Hi, I'm Joe Vecchio, I was the first President and one of the founders of the Japanese Animation Club of Orlando (JACO) when the software was written: for the record, Alex Matulich is the gentleman who wrote the software, I am going to pass this video on to him so he knows people still appreciate the work he and all of us put into fandom back in the early days when we had to walk uphill in the snow both ways to the local anime club in order to watch and trade videos, often ninth-generation copies that were such awful quality that you couldn't tell if it was Lupin or Maison Ikkoku! So many people can lay claim to making anime as popular as it is now in the U.S., but I'm very proud of the role JACO played in that history. Excellent video, thank you for sharing it!
Thanks Joe for letting me know about this. I've left a separate comment (which for some reason has disappeared). The JACOsub software did indeed have a good run before digital fansubbing became all the rage.
Hi Joe, thanks for the comment and passing the link on to Alex! Glad you enjoyed the video. I only got into fansubbing at the very tail end of the linear era by learning from and standing on the shoulders of all those pioneers (cue the Tenchi Muyo OVA 2 Ed music) who went before like yourselves. So thanks to all of you for what you've done to build awareness and promote anime in the U.S.! I can totally relate: we watched all 96 episodes of Maison Ikkoku on nth generation VHS copies from Artic Animation -- oof, that was a challenge!
@@anachronist Hi Alex, I saw your comment in an e-mail notification but it does seem to have disappeared from UA-cam. This happens from time to time but hopefully it resurfaces. Anyway, thanks for stopping by :) I didn't get into fansubbing until almost the dawn of the digisubbing era but I found JACOSub to be very well thought out, easy to use, and quite feature complete by that point so thank you for your hard work! I was a registered user, and still have my license key file (although it seems you've since made the software freeware since then)!
Give Alex a thank-you from me, too. I was a big user of JACOsub back in the day. I think I’m even in the thank-you section of the read me file… JACOsub was a huge leap forward when you were used to TurboTitle on the Amiga.
Excellent video! As someone who's day job is translating Japanese to English, it's easy for me to watch old Initial D fansubs and criticize the translations, but the amount of effort it took to get those subs in place from translation to timing to visibility and even to readability (how quickly the subs move by), is absolutely astounding! Y'all did proper, hard work, all for the love of the show, and that is something to absolutely be commended!
Hey David, glad you enjoyed it! Yeah, the quality of the translations, source material, and subtitling itself varied wildly from group to group but with the exclusion of a few known bootleggers, it was all for the sake of the art. Kind of like UA-cam in that regard! I remember seeing the Initial D live action movie which was apparently translated from a Chinese translation... that one was tough to watch :)
Huh, gotta ask my dad if he bought his Anime online through mail order, he very well might have. It's really interesting to see the roots of this subculture and how they influenced its future, even a small piece of history like this can have grandiose effects. I also really liked how you didn't shy away from explaining the technical details and going through the process. Great video.
I''ve been a professional Japanese translator for more than 20 years, so even though I never really did much subtitling, I think I can appreciate how much work it is. It has always kind of amazed me that people just did this for free as a hobby.
With the way things are heading for the anime community and with the advance technology nowadays, I can definitely see this practice make a bit of a comeback.
Nice! I was into Anime in the 80s, when it was called Japanimation or Japanime. Q-Link was a great hang out for everything Japanime. Pictures, Music, chat groups, etc. You had quite the setup for fansubbing. That was such a fun time. I know some people hated the english dubs of those days and the early 90s, but I loved it. All the cheesy dialog and voice actors were great. About the copyright claim on this video: Doesn't the claimant know anything about "Fair Use". What a joke and I would have blurred or blocked out the same way so that those trolls don't get a dime...
Japan doesn't have or follow the USA 'fair use' law. Nor do youtube accept that when a company makes the claim in their country of origin. Hence the DMCA claim against 'Totally Not Mark' in early December 2021 and having 150 copyright claims made against his channel by Toei Animation in Japan. There was nothing he could do. The DMCA is supported by all but 7 countries at this time. Sadly 'fair use' isn't always the safety umbrella people think it is. Makes me sad for the future of creators on youtube.
@@doctor49152 Totally agree. It is a shame because some of these productions had an english release already. It isn't very logical to me since a small clip may get people to want to purchase or watch the whole episode/series. Oh well we live in an imperfect world.
Yeah what I don't really understand is that someone who claims to have the rights in Italy (but not Japan or the USA) can make a claim against my video and monetize the entire thing for themselves in all markets. And then there's the question of whether they have the rights at all or are just a troll. And if you do try to protest or file an appeal, it goes right back to the party that made the claim to decide if it's valid or not. It seems like UA-cam is asleep at the wheel on this.
