Macross Frontier and Fansubs

[taksraven]

Just creating my own archive (for now) Macross Frontier DVD's. 4 Eps per disk. Its just occured to me that at the end of volume 3 I will have no more Shinsen subs to work with. Have to switch over to Lunar for the rest of the show. Bugger. (Not trying to insult Lunar, there stuff is still good)

Taksraven

[Letigre]

I honestly wish the THORA subs (for eps 10-14, and all, really) would become available other than through torrents. I love Macross Frontier, but I'm not gonna run a trojan-ridden p2p network just to get the subs, and, worse, get the RIAA busting down my door because of it.

I'm just loathe to deal with the bandwidth-throttling ire of Comcast.

[azrael]

Just creating my own archive (for now) Macross Frontier DVD's. 4 Eps per disk. Its just occured to me that at the end of volume 3 I will have no more Shinsen subs to work with. Have to switch over to Lunar for the rest of the show. Bugger. (Not trying to insult Lunar, there stuff is still good)

Menclave is up to 17 so you can get a bit farther with their subs.

[rankafan]

I honestly wish the THORA subs (for eps 10-14, and all, really) would become available other than through torrents. I love Macross Frontier, but I'm not gonna run a trojan-ridden p2p network just to get the subs, and, worse, get the RIAA busting down my door because of it. p2p networks are rapidly becoming illegal anyway.

Besides, I don't want to download gigs of episodes, either: I have the Blu-Rays; I just want the THORA subs!

So, if someone would please be kind enough to upload these subs to rapidshare or some such, I would be most grateful.

Thanks

Finally, I found them here today:

http://getfansub.com/wiki/Macross_Frontier

Seems like a good URL to bookmark.

[taksraven]

Menclave is up to 17 so you can get a bit farther with their subs.

What format are their eps in?

Taksraven

[azrael]

What format are their eps in?

MKVs, MP4s, and AVIs.

[taksraven]

MKVs, MP4s, and AVIs.

Cool, thanks.

Taksraven

[wolfx]

For what it's worth, I was about to shell out for a full-fledged home theater pc when I came across this:

WD TV

You just connect any usb hard drive to this thing, and it can spit video out over an hdmi cable in 1080p. It does read subtitles from mkv containers, but it isn't as nicely formatted as MPC can give you and it's kind of hit and miss with some codecs (particuarly DTS encoded sound ... hoping the next patch fixes that) ... still, for $99 I'd recommend it to anyone.

Anyway, anyone looking to save yourself a LOT of trouble re-encoding these things just to watch them on your TV might want to give this a look.

Interesting. Got pictures on how the subtitles may look like based on THORA subs? I wonder if with firmware updates (that seem to be at 1.01 currently on the page itself) that the subtitle formatting will improve.

[Batou]

Interesting. Got pictures on how the subtitles may look like based on THORA subs? I wonder if with firmware updates (that seem to be at 1.01 currently on the page itself) that the subtitle formatting will improve.

Naw ... no idea how I'd take a screenshot from my television, either.

The subtitle support is pretty craptacular, I'll admit, and looks especially jaggy and aliased when viewed in 720p (hoping the upconverting Sony HD receiver I have on the way will help with that, maybe not). It definitely shows them, but seems to have trouble with multiple subs going on in a scene, and with lyrics getting translated at the same time, the screen can turn into a mess. It also doesn't like the formatting information you'll see in a lot of subs, so it spits out escape sequences and such that look dreadful (the Thora subs are confirmed wierd ... it seems to like the Aone/Menclave subs better, or at least they're easier to follow).

If I had to compare it to something, I'd point it at Gom Player (for anyone who's used it). Yeah, it features subtitles and can play anything you throw at it, but odd things can and do happen with subtitles. The video quality is, for the most part, outstanding.

So anyway, yeah, sub support is underwhelming, but then again what do you expect for $100? A full fledged htpc running Media Player Classic will obviously handle subs leaps and bounds better than this, but at 10x the cost.

[Vegas]

another way of playing mkv on the ps3 is to have an OS installed with a mediaplayer that plays MKV's. i havent done it yet but i heard ubuntu is good

[Letigre]

I don't see why that wouldn't work, aside from I've yet to have the nerve to try itfor myself.

[bishopcruz]

Quick question, has anyone had issues with audio/video sync with the later THORAs I was trying to watch ep 17 and the video would slow down as the audio kept at the same speed. Now what's weird is that my CPU is nowhere near 90% so it's not getting that taxed, and earlier episodes with higher bitrates play without a hitch. It's really wierd. Do later eps use a different encode or something?

One place in particular that gets it really bad is Ranka's concert in 17, holy hell it slows to a crawl. Yet Sheryl's concert in episode 1 works fine. I'm using the K-lite codec pack. Any ideas?

