Forum - View topicAnswerman - How Are DVD and Blu-ray Subtitles Made?
Goto page Previous 1, 2, 3 Next Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
Author | Message | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
K.o.R
Posts: 221 |
|
|||||
It's not a bitmap font, it's a bitmap full stop. There is no text data whatsoever. |
||||||
Frenzie
Posts: 11 |
|
|||||
Ah yes, all of those mainstream anime watchers outside America are really into those subtitled Hollywood anime movies. |
||||||
Superfield
Posts: 77 |
|
|||||
Anime fansubs distributed in the mega-popular .mkv video format always package the necessary fonts in the file itself so that they will display properly even if the watcher's computer doesn't have those fonts installed. Is there a reason why Blu-ray players would be unable to display fonts correctly even if they come packaged with the movie on the disc, or is that what you meant by the kern, anti-alias and outline part? Is there a reason why they would handle the same font declarations differently?
As silly a name it is, .ass is one amazing file type, doubly so because it's literally just a text file with formatting rules, and the software to edit it, Aegisub, is freeware. If you were so inclined, you could do it in Notepad. |
||||||
AholePony
Posts: 330 Location: Arizona |
|
|||||
I was coming in here to mention the Redline BD and I see Justin did that for me. The first few minutes of that disk do all sorts of wacky flashing even on my ps4 which I'd assume has plenty of memory. At least I got it in the bargain bin for $5. I'd be pretty annoyed if I paid $30 for a movie with janky subtitles, let alone much more for a series box set. |
||||||
jsevakis
Former ANN Editor in Chief
Posts: 1684 Location: Los Angeles, CA |
|
|||||
It is true, though, that NOBODY, and I mean NOBODY holds subtitles to the insane and sometimes literally impossible standards that anime fans do. Can you imagine foreign film people kneecapping each other on social media over yellow-vs-white color choice?
Please read my post again, you seem to be missing almost everything I wrote. First of all, those fansub .mkv files with embedded fonts are pirating the fonts too. A legal distributor could include them on a Blu-ray, but they'd have to negotiate and pay a royalty on every disc sold. And yes, you should google "kerning" "anti-aliasing" and such because without those things there is no way rendered text would look good enough to include on a disc.
Yeah, it's pretty annoying. There are creative ways of mitigating the blinking by cheating the timecodes of subtitles that overlap, so they appear and/or disappear at mostly the same time. That's a time-consuming pain-in-the-ass to do, but I've had to do it for years now. Very much looking forward to not worrying about it. |
||||||
trilaan
Posts: 1055 Location: Texas |
|
|||||
I hate the small Blu-ray subs such as the ones on the Rideback Blu-rays. They are hard to see from any comfortable distance.
|
||||||
2weird4u
Posts: 14 |
|
|||||
I'm actually surprised that this is such a hassle. I live in the Flemish part of Belgium and we sub a lot of programs, certainly everything in a different language and even our own. But that's usually only for programs with heavy dialects as not every Flemish dialect is understandable to every Flemish person. I have to be honest that there are a lot of mistakes but it depends on the show or channel, ironically National Geographic is famous for their subtitle mistakes (how they can say 1993 in English that's translated as 2003 I don't know!). Here it depends on which company is contracted. Every DVD or Blu-ray here has subtitles, for every language available on it. What I find funny is that there are usually small or even big differences in subtitles between English or Japanese spoken audio on anime dvd's...
|
||||||
Tylerr
Posts: 475 |
|
|||||
or just avoid these terrible subtitles and go for superior ones fansub groups make. [quote="jsevakis"]
They do it because they can, but it's not like there aren't license free fonts that can be used. And they could always make their own. |
||||||
Superfield
Posts: 77 |
|
|||||
Ah, right, I apologize. I'm not quite up to speed on things like kerning, but now that I give it some thought, I do remember that there's differences between fonts for Windows and MacOS, since those are different OS's, and since Blu-ray players all have their own OS... I also forgot that using fonts would require fees that most film companies wouldn't be willing to shell out for, especially for a feature that isn't widely used or critiqued outside of a relatively small subset of non-interactive audio-visual media. I also didn't read the post carefully enough; I think my brain filtered out the section when it hit the word 'royalty'. I tend to approach things from a technological standpoint of "this should totally be possible" without thinking through the boring and annoying (but highly necessary) business implications, which I should get in the habit of doing more often. I just find it funny that Blu-ray of all things is still relegated to using a horribly obsolete methodology while any guy with a computer can make homebrew subs that look beautiful and are highly flexible (it's not hard to learn, either). |
||||||
gravediggernalk
Space Cowboy
Posts: 246 Location: Alabama |
|
|||||
Everything about BD sounds great, especially when compared to DVD, but then we get into how it's all implemented (or, how some of it isn't implemented), and it's just another sad shit-show.