Thank you for such an amazing video! It's always a treat to see people who were active during the anime boom talk about their experiences online. :) Unfortunately, I was born way too late to see it myself (not to mention that I was born on the other side of the globe... T_T), so it's fascinating to me how people participated in the fandom back then. I enjoy learning about it a lot! As someone said in the comments, another video like this would be incredible to see! I'm sure many would learn something new from it, maybe some familiar faces would show up to reminisce about good old times? :P Also, I'd like to appreciate the way you edited this video: the pacing wasn't too fast, you've spoken clearly and calmly, patiently explaining everything. I know it might seem trivial, but it made my viewing much more comfortable. I felt like you really cared about making me understand all of this, instead of just showing off! Once again, big thanks! :)
Ok, let me rewrite my earlier comment. It just didn't come across right. This was an awesome fantastic video and a great insight already, but I. Want. MORE. Please make this a series! Why? It seemed incomplete to me. This video was basically 50% of "how to create subtitles and their effects (with this one software)" and I absolutely need a huuuge insight into the scene by someone who has been part of that scene back in the days. Hardware choices. Dream rigs. Issues with hardware, software, legal. Big names. Unsung heroes. Stories from times beyond. The scene and how you got in (and when and why you stopped). Favorite anecdotes. I see comments here from people who provided you with content. Maybe they could provide even more insight, anecdotes and so? I mean, retro doesn't mean just hardware. It was a whole state of being back then, with our machines being such a central part of our lives, when so many people still didn't even have a computer at home, let alone an internet connection. When I have someone from "the scene" that made subtitles for something that I loved - and still do! - who also manages to be into old tech - another thing I love - and who is capable of creating great videos, my nerd-greed turns to eleven. :D
I subbed my first video in 1991, largely to help me with my Japanese studies. I retranslated and retimed it last year to mark my 30th anniversary (I translate professionally now). I haven't worked from a VHS or LD source in a long time, but my workflow is largely the same.
Glad you enjoyed it and you're right, there's a lot more of the story left to tell. I've got a handle on talking about tech, but I would have to draw on/interview others to get a more complete picture of the scene as it was back in those days which is something I haven't done before but could be fun and interesting to try. I still keep in touch with a good number of former subbers from that time. Something to think about... Thanks for the ideas! I shall mull them over for a bit and see what shakes out.
This was really fascinating to watch. Nowadays, the dialogue parts of a fansub can be churned out in a matter of hours, with the time-consuming part being sign typesetting, which often involves motion-tracking software and AI to perfectly replicate or replace the original sign. Thanks for sharing!
Nice, I'll have to check out some modern fansubs. If I'm honest, I really am not up to speed on things these days. I have a crunchyroll account and that's about it :P
Watching this from an eye of a modern-day fansubber is really interesting! Fansubbing nowadays is accessible to anyone and doesn't require any specialized hardware. Good video!
@@begija Cool, I'll be interested to check it out and see how far things have come and what, if anything, remains the same! Yea, comments disappearing is very frustrating and happens a lot :/
Aah, I never knew you could sync the video sources like that. When I had conceptualized how the fansubs I was watching were made at the time, dual video sources seemed overly complicated and not possible, but now it looks quite simple. =P
As someone who used an Amiga as my daily driver from about 1990 to 2005, it's fascinating to see how they were used in areas that I literally have no idea about and was completely oblivious to at time. Thank you.
I discovered fansubs around 2000 when getting them via the Internet with IRC was getting easier every day, and then things seemed to explode when Torrents became a thing, then eventually got involved with helping where I could with QC checking and stuff like that, mainly with tokusatsu fansubs. Thank you for sharing this with us! Talk about something I thought I would never hear about. Very cool!
I first learned about fansubs in fall of 1995, was quickly hooked and got involved. By 2000, the era of linear subbing was certainly coming to an end and digisubs and IRC bots were the way to go! Glad you enjoyed it 👍
Fascinating. Always wondered how old-school fansubbing worked. Also brought back a lot of memories, of watching really crappy 8th generation VHS tapes where you could barely recognize who/what was on screen. And holy crap, Kurinkuru and Armitage are names that I actually recognize and remember (albeit vaguely) from back in the day. iirc Armitage used to run a Jpop/anime music internet radio station that I used to have on pretty much all day long while I worked. Thanks for this really interesting and nostalgic trip!
This is super interesting! two cool things collide, the amiga and obscure anime! When I got into onepiece, early episodes relied on fansubs! it's cool to hear about your history as a fansubber and not only is it super interesting hearing your experience, it's interesting to think how this process basically contributed to a huge industry today!
William Chow AKA King Of Smut '95 is known in north america as the grandfather of fansubbing and he is here on youtube just saying it would be really interesting to collab with him even though he is from canada If anyone is interested in a ton more info about the community especially the real early stuff from the 80s you need to check him out . he also made some appearances on Happy console gamer
@@retrobitstv you will definitely not regret it and who knows you might have had some of his releases back in the day he supplied a lot of people in the us . try and reach out i bet it will be worth your time . a fair warning though his youtube channel is somewhat basic but his stories are really interesting because he was around and at the center of the anime craze when it hit north america
Great episode! Love to see that technology again. I use to work on local Tv station. I was subbing News using Amiga 4000 T with Scala. I use to do that live on broadcast. It was hell of a fun! Amiga rulez!
