What did old-school fans think about digital fansubs?

The roughly mid-90's and earlier (generally pre-Toonami, pre-anime boom) era of anime & manga fandom: early cons, clubs, tape trading, Nth Generation VHS fansubs, old magazines & fanzines, fandubs, ancient merchandise, rec.arts.anime, and more!
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mbanu
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What did old-school fans think about digital fansubs?

Post by mbanu »

During my era, it was the height of the "the internet never forgets, it reroutes around damage" feeling about online fansubs. The idea being that there would always be a Somebody that kept things online forever, without specifying who that somebody might be.

We've been forced to eat our words to some degree, as things we thought would be around forever have disappeared, or at least disappeared into the offline archives of people who don't realize they have the only known copy.

Old-school fans seem like collectors (or hoarders, if being unkind). They had the Japanese raw laserdisc when they could afford it, and they hustled to get VHS fansubs of the highest quality possible -- the idea of "it will always be there, you can take it for granted-" seems like it would have been strange to those fans, but maybe I'm misunderstanding.

What was the feeling like around then regarding how likely it was if you lost your copy of something that another would be easy to get?
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Re: What did old-school fans think about digital fansubs?

Post by Drew_Sutton »

I'm probably not the right person for this because I've been kind of perpetually online since my teens (in my forties now) but I knew then as I know now, the idea that "the Internet never forgets" is quite a myth. It is probably better understood that once something is shared on the Internet, you lose some semblance of control over it.

The thing about the Internet is that for there to be content, someone doesn't just need to create* it but someone has to host it, too. Whether it was your character shrine image gallery in the webring, mp3s on Napster or those fansubs on BitTorrent, it all had to be hosted somewhere But even back in the AniPike heyday of the mid to late-nineties, you would encounter broken links occasionally and get 404'ed because whatever it was, was gone.

(*I'm using create here in a very broad term - create the digital file if it's analog, modify it if its a fansub of a digital file, write it and click post if it's a forum post or tweet or whatever.)

When I first encountered digital fansubs, it was maybe 2000 or 2001. At that time, there were a few methods in which you could get digital fansubs over the Internet: direct download (DDL), IRC or peer-to-peer via networks like DC++, Strawberry Heaven (later networks like Kazaa, eMule/eDonkey). All of these had their pitfalls but the one thing they shared was that if the host disconnected or went offline, the file went away. If you completed it and never re-shared it, it was as good as gone. BitTorrent fixed some of the problems but still the root problem - if files aren't shared, they're essentially gone. AnimeSuki, one of the premier fansub torrent hosts of the first decade of the 2000s, you could see, over time, the number of inactive torrents grow that were still linked. You can start a download that will never finish. Very Hotel California.

But obtaining digital fansubs at that time wasn't the only problem. There were a lot of limitations to playback - desktop PCs were heavy, laptops were often expensive (and way under-powered comparatively) and there were tons of software bugs, especially around video codecs. A file that played on your friends PC still ran a good chance of not running on yours when you got it home. Couple that with the fact that lots of homes had at least 1 VCR, tape was more reliable with expected results and because VCRs were connected to televisions, they were usually in areas designed for people to congregate for extended periods - living/family rooms, dens and even basements - as opposed to computers which were usually a desk or table, in a corner with only one seat. All that to say, it didn't even really matter if they were or had a perception of being permanent, they weren't ready for prime time the same way that a tape was.

As someone who was, this past weekend, racking my brain about where a few of my old tape fansubs have wandered off to, I have probably still lost more fansubs to computer issue or HDD crashes than I have lost tapes (lost, stolen, ripped/trash) and have only a handful of times been able to download some of them again from the Internet to restore them.
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Re: What did old-school fans think about digital fansubs?

Post by davemerrill »

I did a lot of copying and trading of VHS fansubs, and helped out on a few of the CPF releases. In terms of the scarcity of fansubs, or the ability to replace lost fansub tapes, well, generally you got that fansub from someone you knew. If a dog ate that tape of the Patlabor movie fansub, or if you loaned the tape to somebody and they lost it, or you took it to a convention screening and it got lost in the shuffle, well, you could get another copy from wherever you got that copy from originally.

I can't speak for others, but certainly I didn't think of fansubs as a collectible resource, certainly not in the way a production commercially released laserdisc or video tape would be. A fansub was a copy, and the nature of copies is that you can always get another one. And generally in our era of fandom we had seen technology move from VHS to laserdisc, and there seemed to be a natural progression of video quality improving over time; your copy of Project A-Ko taped off a VHS in 1986 using a 2-head mono top-loading VHS deck wasn't going to look as good as a copy from a laserdisc made using a stereo hi-fi SVHS in 1990.

