest downsides are the infamous download count and the inability to prevent others from using the fansubs to exploit others.

Download counts matter. Yes, we all get satisfaction from seeing our hard work being appreciated by others. However, I think at the core, most fansubbers do the work because they want to share something special to them with others in a way that they can understand it. Since streaming videos register a hit each time you watch it, just think of how many millions of hits you will get without eating your family and friend's extra bandwidth

The other option is stopping true pirates that sell for profit. Yes, all fansub work is done without actually owning the copyright. But I would contest that some guy thousands of years ago invented pants, but thats not stopping you from wearing them even though he holds the copyright in some distant land. Of course, that is an exaggeration and all true anime fans buy licensed videos in their region.

so the point we next need to get to is people selling fansub rips on pay per view streaming websites. I would say that this is the same problem fansubs first faced and the industry itself still struggles with in dealing with pirate DVDs/VCDs showing up on auction sites like ebay or being sold from shaddy stores in hong kong. I would say stop it when possible and let the government handle it when not. Educating people around you does far more good for the industry then yelling at a few people you have never met over the internet.

bear in mind now, pay websites use the same excuse most fansubbers do, we are raising funds for the bandwidth and server costs, not charging for the videos!
honestly, I dont know much about sites like crunchyroll, but I do know quite a few people use it.

So I have made my two points. and someone is going to say, but what about quality? or what if I want to own my own copy on my hard drive?
well this post assumes that the quality is decent enough (xvid-ish) in the next year or so. and I like owning stuff too, but do I actually own this video I havn't paid for yet? hmm something to think about.

A new company called bost seems to be making a bold move with charging for anime episodes subbed straight from japan. I look forward to supporting them, but I am also quite curious how its all going to turn out.

so now that I have blabbed on about nothing enough in the middle of the night, what is your opinion on the future?
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Old 2007-11-30, 07:19   Link #2
Hanxue
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decent troll, 7/10. a bit too obvious.


wait you're not actually serious are you?
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Old 2007-11-30, 08:29   Link #3
Potatochobit
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you are a funny little man.

you claim I don't know much about streaming video and yet your counter argument is that its too hard to port to PSP a video game system with a miniature screen that is smaller than watching it on a streaming video and has equally bad resolution?

fist, let me clarify the topic some.

we are talking about future streaming technology. when will it be useful to fansubbing and how?

and second, we are talking about currently releasing H264 and what else?
is veoh a legitimate alternative to xvid right here and now?

people who do not download H264 but prefer xvid, would it be better for them to watch it streaming?

that is the question I am posing.

Yes, the internet is getting congested and we need to do our part to reduce the stress. but that is a whole nother issue. btw, streaming video in FLASH player uses far far less kb than having everyone download with bittorent.

honestly, 6 months ago I would have slapped myself for saying something like this.

but have you been to this website?

www.familyguy.com

you like video games right? well, you can STREAM family guy episodes straight to your xbox 360. and it is decently good quality. I was impressed the first time I saw it. NO LAG, plays immediately, sounds good.

we also have cartoon network streaming MAR episodes, this BOST website, and not only that but it seems that alot of fansubs always end up on streaming websites and LOTS of people watch them.
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Old 2007-11-30, 08:34   Link #4
checkers
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Quote:
btw, streaming video in FLASH player uses far far less kb than having everyone download with bittorent.
Only because the quality is lower. You could release 50mb files on bittorrent too y'know. Also, considering flash videos all use VP6 or h263, you would find that they take more space (that said, new flash player supports h264).

Quote:
we are talking about future streaming technology. when will it be useful to fansubbing and how?
There would only be a shift from file downloading to streaming if it was more convenient, or somehow better. Since I can't think of one reason why this is the case I can't think of one reason to stream.
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Old 2007-11-30, 09:11   Link #5
Hanxue
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Potatochobit View Post
you claim I don't know much about streaming video and yet your counter argument is that its too hard to port to PSP a video game system with a miniature screen that is smaller than watching it on a streaming video and has equally bad resolution?
I guess this reply kinda proves my point
Just to give you a hint, I was referring to how easy it is to transcode a fansub release (as opposed to a stream, which you would have to rip first), not the video quality (whatever that would have to do with it).