The Sony MDP-333 laserdisc player you feature was one of the most aesthetically beautifully designed and built A/V components I've ever seen. It wasn't particularly expensive for LD players (I think street price was about $500), but the lines, the look of the brushed aluminum face panels, and feel of the buttons and shuttle wheel, and overall solidity were truly first-class. I don't think it was a particularly highly rated model by "videophiles", and it had a common problem with a belt failing causing the disc tray door to get stuck when flipping down to open (literally a $1.50 belt, and Sony service centers wanted $100 labor to repair.) Anyway, such a beautiful piece! (Sony often had the best industrial designs, aside from generally great quality, plus innovations. Also, I used to dub LDs over to S-VHS, but the quality pretty severely dropped, despite the format's higher resolution than standard VHS. Original S-VHS movies (very scarce) looked much better...
It really is a great design that stands up even today. The SLV-R5UC editing deck I used had the same design language and together they made a beautiful stack. I did not have the optional faux wood grain side panels on mine. Alas, no pictures from back then are to be found as it pre-dates digital cameras :( I do need to replace the belts, the door has a hard time opening and disc playback makes the occasional unpleasant sound these days.
@@retrobitstv Never knew Sony made a complimentary-looking VCR, and I thought the wood side panels were reserved for the ES-series hifi components (of which I've had a few; they were beautiful and robust, too). Good luck restoring the MDP, and if you can't find the specific belt for the door, apparently generic ones, or even plain rubber bands can sometimes suffice in these things!
Nice, I thought SSA was a great piece of software, I just never had a PC genlock at the time because they were $500+, at least twice what I had into my Amiga. As a college student, I had to budget carefully!
In the 70s and 80s it was exclusively called Japanimation. People loved the then-current ones like Space Cruiser Yamato, but being older, I preferred the original Speed Racer, Kimba, and Gigantor imports.
I am a bit too young to appreciate what fansubbers went through, and I may have unintentionally bought bootlegged fan subs in the early 2000s when I got into anime...or at least had the money to get into it.
Wow, incredible what people invested their time in in those days.. I wasted all of my time playing games (by now usually on a PC)! Those anime LD's are REALLY cool though! I still have some 110 LD's and my Pioneer DVL-909 (LD/DVD/CD) player. Ah, memories.. And I also still have the EU version of your JVC SVHS recorder. Nice coincidence. Really cool to see how this was done in those days! Much more involved than I ever thought!
Nice, I have a somewhat smaller LD collection and I haven't even looked at them in 20 years but I'm happy to say I don't see any signs of laser rot! I wasted a lot of my time playing games back then too. Between fansubbing and quake2 there wasn't much time left for studying!
@@retrobitstv Haha, oh man, the Quake virus. Yes, it bit me quite hard as well for a good number of years (while still also playing Civilization and Pinball Fantasies).. Unfortunately, some of my LD's do have laser rot. My copy of The Net is really done for... Still, I have copies of movies both on NTSC and PAL since both copies tended to be slightly different.. (like Terminator 2).. SO cool..
It's so cool for me from the EU to finally see what happened on YOUR side of the pond.. When they were still sort of different worlds.. Today, it's all one, isn't it? Which is really cool!
Thanks Jim, appreciate the feedback! I've wanted to make this for a long time but was never sure how to approach it. Glad I finally did because the equipment was in rough shape having sat idle for 20 years.
@@retrobitstv interestingly, it's the kind of video that fan subbing needed 25 years ago, but of course there was no UA-cam back then. (I wonder if anyone ever made a VHS instructional video.)
It might have been a bit late to the party, but I did try to do a little brain dump towards the end of my short stint as a fansubber which can still be found here: armitage.crinkle.net/karinkuru/howtosub/
The very first time I seen anime on TV when I was a kid back in the 80s I was hooked. The first anime I owned was the VHS version of warriors of the wind.
I was living in italy in that era and, beside the UK and italian video labels (Yamato video in italy and Manga UK mainly) there were not too much options: since italy is a PAL region fansubbing was off the pockets of many including me due to the high cost of import material and multistandard hardware
Hah, I had to check if MegaTokyo was still around or not. Back in those days Fred/Piro was a regular on #fansubs on EFNet and did all the art for our official t-shirts and such. Good times.
wow. I love old school Anime and I really miss my Amiga 4000. This video is full of perfect nostalgia as well as great information. I also had that sony super vhs deck. It was amazing.
Thanks! Yea, it was a great unit! The remote control on it was a beast too, with its Star Trek communicator-style flip lid and separate jog/shuttle knob.
I picked up that CoCo3 a while back to replace my fully functional CoCo2. It has as least a bad RAM chip and a wonky keyboard so I'll have to make a repair video at some point :)
incredible video! thanks so much. 12:42 halfway answers my question, but…i was an impressionable 7-year-old during this era and to this day that chunky yellow Anime Labs font is still my all-time favorite typesetting aesthetic. (nevermind the subs themselves or however accurate they may or may not have been!) i’m trying to figure out how to recreate that font myself, but…from what you’re saying it sounds perhaps impossible. from what you can remember, do you think their signature font was a default font or would they have customized parameters to achieve it? i would super appreciate any insight you might be able to share…or anyone, if someone else reading these words has any idea! 🙏
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it! I believe that Anime Labs video to be using the default JACOsub font with the default outline and drop shadow settings as well. It appears a little smaller than the default size and the aspect ratio might be a little skewed owing to the video capture versus what I see when I emulated it really quickly on my desktop PC just now. For reference, here's the JACOsub default .font file as it ships with the software with all default software settings running the included test script: retrobits.tv/jacosub_default_font.png Hope this helps!
