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Re: An index of prominent figures in the early anime fandom?

Posted: Sat Jul 13, 2019 5:18 am
by Fireminer
Drew_Sutton wrote: Fri Jul 12, 2019 4:35 pmWas there something you meant to link? I would be interested in the read, even though I probably don't know Barbara either.
Here is the interview with Anna Exter which mentions Barbara: https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature/1999-04-15
Drew_Sutton wrote: Fri Jul 12, 2019 4:35 pm I'd never heard of Sub Station Alpha, so I looked it up. Sub Station Alpha is a Windows software released sometime about 1996, per this archive.org link.Given its vintage, the software probably was designed with Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 in mind but going through the archive, it looks like NT was the last OS it was developed for. It is also, a dead project. Compared with JACOsub, JACO is indeed older since it is tied to the Commodore Amiga, which was niche but a popular niche in the 1980s. JACOsub was prolific in the fansub community in the tape days, probably because of the Amiga's dedicated following at the time.

Where the real longevity lies, is that the subtitling formats generated by SSA and JACOsub can both be encoded and decoded by most modern video players and codec packs. ASS was a format used very heavily in the early digisub days but not on systems generated by the SubStationAlpha software. Most folks I knew (which is hardly a large sample) used AegisSub or Adobe Premier.
This article (https://cinemathread.com/culture/a-brie ... to-the-us/) mentions that Sub Station Alpha had been in use since the 1985 with VHS. Maybe the author mistook it with JACOSub?

Re: An index of prominent figures in the early anime fandom?

Posted: Sun Jul 14, 2019 2:55 pm
by Drew_Sutton
Fireminer wrote: Sat Jul 13, 2019 5:18 am
Drew_Sutton wrote: Fri Jul 12, 2019 4:35 pmWas there something you meant to link? I would be interested in the read, even though I probably don't know Barbara either.
Here is the interview with Anna Exter which mentions Barbara: https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature/1999-04-15
Thanks for posting that, it was a cool read.
Fireminer wrote:
Drew_Sutton wrote: Fri Jul 12, 2019 4:35 pm I'd never heard of Sub Station Alpha, so I looked it up. Sub Station Alpha is a Windows software released sometime about 1996, per this archive.org link.Given its vintage, the software probably was designed with Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 in mind but going through the archive, it looks like NT was the last OS it was developed for. It is also, a dead project. Compared with JACOsub, JACO is indeed older since it is tied to the Commodore Amiga, which was niche but a popular niche in the 1980s. JACOsub was prolific in the fansub community in the tape days, probably because of the Amiga's dedicated following at the time.

Where the real longevity lies, is that the subtitling formats generated by SSA and JACOsub can both be encoded and decoded by most modern video players and codec packs. ASS was a format used very heavily in the early digisub days but not on systems generated by the SubStationAlpha software. Most folks I knew (which is hardly a large sample) used AegisSub or Adobe Premier.
This article (https://cinemathread.com/culture/a-brie ... to-the-us/) mentions that Sub Station Alpha had been in use since the 1985 with VHS. Maybe the author mistook it with JACOSub?
So, I may have been off on JACOsub's vintage. I usually associate Amiga computers with the wave of PCs in the 1980s, so I figured that JACOsub came out of the same time, but according to this post on rec.arts.anime by it's author, was in beta in 1992 and I think was out of beta by 1993. From the context in that post, the subtitling software that JACOsub was influenced by was called TurboTitle and also for the Amiga. There is another post to rec.arts.anime by Matulich (I think in response to William Chow) about certain advantages the Amiga had over IBM 486/MS-DOS and Macintosh computers of the time why it was chosen to develop JACOsub.

I tried to dig deeper for Sub Station Alpha on rec.arts.anime, since I was able to get close to a genesis of JACOsub and all I could really find was this post from ~1997, which still confirms what I found before. I leave it open that it is within the realm of possibility that this is a different software by the same name that came later but I'm fairly doubtful of that. I think it's safe to say that the subtitling software referenced in Ms. Chak's article certainly wasn't JACOsub but also wasn't SubStationAlpha.

William Chow's Arctic Animation fasub group pre-dated JACOsub and he describes how the group started in this video but he doesn't name which subtitling software they used (I don't think they ever used JACOsub).

Re: An index of prominent figures in the early anime fandom?

Posted: Tue Jul 16, 2019 6:12 am
by gaijinpunch
Fireminer wrote: Fri Jul 12, 2019 5:42 am
Also, was JACOSub more popular than Sub Station Alpha?
JACOSub was the standard subtitling software in the early 90's, displacing TurboTitle.