People are certainly collecting fansub VHS now, but they're definitely something nobody is making any more of these days.

I was aware of digital fansubs long before I had a PC powerful enough to play video files that approached VHS quality, and certainly before I had the kind of internet connection that would allow downloads at anything approaching adequate speeds. My end goal with Japanese animation was (and still is) to have something I can sit on the couch with and watch on my TV at home, and that I can take to conventions or events and screen as part of panels or video presentations. It was the mid 2000s before I was able to do that without VHS being an integral part of the system. It might not have been cutting edge or sexy, but VHS played when I needed it to play, every time.
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Re: What did old-school fans think about digital fansubs?

Post by DKop »

Yea digital archiving is more important now than ever. Archive.org can only do so much and yet it does quite alot. What worries me about archive.org is the fact that its a great hub for people to upload old fansubs, dubs and etc (Mike Toole uses it to uplaod old dubs) but the other side of that sword is copyright from companies that if found out what are they going to do about it? Stuff like that is something that isnt commercially available (dubs) or was never meant to be (fansubs). Companies don't care about preservation, just money and IP protection.

It's interesting how IP will take down a file that has an old english dub that came from an old VHS tape someone had for 30 something years, but yet there is maybe out there the new high definition version that is commercially available. People are not substituting the VHS rip over the higher quality product that's costing the IP money, no its the fact that the IP didn't put out that dub on the new high quaitly version and people want to see that old dub from Bo Job Gibbs archive.org page becuase he has that old dub. Maybe people are substituting the VHS rip, I dunno, people are weird like that (*cough*, points to self).

People are going to get what they want to get, weither they pay for it or get it from a website, its all part of the wonderful world of the free(ish) open market.

In terms of the question, ive only really seen digi-subs since I got my computer right at the year 2000 and found out about getting old mpeg and quicktime video files from websites in piss ass video compression quality to see what Zeta Gundam is all about.
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Re: What did old-school fans think about digital fansubs?

Post by Drew_Sutton »

DKop wrote: Thu Mar 30, 2023 4:32 am Yea digital archiving is more important now than ever. Archive.org can only do so much and yet it does quite alot. What worries me about archive.org is the fact that its a great hub for people to upload old fansubs, dubs and etc (Mike Toole uses it to uplaod old dubs) but the other side of that sword is copyright from companies that if found out what are they going to do about it? Stuff like that is something that isnt commercially available (dubs) or was never meant to be (fansubs). Companies don't care about preservation, just money and IP protection.

It's interesting how IP will take down a file that has an old english dub that came from an old VHS tape someone had for 30 something years, but yet there is maybe out there the new high definition version that is commercially available. People are not substituting the VHS rip over the higher quality product that's costing the IP money, no its the fact that the IP didn't put out that dub on the new high quaitly version and people want to see that old dub from Bo Job Gibbs archive.org page becuase he has that old dub. Maybe people are substituting the VHS rip, I dunno, people are weird like that (*cough*, points to self).

People are going to get what they want to get, weither they pay for it or get it from a website, its all part of the wonderful world of the free(ish) open market.

In terms of the question, ive only really seen digi-subs since I got my computer right at the year 2000 and found out about getting old mpeg and quicktime video files from websites in piss ass video compression quality to see what Zeta Gundam is all about.
Yeah, I glossed over the some of the pre-2000s stuff, particularly RealMedia files, mostly because I remember that stuff being either dubbed or raw. Probably because a lot of the compression rates made subtitles very difficult to read. Some of the Dragonball Z and Dragonball GT Quicktime and RM clips I remember downloading that were under 1m of runtime still took several hours to download on my 33.6 (Kb/s) modem. Around that time in 1998 or '99, I knew only one person who'd downloaded an entire episode (on his 56K); he had to keep his mom and sister off the phone for almost a week! And like Dave said, very rarely were these VHS quality.

I'm with you - the preservation game is strong, though right now I am not sure I am preserving too much beyond my own sentiments and nostalgia. I mostly agree that companies aren't really up for straight-up preservation, at least for preservation's sake, unless they can make some money off of it.
davemerrill wrote:It was the mid 2000s before I was able to do that without VHS being an integral part of the system. It might not have been cutting edge or sexy, but VHS played when I needed it to play, every time.
And if you wanted to enjoy your digisubs from the comfort of your couch, unless you had a PC connected to a TV, that was perilous even into the early 2010s. TVs were fickle about formats (hell, for all I know, still are) and even using something like a BluRay (either off disc or via USB) wouldn't guarantee playback.