I thought the Amiga could replace any external video mixer; what's the point in having an external genlock mixer and even having to press keys manually as the script runs? I mean for that same purpose I could use a C64 or any other 8 bit machine (which of course have worst graphics quality but would generate computer graphics at 1/10 the cost of a 16 bit computer) and having the computer generated text mixed and over drawn onte the laserdisc or svhs video source and then 2 signals recorded on a second tape
Great video! Thanks for sharing this process :) I'm building a video toaster 2000 and have some of the same genlock hardware. This has inspired me to make a music video that has subtitles using the amiga genlock.. is the amigas high resolution the same resolution as S-VHS and Laserdisc?
No problem, glad you liked it! Video toaster is an amazing bit of kit. Good luck with your project, sounds fun! Both the S-VHS and Laserdisc natively output NTSC 480i video. JACOsub always outputs at the same resolution of the source video, but the overlay is initially generated at either 200 lines of resolution in HIRES or 400 lines in SUPERHIRES mode. When using the default square/blocky font, the lower resolution option is good as it works on OCS machines and gives you 16 colors. I have some "fancy" fonts for some of the titles that look better at the higher resolution on an ECS machine but the tradeoff is having only 4 colors.
@@retrobitstv that's awesome. :) I'll definitely share my progress with the toaster / fansubbing on my end though it won't be over anime.. then again.. who knows.. maybe some anime inspired lightwave clips.. Now about these lines of resolution.. how does that work out then? if the S-VHS outputs 480i, and the amiga outputs 400 lines (let's just stick with high rez), does this mean they spread out over the same screen space or does this mean there are 80 lines of resolution at the bottom of the screen that the amiga can't reach?
@@8bitwidgets That's a great question and I don't know the inner workings of the software that well but here's what I think based on available evidence: when you play back a script, you are presented with an overlay screen inside a bounding box, and you can move that box around to center it, but you cannot enlarge it to fill the entire display. Based on that, I think the software can position those 400 lines anywhere within the 480 available lines, but like you said, there will be some space at the top and/or bottom that is unreachable.
@@retrobitstv ah that's interesting. yea the amiga has some overscan settings in it's own display to allow you to customize it to a given tv/monitor. so yea that's cool still. can that position in the monitor be changed in on the fly (scripted playback) or must be defined / set at the beginning? i'm just thinking of situations where say you need text on the extreme ends (for whatever reason).
@@8bitwidgets You can adjust and ramp and shift in real-time during playback, but not the screen position. My guess is you want to stay pretty far away from the borders anyway because people would have been playing back that VHS on all manner of TVs and if you get too close to the overscan area the text would get chopped off for some.
Everything from this era was in standard definition, so it'll be pretty hard to watch on a modern large format high def display. But there were a good number of groups that made really high quality subtitles. I think the work we did was pretty good :)
Yes, this was my first Amiga and I purchased it specifically for this one purpose long after it's heyday had come and gone. Originally I went from a C128 to a 386 PC and missed the entire Amiga era.
@@retrobitstv Wow! I can't imagine missing out on the Amiga and/or Atari ST. At least you got to experience it later! And, what a time to buy a 3000! I wish I did...
Hi, I'm Joe Vecchio, I was the first President and one of the founders of the Japanese Animation Club of Orlando (JACO) when the software was written: for the record, Alex Matulich is the gentleman who wrote the software, I am going to pass this video on to him so he knows people still appreciate the work he and all of us put into fandom back in the early days when we had to walk uphill in the snow both ways to the local anime club in order to watch and trade videos, often ninth-generation copies that were such awful quality that you couldn't tell if it was Lupin or Maison Ikkoku!
So many people can lay claim to making anime as popular as it is now in the U.S., but I'm very proud of the role JACO played in that history. Excellent video, thank you for sharing it!
Thanks Joe for letting me know about this. I've left a separate comment (which for some reason has disappeared). The JACOsub software did indeed have a good run before digital fansubbing became all the rage.
Hi Joe, thanks for the comment and passing the link on to Alex! Glad you enjoyed the video. I only got into fansubbing at the very tail end of the linear era by learning from and standing on the shoulders of all those pioneers (cue the Tenchi Muyo OVA 2 Ed music) who went before like yourselves. So thanks to all of you for what you've done to build awareness and promote anime in the U.S.! I can totally relate: we watched all 96 episodes of Maison Ikkoku on nth generation VHS copies from Artic Animation -- oof, that was a challenge!
@@anachronist Hi Alex, I saw your comment in an e-mail notification but it does seem to have disappeared from UA-cam. This happens from time to time but hopefully it resurfaces. Anyway, thanks for stopping by :) I didn't get into fansubbing until almost the dawn of the digisubbing era but I found JACOSub to be very well thought out, easy to use, and quite feature complete by that point so thank you for your hard work! I was a registered user, and still have my license key file (although it seems you've since made the software freeware since then)!
Give Alex a thank-you from me, too. I was a big user of JACOsub back in the day. I think I’m even in the thank-you section of the read me file… JACOsub was a huge leap forward when you were used to TurboTitle on the Amiga.