Re: An index of prominent figures in the early anime fandom?

Posted: Tue Jul 16, 2019 6:16 am
by gaijinpunch
Dang we need an edit button:

JACOSub was the standard subtitling software in the early 90's, displacing TurboTitle (created by Robert Jenks who, the internet tells me, is part of if not the head of AnimeFest in the DFW area). I do believe Arctic Animation (at least at some point) used TurboTitle with the really big font. TT has some rendering artifacts from time to time, which are prevalent on their tapes.

There was a somewhat famous group that used SSA about the same time the rest of the world was using JACOsub (it was fantastic) but I can't for the life of me remember who it was.

Re: An index of prominent figures in the early anime fandom?

Posted: Tue Jul 16, 2019 6:30 am
by Fireminer
gaijinpunch wrote: Tue Jul 16, 2019 6:16 am Dang we need an edit button:

JACOSub was the standard subtitling software in the early 90's, displacing TurboTitle (created by Robert Jenks who, the internet tells me, is part of if not the head of AnimeFest in the DFW area). I do believe Arctic Animation (at least at some point) used TurboTitle with the really big font. TT has some rendering artifacts from time to time, which are prevalent on their tapes.

There was a somewhat famous group that used SSA about the same time the rest of the world was using JACOsub (it was fantastic) but I can't for the life of me remember who it was.
Thank you so much for the information about Robert Jenks? According to Twitter, he is the Chairman of the company that still runs AnimeFest.

Re: An index of prominent figures in the early anime fandom?

Posted: Wed Jul 17, 2019 6:11 am
by gaijinpunch
Yeah, that sounds about right. I never really knew him, as he was taking a back seat it seemed when I was active, but the other locals did. Another one who bought all the LDs, and did some subtitling, is part of the group as well. I reached out once when I tried to get my old Maison Ikkoku timed scripts, but he says they're all in storage. I forgot who I sold my Amiga too (20 years ago). I doubt I'd ever use them but I'd say a good 10 hours work went into each 4-episode batch. Wouldn't mind having something to show for that.

Re: An index of prominent figures in the early anime fandom?

Posted: Wed Aug 14, 2019 4:58 am
by Fireminer
Anyone here know what happened to Robin Leyden after the period in this passage in Fred Patten's book. According to iMDB, Wendell Washer retired as an animator years ago but what about his fellow C/FO member Robin?

Re: An index of prominent figures in the early anime fandom?

Posted: Sun Sep 15, 2019 6:28 am
by Fireminer
So, this is pretty much the final version of the index. I hope you guys can give it a read and give me your honest opinion: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1xm_oF ... ddnopb05X8

Re: An index of prominent figures in the early anime fandom?

Posted: Mon Sep 16, 2019 12:41 pm
by DKop
A heck of a lot written, nice work! I would suggest adding in of Fred Patton passing last year (which im sure you'll probably get to doing that.) Im actually curious on your write up on Macek regarding him being caught lying when working on Robotech 2 and Robotech the Movie. He's been pretty honest in his interviews on say ANNCast about 10 years ago, and has gone on record on the ADV Robotech bonus DVDs that included Codename Robotech and Robotech 2 of his involvement in those projects. The only thing I know he says he denies his involvement in is the Megazone 23 Pt 2 English Dub that he says was handled by someone else than him.

Matt Murray has done some really good retrospectives on Star Blazers/Yamato on youtube if you care to credit him for that. Those were just a couple of things that stuck out to me, otherwise nice work!

Re: An index of prominent figures in the early anime fandom?

Posted: Tue Sep 17, 2019 6:40 pm
by Fireminer
DKop wrote: Mon Sep 16, 2019 12:41 pm A heck of a lot written, nice work! I would suggest adding in of Fred Patton passing last year (which im sure you'll probably get to doing that.) Im actually curious on your write up on Macek regarding him being caught lying when working on Robotech 2 and Robotech the Movie. He's been pretty honest in his interviews on say ANNCast about 10 years ago, and has gone on record on the ADV Robotech bonus DVDs that included Codename Robotech and Robotech 2 of his involvement in those projects. The only thing I know he says he denies his involvement in is the Megazone 23 Pt 2 English Dub that he says was handled by someone else than him.

Matt Murray has done some really good retrospectives on Star Blazers/Yamato on youtube if you care to credit him for that. Those were just a couple of things that stuck out to me, otherwise nice work!
Thanks for your opinion! I will remember to add what you have said.