But, hoo yeah, conventions. I felt like it was still fraught with potential issues when I started doing panels in 2007 or 2008. Maybe it really wasn't as wild west as I thought it was. Comparatively, having a VCR deck right in front of you that practically everyone knew how it worked, yeah, that is reliable and safe.
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Re: What did old-school fans think about digital fansubs?

Post by mbanu »

davemerrill wrote: Wed Mar 29, 2023 6:43 pm I did a lot of copying and trading of VHS fansubs, and helped out on a few of the CPF releases. In terms of the scarcity of fansubs, or the ability to replace lost fansub tapes, well, generally you got that fansub from someone you knew. If a dog ate that tape of the Patlabor movie fansub, or if you loaned the tape to somebody and they lost it, or you took it to a convention screening and it got lost in the shuffle, well, you could get another copy from wherever you got that copy from originally.
Aha! I think maybe that was the piece of the puzzle I was missing. By the time I was watching a lot of digital fansubs, the most common way to get them was almost completely anonymous- maybe I knew the person who showed it to me (if I saw it at an anime club or a friend's house) and the fansub group name and some user handles in the credits, but if the group went away, all the middle rungs of the ladder were gone because of how it was distributed using torrents or third-party hosts, so it wasn't that I got it from one person who got it from another person who got it from the third who made it, where I could ask at each level, "OK, you don't have a copy anymore, who else did you give copies to?" In hindsight, it seems all the more surprising that I was able to maintain a "Somebody will always have them up-" mentality back then... :lol:

It sounds like while an old-school fan might take for granted that there would always be another way to get a copy, it was because they could find out where the other copies had gone?
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Re: What did old-school fans think about digital fansubs?

Post by davemerrill »

Drew_Sutton wrote: Thu Mar 30, 2023 6:05 pm
Yeah, I glossed over the some of the pre-2000s stuff, particularly RealMedia files, mostly because I remember that stuff being either dubbed or raw. Probably because a lot of the compression rates made subtitles very difficult to read. Some of the Dragonball Z and Dragonball GT Quicktime and RM clips I remember downloading that were under 1m of runtime still took several hours to download on my 33.6 (Kb/s) modem. Around that time in 1998 or '99, I knew only one person who'd downloaded an entire episode (on his 56K); he had to keep his mom and sister off the phone for almost a week! And like Dave said, very rarely were these VHS quality.

I'm with you - the preservation game is strong, though right now I am not sure I am preserving too much beyond my own sentiments and nostalgia. I mostly agree that companies aren't really up for straight-up preservation, at least for preservation's sake, unless they can make some money off of it.
davemerrill wrote:It was the mid 2000s before I was able to do that without VHS being an integral part of the system. It might not have been cutting edge or sexy, but VHS played when I needed it to play, every time.
And if you wanted to enjoy your digisubs from the comfort of your couch, unless you had a PC connected to a TV, that was perilous even into the early 2010s. TVs were fickle about formats (hell, for all I know, still are) and even using something like a BluRay (either off disc or via USB) wouldn't guarantee playback.

But, hoo yeah, conventions. I felt like it was still fraught with potential issues when I started doing panels in 2007 or 2008. Maybe it really wasn't as wild west as I thought it was. Comparatively, having a VCR deck right in front of you that practically everyone knew how it worked, yeah, that is reliable and safe.
I know some fans for whom it seems like they archive everything they possibly can, even to ripping their DVDs and BDs to digital files, which are on a server somewhere they can access through a media server program. And that's just a lot of work. I have become super picky in what I keep, even on hard drives - if it's not something I'm interested in I'm not going to keep it, it's that simple. I spent a few years acquiring anime I wasn't a fan of and wasn't going to watch, merely because somebody somewhere might want it, or merely to satisfy that "collector" urge, and once we had an anime club with its own tape library I was able to stop worry about what other people wanted to see, which is less work.

There are some fans who genuinely think that I have a responsibility to preserve everything I can, and also a responsibility to make everything I have available to everyone, everywhere, forever. I mean, they have told me this in exactly these words. And that is... absolutely not the case. I'm not a public library, I'm not a universal archive and distribution service, and if some 80s cartoon isn't potentially in front of their eyeballs 24/7, that is 100% not my problem. I don't know who's problem it is, but it's not mine.

In terms of using video for panels at conventions, we spent a good ten years wasting time at the start of every single panel trying to figure out how to get the panelists' laptop connected to the projector and then connected to the room audio, and then more time wasted trying to get the files to play using whatever software was on the laptop. Sometimes I'd see panelists sitting in the hotel lobby downloading new software using the free hotel wifi because their computer had decided that morning to have critical errors and corrupt their media player. Meanwhile, there I was, starting on time, having put all my panel materials in sequence onto a VHS tape a week before. Later I started burning everything to DVDs. Now I make an MP4 video file out of my panel visuals - which will play on every PC or MAC or UNIX box anywhere, it will probably play on your car stereo. My motto is "keep it simple, stupid."
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Re: What did old-school fans think about digital fansubs?