Excellent video! As someone who's day job is translating Japanese to English, it's easy for me to watch old Initial D fansubs and criticize the translations, but the amount of effort it took to get those subs in place from translation to timing to visibility and even to readability (how quickly the subs move by), is absolutely astounding! Y'all did proper, hard work, all for the love of the show, and that is something to absolutely be commended!
Hey David, glad you enjoyed it! Yeah, the quality of the translations, source material, and subtitling itself varied wildly from group to group but with the exclusion of a few known bootleggers, it was all for the sake of the art. Kind of like UA-cam in that regard! I remember seeing the Initial D live action movie which was apparently translated from a Chinese translation... that one was tough to watch :)
Huh, gotta ask my dad if he bought his Anime online through mail order, he very well might have.
It's really interesting to see the roots of this subculture and how they influenced its future, even a small piece of history like this can have grandiose effects. I also really liked how you didn't shy away from explaining the technical details and going through the process.
Great video.
Man, this is one of the coolest videos I've seen on UA-cam in a long time.
That was so insightful and interesting to watch.
It's not just about the Amiga or Anime, it's both.
I''ve been a professional Japanese translator for more than 20 years, so even though I never really did much subtitling, I think I can appreciate how much work it is. It has always kind of amazed me that people just did this for free as a hobby.
Ah, those were the days.
Sup kenny
Hah, I remember procuring LDs for you back in the day and just how much cheaper they were in Japan.
With the way things are heading for the anime community and with the advance technology nowadays, I can definitely see this practice make a bit of a comeback.
Nice! I was into Anime in the 80s, when it was called Japanimation or Japanime. Q-Link was a great hang out for everything Japanime. Pictures, Music, chat groups, etc. You had quite the setup for fansubbing. That was such a fun time. I know some people hated the english dubs of those days and the early 90s, but I loved it. All the cheesy dialog and voice actors were great.
About the copyright claim on this video: Doesn't the claimant know anything about "Fair Use". What a joke and I would have blurred or blocked out the same way so that those trolls don't get a dime...
Ever go to any Q-Link meetups? I think I remember you, if you went by Racer X back then.
Japan doesn't have or follow the USA 'fair use' law. Nor do youtube accept that when a company makes the claim in their country of origin. Hence the DMCA claim against 'Totally Not Mark' in early December 2021 and having 150 copyright claims made against his channel by Toei Animation in Japan. There was nothing he could do. The DMCA is supported by all but 7 countries at this time. Sadly 'fair use' isn't always the safety umbrella people think it is. Makes me sad for the future of creators on youtube.
@@doctor49152 Totally agree. It is a shame because some of these productions had an english release already. It isn't very logical to me since a small clip may get people to want to purchase or watch the whole episode/series. Oh well we live in an imperfect world.
Yeah what I don't really understand is that someone who claims to have the rights in Italy (but not Japan or the USA) can make a claim against my video and monetize the entire thing for themselves in all markets. And then there's the question of whether they have the rights at all or are just a troll. And if you do try to protest or file an appeal, it goes right back to the party that made the claim to decide if it's valid or not. It seems like UA-cam is asleep at the wheel on this.
@@retrobitstv UA-cam does give you the ability to click the "go ahead and sue me" button, but that immediately doxxes you to the complaining party.
Thank you for such an amazing video! It's always a treat to see people who were active during the anime boom talk about their experiences online. :) Unfortunately, I was born way too late to see it myself (not to mention that I was born on the other side of the globe... T_T), so it's fascinating to me how people participated in the fandom back then. I enjoy learning about it a lot! As someone said in the comments, another video like this would be incredible to see! I'm sure many would learn something new from it, maybe some familiar faces would show up to reminisce about good old times? :P
Also, I'd like to appreciate the way you edited this video: the pacing wasn't too fast, you've spoken clearly and calmly, patiently explaining everything. I know it might seem trivial, but it made my viewing much more comfortable. I felt like you really cared about making me understand all of this, instead of just showing off!
Once again, big thanks! :)
Ok, let me rewrite my earlier comment. It just didn't come across right. This was an awesome fantastic video and a great insight already, but I. Want. MORE. Please make this a series!
Why? It seemed incomplete to me. This video was basically 50% of "how to create subtitles and their effects (with this one software)" and I absolutely need a huuuge insight into the scene by someone who has been part of that scene back in the days.
Hardware choices. Dream rigs. Issues with hardware, software, legal. Big names. Unsung heroes. Stories from times beyond. The scene and how you got in (and when and why you stopped). Favorite anecdotes. I see comments here from people who provided you with content. Maybe they could provide even more insight, anecdotes and so? I mean, retro doesn't mean just hardware. It was a whole state of being back then, with our machines being such a central part of our lives, when so many people still didn't even have a computer at home, let alone an internet connection.
When I have someone from "the scene" that made subtitles for something that I loved - and still do! - who also manages to be into old tech - another thing I love - and who is capable of creating great videos, my nerd-greed turns to eleven. :D
I subbed my first video in 1991, largely to help me with my Japanese studies. I retranslated and retimed it last year to mark my 30th anniversary (I translate professionally now). I haven't worked from a VHS or LD source in a long time, but my workflow is largely the same.