If publishers went into this knowing that, at least for a few years, they would be making a good bit of their money off of BD, why would they do such a lackluster job at handling many of these issues?
As much as I prefer white subtitles, it just feels comfy/nostalgic popping in a disc to find that the subtitles are some rotten-banana yellow.
I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but it only makes sense. If subtitles are essential to understanding the show/movie/game/etc., then they should be as close to perfect as everything else that goes into it. |
||||||
leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
|
|||||
Closed captions on TV work by having text and the TV itself displaying the captions. Every TV has its own way; all it needs is the text and when the text is to show up. I'm sure I'm greatly simplifying the process, but I have to ask: Why do DVD and Blu-Ray players not simply use the TV's built-in closed captions system? Recent TVs even now have the transparency so you don't have to deal with the white-letters-in-black-rectangles problem of old.
I was actually thinking about that myself. There are many manufacturers for these appliances, and I'm guessing besides the decoder, they have pretty little in common as far as programming goes. This was the problem railroads had until international standards were made.
Now I wonder: Are Comic Sans and Papyrus royalty-free fonts? They're both infamous for their overuse (and having skeletal Undertale characters named after them, but that's another matter), but if they're free to use, then I can see why everyone would be using it. Are there any royalty-free fonts at all? Even Arial or Times News Roman? How feasible is it to create your own fonts (which video game companies, both big and small, do all the time)?
I think Justin's point is that any other audience who would watch a lot of subtitled material don't really take the look of subtitles nearly as seriously as anime fans. And having been in groups of fans of foreign film, I can say for them, they believe the focus should be on the movie, not the subtitles: As long as the subtitles are legible, unobtrusive, timed correctly and free of spelling and grammar mistakes, they are fine with it. I'd say an analogy is if you're growing a potted plant for decoration. Do you need an ornate, very fancy and colorful pot? Maybe that's how you like it, but the consensus among gardeners of ornamental plants is that the pot should not take visual attention away from the plant. Look at some professionally grown display or competition potted plants, and you'll see their pots tend to be on the very plain side for that reason. |
||||||
jsevakis
Former ANN Editor in Chief
Posts: 1684 Location: Los Angeles, CA |
|
|||||
Actually wrote about what a giant bag of hurt closed captions are! Also, they get cropped off of most BD/DVD encodes. animenewsnetwork.com/feature/2017-04-28/the-art-of-closed-captioning/.115428
There are free-to-use fonts but not many free-to-distribute ones. None of the "famous" ones, definitely. BUT THIS IS A DUMB TOPIC BECAUSE THE RENDERING ISSUES MEAN IT WOULD LOOK TERRIBLE ANYWAY
Because the spec got rushed out the door to compete with HD-DVD. |
||||||
atyamamoto
Posts: 23 |
|
|||||
Just to throw in my 2 cents -- I localized Yasuhiro Yoshiura's "Time of EVE: The Movie" on BD with subtitles in ten (!!!) languages, and initially I tried working with an authoring house that advertised itself as being "subtitle aficionados" specializing in indie titles for picky audiences, but they were totally paralyzed by the level of detail required for the project -- customized placement of subtitles, overlapping subtitles, etc. So Justin rescued the project, and went to the depths of subtitle hell. Justin, thank you. |
||||||
AtoMan
Posts: 161 |
|
|||||
Probably because that format doesn't get used AT ALL outside U.S. In my life I never encountered a PAL TV that would support the format, probably because noone here ever used it. DVD/DVB subtitles plus the occasional teletext is all that's used. |
||||||
Just Passing Through
Posts: 277 |
|
|||||
Solution is simple.
Double the number of BDs, repeat the show twice, once as normal with player generated sub and dub options, once as Japanese only, with fansub quality nutty rainbow subs burnt into the print, with everything written in romanji Japanese, and the rest of the screen filled with translation notes for the romanji. Actually I wouldn't mind that as an Easter Egg on an anime disc once, just for a laugh having an episode given the max fansub treatment. |
||||||
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
||
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group