[edwin3060]

Quick question, has anyone had issues with audio/video sync with the later THORAs I was trying to watch ep 17 and the video would slow down as the audio kept at the same speed. Now what's weird is that my CPU is nowhere near 90% so it's not getting that taxed, and earlier episodes with higher bitrates play without a hitch. It's really wierd. Do later eps use a different encode or something?

One place in particular that gets it really bad is Ranka's concert in 17, holy hell it slows to a crawl. Yet Sheryl's concert in episode 1 works fine. I'm using the K-lite codec pack. Any ideas?

Hmm what player are you using? I've had problems with vlc but everything runs fine with Media Player Classic.

For reference I'm running a HP Pavilion dv5000 series with T2400 Centrino Duo processor, GeForce Go 7400 graphics and 2 GB of RAM-- I mention the graphics and RAM because my laptop freezes up when I try to play HD videos, so I suspect hardware may also be the issue here.

[bishopcruz]

Hmm what player are you using? I've had problems with vlc but everything runs fine with Media Player Classic.

For reference I'm running a HP Pavilion dv5000 series with T2400 Centrino Duo processor, GeForce Go 7400 graphics and 2 GB of RAM-- I mention the graphics and RAM because my laptop freezes up when I try to play HD videos, so I suspect hardware may also be the issue here.

I have a Gateway MX-6453 running an ATI 200M and a Turion TL-52. It's a laptop but it should be more than enough to decimate 720p video. Most HD stuff I have ever grabbed runs perfect on it. I dunno if it's the players (MPC and WMP) or something amiss with the codec, but even CoreAVC didn't help much, if at all. Prebuffering of the subs helped a bit, but the problem still existed.

I'm thinking it may be something slightly different with later THORA encodes that doesn't like my codec setup, mainly because the earlier ones with higher bitrates work fine, and these do not. On the bright side, I grabbed SMPlater (an MPlayer frontend) and the same files play perfectly without frame skipping, forced audio sync, or anything like that. It's odd, but at least I have a work-around for now.

I'm really impressed with MPlayer BTW, seems to handle everything on its own, sans external codecs at a pretty low damn resource cost. Pretty crazy.

[edwin3060]

I have a Gateway MX-6453 running an ATI 200M and a Turion TL-52. It's a laptop but it should be more than enough to decimate 720p video. Most HD stuff I have ever grabbed runs perfect on it. I dunno if it's the players (MPC and WMP) or something amiss with the codec, but even CoreAVC didn't help much, if at all. Prebuffering of the subs helped a bit, but the problem still existed.

I'm thinking it may be something slightly different with later THORA encodes that doesn't like my codec setup, mainly because the earlier ones with higher bitrates work fine, and these do not. On the bright side, I grabbed SMPlater (an MPlayer frontend) and the same files play perfectly without frame skipping, forced audio sync, or anything like that. It's odd, but at least I have a work-around for now.

I'm really impressed with MPlayer BTW, seems to handle everything on its own, sans external codecs at a pretty low damn resource cost. Pretty crazy.

Glad it worked out for you!

[Ork_dreadnought]

I'm just going to stick this question here, even though I'm not technically a newbie. Now that Frontier has finished, is there a consensus as to which group produced the best fansubs for it? By "best" I mean the most accurate, and truthful to the source material. Thanks.

Edited April 20, 2009 by Ork_dreadnought

[bishopcruz]

I've asked this before, and it's kinda hard to say. I appreciate that THORA doesn't have a crap ton of graphical effects and crazy fonts littering the screen, and they are the only ones who have done the Blu-Ray rips, so they have a pretty decent advantage there. Some say they are the best, but I know their scripts are taken from someone else, and they do have errors in 'em. Lunar's subs are also pretty good, though their video is off of HDTV, so it isn't as nice as the Blu-Ray rips, and it has way too much happening during songs. I mean you have dialogue at the bottom, kanji/kana on the right border, roomaji in the top left, and the lyric translations just below. However they are far from the only group to do this, and a lot of people like it, so who knows. I feel like editing their subs to get rid of the roomaji and kana stuff though.

The only ones I've seen that I would say stay the hell away from are the Shinsen ones, errors galore, and REALLY intrusive graphics.

[logos]

For what it's worth, I was about to shell out for a full-fledged home theater pc when I came across this:

WD TV

You just connect any usb hard drive to this thing, and it can spit video out over an hdmi cable in 1080p. It does read subtitles from mkv containers, but it isn't as nicely formatted as MPC can give you and it's kind of hit and miss with some codecs (particuarly DTS encoded sound ... hoping the next patch fixes that) ... still, for $99 I'd recommend it to anyone.

Anyway, anyone looking to save yourself a LOT of trouble re-encoding these things just to watch them on your TV might want to give this a look.