Glad you enjoyed it and you're right, there's a lot more of the story left to tell. I've got a handle on talking about tech, but I would have to draw on/interview others to get a more complete picture of the scene as it was back in those days which is something I haven't done before but could be fun and interesting to try. I still keep in touch with a good number of former subbers from that time. Something to think about... Thanks for the ideas! I shall mull them over for a bit and see what shakes out.
This was really fascinating to watch. Nowadays, the dialogue parts of a fansub can be churned out in a matter of hours, with the time-consuming part being sign typesetting, which often involves motion-tracking software and AI to perfectly replicate or replace the original sign.
Thanks for sharing!
Nice, I'll have to check out some modern fansubs. If I'm honest, I really am not up to speed on things these days. I have a crunchyroll account and that's about it :P
Very cool. Thanks for sharing.
damn, those laserdiscs are looking crisp
Watching this from an eye of a modern-day fansubber is really interesting! Fansubbing nowadays is accessible to anyone and doesn't require any specialized hardware. Good video!
For the curious (myself included), what tools are used for creating the timing these days?
@@retrobitstv for some reason, my comments keep disappearing, maybe because I'm mentioning the software name and the comment is automatically deleted.
the software is called A e g i s u b (maybe this will go undeleted :D )
@@begija Cool, I'll be interested to check it out and see how far things have come and what, if anything, remains the same! Yea, comments disappearing is very frustrating and happens a lot :/
Aah, I never knew you could sync the video sources like that. When I had conceptualized how the fansubs I was watching were made at the time, dual video sources seemed overly complicated and not possible, but now it looks quite simple. =P
As someone who used an Amiga as my daily driver from about 1990 to 2005, it's fascinating to see how they were used in areas that I literally have no idea about and was completely oblivious to at time. Thank you.
I discovered fansubs around 2000 when getting them via the Internet with IRC was getting easier every day, and then things seemed to explode when Torrents became a thing, then eventually got involved with helping where I could with QC checking and stuff like that, mainly with tokusatsu fansubs. Thank you for sharing this with us! Talk about something I thought I would never hear about. Very cool!
I first learned about fansubs in fall of 1995, was quickly hooked and got involved. By 2000, the era of linear subbing was certainly coming to an end and digisubs and IRC bots were the way to go! Glad you enjoyed it 👍
Fascinating. Always wondered how old-school fansubbing worked. Also brought back a lot of memories, of watching really crappy 8th generation VHS tapes where you could barely recognize who/what was on screen. And holy crap, Kurinkuru and Armitage are names that I actually recognize and remember (albeit vaguely) from back in the day. iirc Armitage used to run a Jpop/anime music internet radio station that I used to have on pretty much all day long while I worked. Thanks for this really interesting and nostalgic trip!
Glad you enjoyed it and you're welcome! Always nice to have a former ArmiTunes listener check in too :)
Best video yet. That was so interesting. I did not know that even existed.
This is super interesting! two cool things collide, the amiga and obscure anime! When I got into onepiece, early episodes relied on fansubs! it's cool to hear about your history as a fansubber and not only is it super interesting hearing your experience, it's interesting to think how this process basically contributed to a huge industry today!
Thanks it has been a long time since I watched a video on an Amiga topic that was entirely new to me. Good job, subbed.
Glad you found it interesting and welcome!
Cool video! I've never been into anime but I can sure appreciate the processes used and your obvious fascination with it.
William Chow AKA King Of Smut '95 is known in north america as the grandfather of fansubbing
and he is here on youtube just saying it would be really interesting to collab with him even though he is from canada
If anyone is interested in a ton more info about the community especially the real early stuff from the 80s
you need to check him out . he also made some appearances on Happy console gamer
Thanks for the tip, I will have to check out his stuff!
@@retrobitstv you will definitely not regret it and who knows you might have had some of his releases back in the day he supplied a lot of people in the us .
try and reach out i bet it will be worth your time . a fair warning though his youtube channel is somewhat basic but his stories are really interesting because he was around and at the center of the anime craze when it hit north america
Great episode! Love to see that technology again. I use to work on local Tv station. I was subbing News using Amiga 4000 T with Scala. I use to do that live on broadcast. It was hell of a fun! Amiga rulez!
Here in my country we used the PC configuration, Pentium 133 + vinemicro Deltascan pro genlock... just remember those old days...
The Sony MDP-333 laserdisc player you feature was one of the most aesthetically beautifully designed and built A/V components I've ever seen. It wasn't particularly expensive for LD players (I think street price was about $500), but the lines, the look of the brushed aluminum face panels, and feel of the buttons and shuttle wheel, and overall solidity were truly first-class. I don't think it was a particularly highly rated model by "videophiles", and it had a common problem with a belt failing causing the disc tray door to get stuck when flipping down to open (literally a $1.50 belt, and Sony service centers wanted $100 labor to repair.) Anyway, such a beautiful piece! (Sony often had the best industrial designs, aside from generally great quality, plus innovations.
Also, I used to dub LDs over to S-VHS, but the quality pretty severely dropped, despite the format's higher resolution than standard VHS. Original S-VHS movies (very scarce) looked much better...
It really is a great design that stands up even today. The SLV-R5UC editing deck I used had the same design language and together they made a beautiful stack. I did not have the optional faux wood grain side panels on mine. Alas, no pictures from back then are to be found as it pre-dates digital cameras :(
I do need to replace the belts, the door has a hard time opening and disc playback makes the occasional unpleasant sound these days.
