Posts in Fushigiboshi Subs Category
June 19, 2005Bet y'all didn't think I'd be back with another episode for y'all this quick ;)
Anyways... it's time for another Princess Party (seems there'll be one every month), this time in the Flame Kingdom, with the theme being "Best Decor Princess". Of course Fine and Rain have absolutely no chance of winning, being the most un-princess-like(the rest omitted)... but watch to see who does win :)
Tried a bit of a different encoding method this time, so y'all see if you can spot any differences or not and tell me if you think it's better than before. Well, we'll see when I can get the next episode out ;)
It's taken a while, but it's finally done. Wai~! ;)
Can you say "product promotion"? Fine and Rain receive the Decor Maker from their parents, but the material used for it is... nuts? That can't be right, so they set off to go to town and eventually meet the Nyamurus, cat people who work at the Totem Cone climate observatories. Watch to find out the rest ;)
Sorry for taking so long, but I got busy with a lot of other things. I'll try and make the next release a bit faster, though probably not as fast as Triad has been releasing Zettai Shounen ;)
If you've got comments about the release you can leave them here or in the thread on the Animeblogger.net forums :)
I figure some of y'all out there might be interested in what I do to sub episodes of Futago Hime, so I'll give a quick overview of the process I go through here.
1. Obtain a good raw video file
Pretty easy to understand there. Have to have a high quality raw to get the best results. Most raws for Futago Hime I have are near 300MB in size.
2. Timing
My preferred program for timing is Subtitle Workshop by URUSoft. I load up the raw video file in it then get to work timing the dialogue. Subtitle Workshop has a nifty feature where I can do "timing-on-the-fly", simply pressing Alt+Z when a line of dialogue starts, and Alt+X when a line ends, which makes things pretty quick and easy. I rarely get the timing down exactly when doing that, so I make adjustments afterwards.
3. Translation
A rough first translation is done while timing in Subtitle Workshop. For some reason I like doing the episode in chunks of a few minutes or so, timing some, then translating. I also make a note when one of the main characters who has a different style (color, font) speaks so I can add that in later while typesetting. If I need to look up a word I'm not familiar with, WaKan and the dictionaries at Infoseek and Alc are my friends. Sometimes very good friends when my vocabulary fails me (^^;;)
After completing the timing/translation, I check to make sure that most everything is in good shape before moving on. I save the file in Sub Station Alpha format (*.ssa).
4. Typesetting
I use good ol' Sub Station Alpha to make the "styles" -- different fonts and colors -- that I use, mostly to differentiate characters' dialogue. It was a pretty obvious decision to use different colors for the princesses ;)
The section in the above screenshot is from the OP sequence, which required quite a lot of work to do. The instructions in {} are scripting commands available for use in SSA, and some are more advanced commands available in ASS (Advanced Sub Station Alpha format) for absolute positioning of text, and also effects, such as the text getting bigger and smaller during the iya-iya dance as shown below.
5. Encoding
Before encoding, I check over everything again and make sure correct styles were used and that the translation and timing are also accurate. I do that by using VirtualDub, along with a plugin for VirtualDub called TextSub which places the subtitles in the video. Since my computer isn't the fastest out there (Athlon XP 1600+), sometimes I'll have to use DirectVobSub to check subtitles if VirtualDub won't preview them smoothly.
Once I'm just about absolutely sure everything is okay and ready to go I set my DivX encoding options to give a file size near 175MB. Most of the time that's a bitrate of around 850kbps, using B-frames, with MP3 Lame audio of 128kbps, using 2 passes, 23.97fps. And then I wait... it takes about 2 hours to finish a complete encode.
After encoding is finished, I check things again to make sure they came out okay and the quality is acceptable. If everything's ready to go...
6. Distribution
I upload the encoded file to a place where the people who help me distribute the file can get it, and after I'm done with that I create a torrent file and upload it to the tracker and begin seeding. The other distro people help me seed after they retrieve the file, which helps out a good bit -- I've only got about 14KB/s upload most of the time (^^;;;)
7. It's Finished!
And then y'all get on the torrent, download it, and hopefully enjoy it :) Hope that gives you an idea of what it takes to get an episode of Futago Hime out there. If I'm really, really, motivated I can do all of that in less than a day, as I did with episode 2. But since that was rather tiring I do it bit by bit now ;)
Omatase shimashita! Sorry for making y'all wait that long, but I sorta got caught up in things... first, keeping up with e3, then being without my laptop for five days kinda kept things from moving along :)
[Fushigiboshi-Subs]Futago_Hime_03.avi
Fine and Rain go back to the Flame Kingdom, but there's something wrong -- it's kinda cold for the Flame Kingdom. For those wondering, yes, the kawaii Princess Leonne is the main character this time. I'm with Pumo: she's exactly what a princess should be :) Enjoy!
Please leave your comments about the sub itself in this entry (If there's something I can do to make it better don't be afraid to say so), but leave comments about the actual episode in my Futago Hime 3 entry or in the Futago Hime thread on the AnimeSuki forums :)
As usual... next episode when I can do it, whenever that might be. Only so much one person can do, you know ;)
After suddenly deciding to go ahead and sub the second episode this morning here you go. Everybody ready to go visit the Flame Kingdom and have some Flaming Hot Fried Rice? You'll understand when you watch ;) No Princess Leonne this time even though Fine and Rain are in the Flame Kingdom... that's for next time ;)
[Fushigiboshi-Subs]Futago_Hime_02.avi
The other distro people should be joining me on the torrent soon, so things should move along faster than yesterday, hopefully. I apologize in advance for translation/subbing errors, as I'm sure there are some I didn't catch (if there are enough to make the quality unacceptable to y'all I guess a v2 would be in order..). Hope y'all enjoy it!
I'll get to episode 3 when I can. Don't expect it tomorrow, though ;)
6:09PM - Okay, looks like people are starting to finish downloading now so I want to thank all of y'all for being patient while doing so. Hopefully the quality will be of an acceptable standard to most of you (and perhaps even the Japanese-speaking among you who'll catch my every mistake). Please help seed after you finish downloading if you've got the bandwidth to spare. Thanks!
After you watch, please leave your thoughts on the sub itself here, and thoughts on the actual content of the episode in my Futago Hime 1 entry. I'll be looking forward to your comments and hearing who's your favorite princess :)
Episode 2 will be released when and if I can get it done, so we shall see. My character and heart will hopefully roughly cover for my sometimes lacking knowledge of Japanese ;)
3:43PM - Looks like things are moving along slowly but steadily. Thanks for being patient :) I forgot to mention something earlier. The raw I used for episode 1 is a non-standard size 640x448, but the other raws I have are the usual 640x480, in case anybody was wondering about it.
Fushigiboshi☆Subs -- currently only made up of one member who does everything, me, Matthew ;) -- is happy to bring the first episode of Fushigiboshi no Futago Hime - The Twin Princesses of the Mysterious Planet to all of you who have been waiting patiently out there for it.
[Fushigiboshi-Subs]Futago_Hime_01.avi.torrent
I've only got 128kpbs upload so please be patient and help me seed. Thanks to Delta Anime Torrents for providing the tracker.
Future releases will be dependant on how much interest there is out there and whether or not my Japanese will hold up well enough for me to bring all of you a quality release. If you find mistakes in this release (and I'm sure there are some. There were a couple of places I couldn't hear completely no matter what I did) please notify me by e-mail or by posting a comment. Thanks!