I don't think this supports MKVs right out the box correct? It needs a firmware update? Also you need an external hard drive for it....I would prefer not to have to move hardrives around all the time coping media if I could. I built a home network for a reason. Yes it's because I'm lazy. I was looking at this:

http://www.verismonetworks.com/index.php?p...t&Itemid=22

news item about it from Attack of the Show

http://g4tv.com/attackoftheshow/attackthis...y-New-Tech.html

But they don't sell it outside of the States as far as I can tell so I can't get one. I think I am going to have to break down and make a hometheater pc.....

Note I was looking at Tversity so that I could stream to my xbox or ps3 but it messes with codexs and screws them up if you don't install it right so I have been avoiding it.

Edited April 21, 2009 by logos

[Batou]

I don't think this supports MKVs right out the box correct? It needs a firmware update? Also you need an external hard drive for it....I would prefer not to have to move hardrives around all the time coping media if I could. I built a home network for a reason. Yes it's because I'm lazy. I was looking at this:

http://www.verismonetworks.com/index.php?p...t&Itemid=22

news item about it from Attack of the Show

http://g4tv.com/attackoftheshow/attackthis...y-New-Tech.html

But they don't sell it outside of the States as far as I can tell so I can't get one. I think I am going to have to break down and make a hometheater pc.....

Note I was looking at Tversity so that I could stream to my xbox or ps3 but it messes with codexs and screws them up if you don't install it right so I have been avoiding it.

It "supported" mkvs out of the box, but not subtitles within a mkv container. The last firmware update they pushed out added subtitling and chapter support for mkv files, along with a bunch of other improvements. It's really quite functional now.

Someone mentioned crazy fonts and graphic effects in subtitles, which do tend to send this thing into a tizzy. The plainer the subtitles used, the better the results. Typically, anyway. Most of the time, this doesn't present any problems, but for shows like Macross that have a lot of dialog spoken over singing, it can sometimes degenerate into an unreadable mess in some groups' fansubs.

I'd compare its subtitling support to Gom player (a free download, if you've never tried it). Gom also has trouble with fancy shmancy effects in subs, so it should give you an idea as to what you're in for before you commit to buying.

Hope that helps!

[Graham]

[rant mode] I really wish fansubbers would not use MKV so much.

What's wrong with good old AVI? It plays on everything!

Don't they realise that not everyone wants to watch fansubs just on their computer.

Most of the time I like to watch anime on my TV and MKV format is just not playable on a normal DVD player.

And yes, I'm sure there is some procedure for converting MKV to AVI or other DVD playable format, but last time I checked, it was pretty damn complicated to do (way past my ability).[/rant mode]

Graham

[bishopcruz]

I like MKVs mainly because of the softsubs honestly, I can edit out the parts that annoy, and if I want to watch certian scenes RAW I have the option. Currently I sue PS3 Media Server to stream my video to my TV, and it works like ace.

[nhyone]

What's wrong with good old AVI? It plays on everything!

MKV: soft-subs, dual language, can contain more advanced codecs.

I connect my notebook to my TV. Problem solved.

[Major Focker]

I like MKVs mainly because of the softsubs honestly, I can edit out the parts that annoy

did you mean choose what subs are displayed eg. only dialogue subs but not the karaoke? or did you mean edit the dialogue text?

i'm hoping it's the latter.

been watching the THORA BD versions and while they look amazing, i find myself preferring the gg subs translation, so combining the two would be double win for me. i heard though that i can't just use the gg subs file to go with the THORA release since the timings are probably different, and even if knew how to do script re-timing, i wouldn't want to go through that time-consuming method.

so what i was thinking was, if the THORA softsubs were editable, i would keep their timings and just cut and paste the gg script. i have absolutely no idea whether this is feasible so appreciate if you can enlighten me on that. thanks

edit:

btw, has anyone heard any news if gg has plans of going to go back and doing the earlier episodes?

Edited May 4, 2009 by Major Focker

[Letigre]

MKV: soft-subs, dual language, can contain more advanced codecs.

I connect my notebook to my TV. Problem solved.

I'm with Graham, I like to divorce having to need my computer to be able to play the media. For one, it makes it difficult if you want to take it around and share it with people; you can't always lug around your laptop, or just lend out your computer.

[boinger]

You can convert subtitled .mkv videos into hard encoded subtitled xvid .avi videos with free Handbrake software. I hope that helps.

[nhyone]

been watching the THORA BD versions and while they look amazing, i find myself preferring the gg subs translation, so combining the two would be double win for me. i heard though that i can't just use the gg subs file to go with the THORA release since the timings are probably different, and even if knew how to do script re-timing, i wouldn't want to go through that time-consuming method.

so what i was thinking was, if the THORA softsubs were editable, i would keep their timings and just cut and paste the gg script. i have absolutely no idea whether this is feasible so appreciate if you can enlighten me on that. thanks

I would think it's easier to swap a different script than just to swap the text. Re-timing should be just be a matter of shifting the start time?