@@retrobitstv Never knew Sony made a complimentary-looking VCR, and I thought the wood side panels were reserved for the ES-series hifi components (of which I've had a few; they were beautiful and robust, too).
Good luck restoring the MDP, and if you can't find the specific belt for the door, apparently generic ones, or even plain rubber bands can sometimes suffice in these things!
I did my share of fansubing with SSA back in the early to mid 2000s, great video!
Nice, I thought SSA was a great piece of software, I just never had a PC genlock at the time because they were $500+, at least twice what I had into my Amiga. As a college student, I had to budget carefully!
In the 70s and 80s it was exclusively called Japanimation. People loved the then-current ones like Space Cruiser Yamato, but being older, I preferred the original Speed Racer, Kimba, and Gigantor imports.
I am a bit too young to appreciate what fansubbers went through, and I may have unintentionally bought bootlegged fan subs in the early 2000s when I got into anime...or at least had the money to get into it.
Wow, incredible what people invested their time in in those days.. I wasted all of my time playing games (by now usually on a PC)! Those anime LD's are REALLY cool though! I still have some 110 LD's and my Pioneer DVL-909 (LD/DVD/CD) player. Ah, memories.. And I also still have the EU version of your JVC SVHS recorder. Nice coincidence.
Really cool to see how this was done in those days! Much more involved than I ever thought!
Nice, I have a somewhat smaller LD collection and I haven't even looked at them in 20 years but I'm happy to say I don't see any signs of laser rot! I wasted a lot of my time playing games back then too. Between fansubbing and quake2 there wasn't much time left for studying!
@@retrobitstv Haha, oh man, the Quake virus. Yes, it bit me quite hard as well for a good number of years (while still also playing Civilization and Pinball Fantasies).. Unfortunately, some of my LD's do have laser rot. My copy of The Net is really done for... Still, I have copies of movies both on NTSC and PAL since both copies tended to be slightly different.. (like Terminator 2).. SO cool..
I have been waiting for this video! I have been following your work for over twenty years.(Armitage, ArmiTunes, and all that!)
Hope it was worth the wait :) Ah, good ol ArmiTunes! A shame it went out the way it did, alas...
It's so cool for me from the EU to finally see what happened on YOUR side of the pond.. When they were still sort of different worlds.. Today, it's all one, isn't it? Which is really cool!
18:03 BRUTAL. wow…
Fantastic demonstration of how it was done. Thanks for taking the time to put this together.
Thanks Jim, appreciate the feedback! I've wanted to make this for a long time but was never sure how to approach it. Glad I finally did because the equipment was in rough shape having sat idle for 20 years.
@@retrobitstv interestingly, it's the kind of video that fan subbing needed 25 years ago, but of course there was no UA-cam back then. (I wonder if anyone ever made a VHS instructional video.)
It might have been a bit late to the party, but I did try to do a little brain dump towards the end of my short stint as a fansubber which can still be found here: armitage.crinkle.net/karinkuru/howtosub/
Awesome! Thanks for this video.
I loved Guyver back in 1994 but that was a video comic I bought from John Menzies and was dubbed I think.
The very first time I seen anime on TV when I was a kid back in the 80s I was hooked. The first anime I owned was the VHS version of warriors of the wind.
I was living in italy in that era and, beside the UK and italian video labels (Yamato video in italy and Manga UK mainly) there were not too much options: since italy is a PAL region fansubbing was off the pockets of many including me due to the high cost of import material and multistandard hardware
1:00 - Oh sweet, I'll have to remember to check out that new webcomic "MegaTokyo" later
Hah, I had to check if MegaTokyo was still around or not. Back in those days Fred/Piro was a regular on #fansubs on EFNet and did all the art for our official t-shirts and such. Good times.
great video, a subject i've not really known or thought about, but looks like it was a lot of work!! (and I suppose actually still is).
Wow! Just wow, hear this story form person who work on it. Thank you for this clip :)
You're welcome, glad you enjoyed it!
wow. I love old school Anime and I really miss my Amiga 4000. This video is full of perfect nostalgia as well as great information. I also had that sony super vhs deck. It was amazing.
Thanks! Yea, it was a great unit! The remote control on it was a beast too, with its Star Trek communicator-style flip lid and separate jog/shuttle knob.
Great video, though I did wince when you threw the Tenchi Muyo OVA box off screen. I still have that one myself 😅
Haha, thanks! No DVDs were harmed in the making of this video :)
Great topic, Matt - thanks for sharing. I had no idea!
Only Amiga makes it possible!
Interesting vid - thanks for posting B)
very nostalgic era...
Really cool and unique video :)
Thanks, glad you liked it!
Awesome video!
Glad you enjoyed it
I was a huge CoCo nut growing up and great to see one in the background!
I picked up that CoCo3 a while back to replace my fully functional CoCo2. It has as least a bad RAM chip and a wonky keyboard so I'll have to make a repair video at some point :)
Nice video!
This channel is so good!
I love this topic!
Nice video, just wish I can see video toaster in action.
Perhaps a separate video for another day!