Quote:
Originally Posted by Potatochobit View Post
Yes, the internet is getting congested and we need to do our part to reduce the stress. but that is a whole nother issue. btw, streaming video in FLASH player uses far far less kb than having everyone download with bittorent.
You really don't get it do you? Once you're done with the initial seeding of a BT upload, you can stop it and let the leechers handle the uploading themselves. Hence you only really need to upload a couple hundred MB at worst, and you can do it at 50kb/s from your home DSL connection if you want to because once there's one full copy circulating in the swarm everyone will be able to download it with the combined upload bandwidth of the entire swarm.
With streaming, you need to upload ONE FULL COPY PER PERSON WHO WATCHES THE STREAM. Even if each copy "uses less kb" (lol) it'll still be a huge burden for the uploader. And not only that, there needs to be total bandwidth enough to serve all simultaneous watchers. Even if you're using a relatively low-bandwidth stream at, say, an average bitrate of 400kbit/s (would look pretty shitty with most shows even with h264, not to mention worse codecs), having just 1000 people watching at the same time (very possible at release-time even with modestly popular shows) would require 400 (four hundred) MEGABIT per second to make it possible for everyone to watch at the same time. Do you have any idea what kind of money gigabit-sized links cost? Not to mention the bandwidth usage; we're talking about terabytes and terabytes of transfer. It's so far out of the reach of most fansub groups it's not even worth THINKING about.
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Old 2007-11-30, 09:51   Link #6
Nicholi
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Let other idiots take the fansubs and add them to their streaming sites/endlessly upload to youtube as the videos are removed.

It's likely a bad/stupid idea for almost any fansub group to undertake, as stated by Hanxue. I'd say second to actually having a team (see translator) to work on a project, bandwidth is the next major problem for most groups. Not everyone simply has the bandwidth to do such things. I could see a few groups which are hemorrhaging so much bandwidth they don't know what to do with it taking this up. But it simply can't be done by the non-ginormous groups, which is the majority of everyone else :P. Unless fansubbers suddenly enjoy spending copious amounts of money on bandwidth to see their download count/e-penor rise (not that unlikely for some ). It's not a matter of "when the technology will come". It's not that difficult to setup a player in a browser and point to a stream. Also of course the quality of the streams is probably the other matter groups don't want to bother with it. Why waste bandwidth just to resize the video to some ridiculous small resolution as well as choke the bitrate till you see the lovely blocks? Some other weirdo can do that and likely will anyways, uploading to Veoh/Youtube/enter streaming site here.

It is akin to asking "when is direct-download going to come back, it's so easy for all the newbs!" It's not coming back because of bandwidth concerns, and the only reason it unfortunately took off were for extremely small and shitty looking real media files . Some groups still have the ability to pull it off, but only for the latest episodes. H.264 streaming might improve things, but it still takes a hell of a lot of CPU to decode the sucker. And if its going to be some shitty java plugin, o' dear god the lag. Also have you noticed the subs get awfully hard to read at the ugly low "streaming resolutions"? Not purty.

Last edited by Nicholi; 2007-11-30 at 10:02.
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Old 2007-12-01, 10:58   Link #7
pingmeep
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Streaming might be viable if it was unique content e.g., preview/special episodes perhaps released by licensors but for fansubs why encumber your releases?

Being able to start watching before your download starts (arguably BT will have this capability too but encoders will have to co-operate), and not sharing your bandwidth don't really seem like big features. Now perhaps if ISP's cripple P2P we'll be stuck with streaming.

But even that's not true because, you could just as easily use one of the oodles of file hosting sites with some measure of control. Using third party streaming sites for fansubs is just dumb if you cannot guarantee you can stop their distribution after shows are licensed.

One decent feature streaming sites could offer is automatic adaption for different devices. But if you are stuck using the device to get the show you are placing more hoops in front of the viewer who likely already uses an iPod or PSP model of loading the media from computer onto the device/media.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Potatochobit View Post
so the point we next need to get to is people selling fansub rips on pay per view streaming websites.
It's already a real pain in the arse now and just as hard to get most of these sites to take down fansubs as it is to get eBay to remove auctions. Sending snail mail sucks. It's like playing whack-a-mole atm and I think it'll get worse before it gets better.
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Old 2007-12-01, 13:10   Link #8
Doughnuts
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Streaming is extremely difficult to monetize. People can redisrubte your content, the worst case being them making money from ads at the cost of your bandwidth. People block ads and continually redownload content in the case of rewatching (because thier browser won't cache streams or whatnot). Streaming sites are either making very little money on ads, or are making a loss, waiting on future potential.