I googled and found mkvtoolnix to create/edit MKV. You should download MkvExtractGUI as well for the GUI frontend for the extraction part. With these two, you will be able to extract the subtitles, edit it and merge it back.

I also found this pretty old page How To Convert MKV Files To AVI With Subtitles that describes using MkvExtractGUI to extract the streams, using Subtitle Workshop to edit the subtitles and finally using AutoGK to convert to AVI. Screenshots are provided, so it should be easy to follow.

Edited May 12, 2009 by nhyone

[Major Focker]

I would think it's easier to swap a different script than just to swap the text. Re-timing should be just be a matter of shifting the start time?

I googled and found mkvtoolnix to create/edit MKV. You should download MkvExtractGUI as well for the GUI frontend for the extraction part. With these two, you will be able to extract the subtitles, edit it and merge it back.

I also found this pretty old page How To Convert MKV Files To AVI With Subtitles that describes using MkvExtractGUI to extract the streams, using Subtitle Workshop to edit the subtitles and finally using AutoGK to convert to AVI. Screenshots are provided, so it should be easy to follow.

thanks. Subtitle Workshop may just be what i'm looking for.

unfortunately, i don't think re-timing will be as simple as shifting the start time. the THORA video is ripped from the BD while the gg versions are from the broadcast and they have different play times (for one thing, the BD rip excludes the commercial breaks)and some scenes in the BD have been extended.

[Graham]

Haven't been keeping up with this thread.

Has Thora done anything past episode 18 yet?

Had a quick search but couldn't find any more eps.

Graham

[Gubaba]

Haven't been keeping up with this thread.

Has Thora done anything past episode 18 yet?

Had a quick search but couldn't find any more eps.

Graham

Not yet...it looks like they're using the Aone/Menclave subs...so there should be more soon. Aone's up to...what...21 now?

[rankafan]

Not yet...it looks like they're using the Aone/Menclave subs...so there should be more soon. Aone's up to...what...21 now?

I really hope THORA will continue to make their own subs: I have everything from THORA up to ep 10 now (ordered the rest of all Blu-Rays the other day, too); the Aone/Menclave subs -- please, don't shoot me -- were not entirely on par with THORA's work, IHMO.

P.S. What's with this?

"February 7, 2009: The Complete Macross Translation Project has begun!"

Okay, who's doing the translating? And where can I download 'em?

[Gubaba]

I really hope THORA will continue to make their own subs: I have everything from THORA up to ep 10 now (ordered the rest of all Blu-Rays the other day, too); the Aone/Menclave subs -- please, don't shoot me -- were not entirely on par with THORA's work, IHMO.

Really? They're doing their own? I thought it was mostly A/M/G with a little bit of some of the other subbers...

P.S. What's with this?

"February 7, 2009: The Complete Macross Translation Project has begun!"

Okay, who's doing the translating? And where can I download 'em?

Keep reading...there's a Blogger address there...you'll want to click that.

[rankafan]

Really? They're doing their own? I thought it was mostly A/M/G with a little bit of some of the other subbers...

I guess expressed myself somewhat inaccurately. I should have said: "THORA does its own edit." I just think their 'finish' is better than that of other fansubs: nicely matched for Blu-Ray timing, for one, less spelling-errors, better positioned Karaoke; I dunno, I just favor their end-product.

Speaking of which, where have the THORA subs gone to?

http://getfansub.com/wiki/Macross_Frontier

All THORA links as of ep 10 seem gone. Now I'm screwed.

Keep reading...there's a Blogger address there...you'll want to click that.

I'll do that. Thanks.

[Graham]

You can convert subtitled .mkv videos into hard encoded subtitled xvid .avi videos with free Handbrake software. I hope that helps.

Thanks for the tip. Download it this morning and been testing it.

Seems to be pretty easy to use and works well, although it takes a while.

My first test conversion of an MKV (Thora Mac Frontier ep 1) to AVI went well, although I forget to check the subtitle box, so no subs on my first test conversion.

The acid test will be when I try the copy I burned to DVD on my stand alone DVD players.

Graham

[rankafan]

Using torrents, it's apparently gonna cost me a ca. 2 weeks to get the THORA eps downloaded. Doesn't someone just have the THORA subs (just the subs) for eps 10-18? Or knows a subs-only torrent thereof?

Thanks!

[nhyone]

Has Thora done anything past episode 18 yet?

Had a quick search but couldn't find any more eps.

I saw ep 19 and 20 on their IRC server. Apparently they enforce a 50kB/s download rate, so if you can achieve that, it's worth a try.