It amazes me how much time and money a company will spend to block something they never intend to do themselves.
incredible video! thanks so much. 12:42 halfway answers my question, but…i was an impressionable 7-year-old during this era and to this day that chunky yellow Anime Labs font is still my all-time favorite typesetting aesthetic. (nevermind the subs themselves or however accurate they may or may not have been!) i’m trying to figure out how to recreate that font myself, but…from what you’re saying it sounds perhaps impossible. from what you can remember, do you think their signature font was a default font or would they have customized parameters to achieve it? i would super appreciate any insight you might be able to share…or anyone, if someone else reading these words has any idea! 🙏
for ease of reference, a particularly infamous example: ua-cam.com/video/PrhE4cRFJ7A/v-deo.html
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it! I believe that Anime Labs video to be using the default JACOsub font with the default outline and drop shadow settings as well. It appears a little smaller than the default size and the aspect ratio might be a little skewed owing to the video capture versus what I see when I emulated it really quickly on my desktop PC just now. For reference, here's the JACOsub default .font file as it ships with the software with all default software settings running the included test script: retrobits.tv/jacosub_default_font.png Hope this helps!
I thought the Amiga could replace any external video mixer; what's the point in having an external genlock mixer and even having to press keys manually as the script runs? I mean for that same purpose I could use a C64 or any other 8 bit machine (which of course have worst graphics quality but would generate computer graphics at 1/10 the cost of a 16 bit computer) and having the computer generated text mixed and over drawn onte the laserdisc or svhs video source and then 2 signals recorded on a second tape
Cool now i can fansub only must learn japanese
Great video! Thanks for sharing this process :) I'm building a video toaster 2000 and have some of the same genlock hardware. This has inspired me to make a music video that has subtitles using the amiga genlock.. is the amigas high resolution the same resolution as S-VHS and Laserdisc?
No problem, glad you liked it! Video toaster is an amazing bit of kit. Good luck with your project, sounds fun!
Both the S-VHS and Laserdisc natively output NTSC 480i video. JACOsub always outputs at the same resolution of the source video, but the overlay is initially generated at either 200 lines of resolution in HIRES or 400 lines in SUPERHIRES mode. When using the default square/blocky font, the lower resolution option is good as it works on OCS machines and gives you 16 colors. I have some "fancy" fonts for some of the titles that look better at the higher resolution on an ECS machine but the tradeoff is having only 4 colors.
@@retrobitstv that's awesome. :) I'll definitely share my progress with the toaster / fansubbing on my end though it won't be over anime.. then again.. who knows.. maybe some anime inspired lightwave clips..
Now about these lines of resolution.. how does that work out then? if the S-VHS outputs 480i, and the amiga outputs 400 lines (let's just stick with high rez), does this mean they spread out over the same screen space or does this mean there are 80 lines of resolution at the bottom of the screen that the amiga can't reach?
@@8bitwidgets That's a great question and I don't know the inner workings of the software that well but here's what I think based on available evidence: when you play back a script, you are presented with an overlay screen inside a bounding box, and you can move that box around to center it, but you cannot enlarge it to fill the entire display. Based on that, I think the software can position those 400 lines anywhere within the 480 available lines, but like you said, there will be some space at the top and/or bottom that is unreachable.
@@retrobitstv ah that's interesting. yea the amiga has some overscan settings in it's own display to allow you to customize it to a given tv/monitor. so yea that's cool still. can that position in the monitor be changed in on the fly (scripted playback) or must be defined / set at the beginning? i'm just thinking of situations where say you need text on the extreme ends (for whatever reason).
@@8bitwidgets You can adjust and ramp and shift in real-time during playback, but not the screen position. My guess is you want to stay pretty far away from the borders anyway because people would have been playing back that VHS on all manner of TVs and if you get too close to the overscan area the text would get chopped off for some.
Anyone care to point to some of the stand-out examples of such fan releases? And do any of them stand the test of time?
Everything from this era was in standard definition, so it'll be pretty hard to watch on a modern large format high def display. But there were a good number of groups that made really high quality subtitles. I think the work we did was pretty good :)
I know how much work it is, I have DR. Stone translated to Dutch. 15 to 20 hours for an episode is nothing.
Did the Laserdisc help lead to the cd and the DVD?!!!!!!!!!!!
The channels Technology Connections and Techmoan both go into detail on their history.
@@CantankerousDave Hey it was a yes or no type!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Had to stop watching and comment right away. As a fellow otaku-ish amigan, I am enjoying this video immensely. A big hello from Italy, and God bless!
Awesome, glad you enjoyed it and thanks for the comment!
Was this your first Amiga, then--the one you bought for fansubbing?
Yes, this was my first Amiga and I purchased it specifically for this one purpose long after it's heyday had come and gone. Originally I went from a C128 to a 386 PC and missed the entire Amiga era.
@@retrobitstv Wow! I can't imagine missing out on the Amiga and/or Atari ST. At least you got to experience it later! And, what a time to buy a 3000! I wish I did...
Now imagine if there was a contentID-like shiz back then - the whole anime genre would not spread on the West.
$100-$200 for an A3000 in the 90's Bargain!!!
What´s the interest of this shit ? Amiga computers have interesting stuff but not this.