Veoh aren't making any much at the moment from their ads, that's why they're continually making cuts on video quality. A while ago they offered the ability to download full videos via their client, now I'm led to believe they've even cut down those downloadable videos down. They offered a DDL link on the webpage for a limited time, but realised that it isn't in their interest to do so. What's more is they have an ad deal with google, it's never going to be able to compete with youtube doing that. I see them making more and more cuts until it becomes no different to any other streaming site.

That being said, at the moment, Veoh is a decent alternative to distributing, it definately shouldn't replace BT. Veoh is especially useful for those ISPs and academic campuses that shape P2P traffic, as their client uses a completely HTTP based protocol for downloading and will go straight through most traffic shapers. Not everyone is fortunate enough to be able to use BT. I was stuck with Veoh (and DDL sites) a few months ago in my student accomodation, I would've appreciated everything being uploaded there.

I don't see fansub groups ever moving to streaming. It'll never be as efficient as distibuting content, and it really isn't neccesary. Streaming is for the purpose of watching while it's downloading. Are you really that desperate to watch an episode of anime that you can't wait 20 minutes longer for it to download, and be in a watchable quality? I doubt fansub groups think so. Ads, previews, news etc I like to watch right away, but I usually download anime and leave it till I'm in bed to watch.

Even outside of fansubbing, I don't think the scenario will be much different. As TV moves to the net, it'll be likely to adopt the BT protocol, Veoh's web TV client won't be successful because it's horrible. They've reinvented the wheel instead of adopting a well designed and programmed protocol like BT, and done it badly. The idea behind their "peer casting" can be applied to Bittorrent by saying if(seeds=0) reseed(); Veoh waste so much bandwidth by letting you download from their cache servers when there are still seeds in the swarm. Legitimate producers will always opt for the cheapest distribution model.
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Old 2007-12-04, 03:59   Link #9
xris
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Whatever this topic is really about, it's not about the legality or morality of fansubs, so can we attempt to keep the thread on-topic.
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Old 2007-12-06, 21:42   Link #10
gh0stmice
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well how about this....download an xvid player and an h264 player and use the power of http for streaming and you wont go wrong ever...youll always have an available resource...thou i hate the quality of streaming videos; BTs are just chuck full of viruses and malware...where a virtual "rubber" only DL torrents from the most reliable sites...and if you cant find one look to veoh or any other streaming website...for extra precaution....every once in a while douche your ports and go take them to a computer gynocologist (ie)-me a PC technician....



p.s. save my salary; and stop outsourcing jobs to India....its like going to a doctor!!! would you perfer some one who speaks clearly and coeherently...or the guy that smells like curry(completely not hating on curry...its awesome)....long live I.T. jobs in america!!!
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Old 2007-12-07, 00:23   Link #11
Skyward
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The codec isn't the problem here, the problem is that most people simply don't have the bandwidth to support streaming services, http or otherwise. Thats why self perpetuating downloads like bittorrent are so popular and prevalent.

Bittorrent isn't chock full of viruses either if you know where to look (say... the group's official tracker, Tokyotosho, Baka updates, or animesuki's torrent index to name a few). Yes there are quite a number of torrents that contain garbage, but not only are those on more mainstream trackers, they can also be avoided with a little bit of common sense and research.

Yes streaming is convenient, however I can't see any way of streaming becoming a main distribution method anytime in the near or not so near future.
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Old 2007-12-07, 19:29   Link #12
Kurumin
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Bittorrent isn't great compared to IRC, which has much faster speeds and you arn't uploading at all.
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Old 2007-12-07, 21:20   Link #13
JustInn14
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I'm al-ready streaming! *bricked* Veoh, I'd guess. But they have copy-right infringements for Lucky Star. ;-(
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Old 2007-12-07, 22:36   Link #14
Isako
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As it continues to be a BW and quality loss problem, I don't see fansubbers switching to streaming as a main distro option. We can't deliver fansubs via streaming w/o taking a quality hit. Quality is too important for to many groups.