Post by DKop »

davemerrill wrote: Fri Mar 31, 2023 10:23 am

I know some fans for whom it seems like they archive everything they possibly can, even to ripping their DVDs and BDs to digital files, which are on a server somewhere they can access through a media server program. And that's just a lot of work. I have become super picky in what I keep, even on hard drives - if it's not something I'm interested in I'm not going to keep it, it's that simple. I spent a few years acquiring anime I wasn't a fan of and wasn't going to watch, merely because somebody somewhere might want it, or merely to satisfy that "collector" urge, and once we had an anime club with its own tape library I was able to stop worry about what other people wanted to see, which is less work.
I've gone through to downsize my physical collection by ripping what I can digitally and then selling the DVD/Bluray I dont want anymore. I have the means to do it and the technology, time otoh is something I would have to prioritize to make that happen.
There are some fans who genuinely think that I have a responsibility to preserve everything I can, and also a responsibility to make everything I have available to everyone, everywhere, forever. I mean, they have told me this in exactly these words. And that is... absolutely not the case. I'm not a public library, I'm not a universal archive and distribution service, and if some 80s cartoon isn't potentially in front of their eyeballs 24/7, that is 100% not my problem. I don't know who's problem it is, but it's not mine.
I agree with you. It's not that their asking politely if you could do it out of the kindness of your heart when you have the time and motivation, but its a matter of an entitled attitude of "YOU OWE THE ANIME COMMUNITY YOUR STUFF BECAUSE YOU HAVE IT, BECAUSE I WANT IT AND IM THE ONLY ONE ASKING AND THE ONLY PERSON TO ASK YOU IN THE HISTORY OF FOREVER! WHEN YOU GONNA DO IT DAVE, HUH?" I get this from the archiving community of the Toonami/Adult Swim tapes I have, and then being asked to re-rip them again because someone didn't like how I did it the first time. The fact that I got those Voltes V episodes from you was a gift because were cool, and that I was shocked when you gave those too me at AWA and im like "Wait I asked for these?" haha.

In a sense, I think if people have something that quite a bit of people are interested in, then the peson who has it should have some amount of obligation to share it. That's how I feel with the stuff I have where I know people will enjoy it so I might as well do it when I get too it. But in terms of demanding someone to do it that isn't right. If you want to share something then great, if not, that's ok too, but hopefully you may one day when you want too.
In terms of using video for panels at conventions, we spent a good ten years wasting time at the start of every single panel trying to figure out how to get the panelists' laptop connected to the projector and then connected to the room audio, and then more time wasted trying to get the files to play using whatever software was on the laptop. Sometimes I'd see panelists sitting in the hotel lobby downloading new software using the free hotel wifi because their computer had decided that morning to have critical errors and corrupt their media player. Meanwhile, there I was, starting on time, having put all my panel materials in sequence onto a VHS tape a week before. Later I started burning everything to DVDs. Now I make an MP4 video file out of my panel visuals - which will play on every PC or MAC or UNIX box anywhere, it will probably play on your car stereo. My motto is "keep it simple, stupid."
I do all my panels through an .mp4 file by editing using Adobe Premiere since thats my only video editing software im accustomed too. It's easy to just hit the space bar on a video to pause and hit it again to play through the video slideshow. I dont want to attempt at doing excel or powerpoint only because I don't have those programs and my way is effective enough and will work 99 percent of the time. I'm a firm believer of the KISS methodolgy.
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Re: What did old-school fans think about digital fansubs?

Post by davemerrill »

DKop wrote: Fri Mar 31, 2023 12:35 pm

I do all my panels through an .mp4 file by editing using Adobe Premiere since thats my only video editing software im accustomed too. It's easy to just hit the space bar on a video to pause and hit it again to play through the video slideshow. I dont want to attempt at doing excel or powerpoint only because I don't have those programs and my way is effective enough and will work 99 percent of the time. I'm a firm believer of the KISS methodolgy.
I'm still using Windows Movie Maker!!!!! I need to just sit my butt down and learn Premiere, I'm fully aware of this fact.
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Re: What did old-school fans think about digital fansubs?

Post by DKop »

In terms of video editing programs out there, you can get free ones that are more effective than Windows Movie Maker. Depending on really what you need it for, you don't really have to have premiere. On the other hand, using Premiere you can do more design wise if you use Illustrator and Photoshop if you wanted to do some really cool designs for panel promos that you do. It's really up to you, but if your familiar with what you got then just stick to that.
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