You also need to factor in when an episode is first released. If you ever been on irc, you would see that bots get lagged due to over-requesting and overuse of BW. I 'd expect streaming sites to feel the same kind of stress when an episode is first released, because they aren't designed to handle a rapid number of request per second during a release period.(assuming of course, we kept the quality the same)

This isn't a problem on youtube and other places atm, because they don't draw viewer traffic immediately during a release period. A viewer usually ul the episode a few hours after. At that point, there is minimal interest to see it streamed and at that quality.
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Old 2007-12-08, 01:14   Link #15
DryFire
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The bigger issue is that dedicated streaming (not just watching an mkv while it downloads) would take more bandwidth than a ddl. Nothing is stopping groups from releasing streaming sized encodes if they don't care about picture quality.

I can barely stand youtube and the like; I don't see how someone would put themselves through the pain of watching a whole series on it.
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Old 2007-12-08, 22:34   Link #16
Starks
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Fansub groups should embed messages after the OP that say "We prefer if you download our anime rather than watch it in shitty quality on Youtube."
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Old 2007-12-08, 23:25   Link #17
DryFire
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It would get blurred out, and is easily removed (assuming anyone cares). A pretty dumb idea.
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Old 2007-12-09, 02:53   Link #18
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DryFire View Post
It would get blurred out, and is easily removed (assuming anyone cares). A pretty dumb idea.
except if it's displayed as text replacement of the title...
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Old 2007-12-09, 04:48   Link #19
jfs
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Originally Posted by Kurumin View Post
Bittorrent isn't great compared to IRC, which has much faster speeds and you arn't uploading at all.
But SOMEBODY is uploading.
That's the important part, every time you download something, an equal amount of upload bandwidth is being used somewhere else in the world. An XDCC bot could just as well be replaced with a HTTP server, which could serve the same amount of bandwidth (because it'd be on the same connection) but it'd be more accessible. Or an FTP server. Or a BitTorrent client seeding for the downloaders.

Here's again a quick explanation why BitTorrent is generally better than more traditional, cathedral-like download services:
With a traditional service you have to offer the file for download and have a massive amount of bandwidth, let's say you use 200 MB per file downloaded.
With BitTorrent, you also need to offer the file from an initial seed, but that initial seed will need to upload less. The first downloader for the file must of course get the whole file from the initial seed, but that first downloader also (because they have an internet connection) has some upload bandwidth spare which they can use to also distribute the file, help out. Say every downloader also uploads 100 MB of the file after having downloaded it. This means that effectively 100 MB of bandwidth is "put back into the system", and for every download completeted, the initial seed only needs to upload 100 MB to the next downloader, because that downloader can get the other 100 MB from other downloaders.
The final result is that (using these numbers) the initial seed can serve the same number of users with half the bandwidth, or serve the double amount of users with the same bandwidth.
One final thing to keep in mind is that the total amount of bytes moved (bandwidth used) does not change with p2p over central download service, it's just that some of the upload bandwidth is moved from the initial seed to the users. (When the number of users stays constant. Of course this is ignoring things like protocol overhead, but that is ignorable.)

Now, the same applies to video streaming, traditionally that's also been cathedral-like, you have one or a few central servers feeding out video data to the viewers, so the service provider uses bandwidth equal to the amount of viewers. The amount of bandwidth per viewer of course depends on the quality of the video, whether it's YouTube quality (300 kbps) or full HD (20 mbps) or something in between. There's just another catch, you now have to provide bandwidth per view instead of per user, if the same user views the video twice they also use twice the bandwidth!
Now, you can apply a peer-to-peer model for video streaming too. This first of all requires that the viewers keep a local cache of video content, because they would have to be able to send other parts of the video than what they're viewing themselves at the moment, to other users. This is what Joost does.
But, unlike file download, p2p streaming is much less reliable because it requires a constant stream of incoming data, interruptions are very inconvenient.


tl;dr
For video download services, peer-to-peer models allows one initial seed to service more users for the same bandwidth.
Video streaming requires more bandwidth per user than file download distribution, even at the same video quality. Peer-to-peer video streaming is hard to get right and if not made completely right it can be very unreliable.

So let's just stick to p2p download models for now, it's more efficient.
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Old 2007-12-09, 22:40   Link #20
DryFire
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Quote:
Originally Posted by edogawaconan View Post
except if it's displayed as text replacement of the title...
Uhhh.... that can be clipped out rather easily, or even replaced with one from a raw. It accomplishes nothing,--except pissing off your "customers"--so why bother?

I'm running on low levels of sleep so I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not (though I was pretty sure the first post is a joke; was I wrong?).
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