This post was written by Dark_Sage. He is Dark_Sage.
Seraph of the end my pain already. Fuck this show.
Visuals
Encode
DerpDesuYo has a 1536×864 release in addition to a release in the fansub standard resolution of 1280×720.
As this 864p is bigger than 720p, you can infer it’s better. HorribleSubs has a 1920×1080 release though, so as always, fansubs lose. I’d do a side-by-side, but encodes have only ever mattered to illiterates, and they ain’t exactly Crymore’s target audience.
Also because it’s a fucking bitch to use that weird-ass resolution for screen comparisons, so I’m basically pretending DDY’s 720p release is the only one they bothered with.
Typesetting
Skipping the episode title sign cuz it’ll just be a repeat of the preview title sign.
Having only a couple signs per episode is pretty standard for Owari. So while DDY wins by default, I wouldn’t bother weighing this heavily in your decision, if at all.
Karaoke
OP
DerpDesuYo
Vivid
Verdict: Vivid’s is shit as far as kara goes. Like, if I wanna sing along, I shouldn’t have to be constantly darting my eyes around the fucking screen to find the lyrics. Since this is straight-up kara maker masturbation, it can be nice if you’re just into watching. Can’t say that’s my bag, though.
DerpDesuYo was pretty good for the first half before they got caught in the same trap and made the script nigh-unreadable.
Look, guys, you aren’t the show. Stick to improving your presentation of the anime for your ever-dwindling viewers — if you wanted to be popular you should’ve made a fucking fansub review site.
ED
DerpDesuYo
Vivid
Verdict: Yes, DDY, there are shadows in the ED. That doesn’t mean you need to force cataracts on everyone.
Vivid… what the shit is up with your font? I’d like to attribute the eyecancer to laziness, but I’m sure you actually put some thought into this. Fucking wow.
Neither group scores any points for the karaoke section. Christballs.
Dialogue
DerpDesuYo – Silo’d
Didn’t go through looking for mistakes in particular, cuz a comparison is more about dialogue differences than how a release functions standalone, but I’m not gonna ignore issues I stumble across.
For a release with four QCs, you’d expect a bit better than punctuation errors and repetitive dialogue.
Vivid – Silo’d
Subs as good as the show. Well matched, Vivid.
I don’t consider these an issue, but some of you ain’t fucking keen on swearing or memes in your subtitles. In which case, Vivid won’t be your group of choice. What else would you expect from a Commie offshoot, though?
Vivid goes for the puns/wordplay when they can, which is something I appreciate in my subs. As you’ll see later though, they actually removed some of the most entertaining dialogue from the script, which… Yeah, I can’t even either.
Holy Glory
I have no idea how both groups found their way from Funi’s line to this mumbly meaninglessness, but I wish they broke their necks on the path to failure.
And yeah, DDY claims this is purely an original translation that doesn’t reference Funi’s, but that’s bullshit. The number of times DDY and Vivid “break” with each other in terms of translation is too few for their base scripts to have been significantly different.
Okay, I was wrong about this — saw DDY’s base script. The translations are absurdly similar compared to what I’m used to from different groups, but that’s likely because the dialogue is about as complicated as a connect-the-dots puzzle with two dots.
Lol Funi
As long as you’re not saying Funi got it right, this one’s somewhat arguable. “John” is clearly audible, but since no one refers to the Four Horsemen (even though they’re just mobs in Owari) as “Horsemen of John”, Vivid’s works better for me.
Shortsighted is exactly what he’s being. Thank me-sama at least one of these releases has an editor with a vocabulary that surpasses a third-grader’s.
Phrasing
Concise doesn’t always translate to better. For example, you don’t want to have a short English line for lengthy Japanese dialogue, because the mismatch will draw viewers out of the experience, and you can lose details with compact phrasing.
As this comparison shows, the longer a line goes on, the more awkward it can get.
DerpDesuYo sometimes straddles this line (why the fuck would they drop “child” from here?), but ultimately they get to the point much quicker than the other options.
Tripping Over the Point
Unlike with DanMachi, this isn’t exactly a cut-and-dry recommendation, but I gotta recommend DDY over Vivid here.
The insult used here has to work with both a description of a telephone pole and Captain Red. Further, the insult has to fit the scenario MC-kun presented. While DDY’s “unpleasant” is a fairly bland adjective, it’s the only one that actually fits (“I ran into an ugly telephone pole” makes little sense).
Vivid missed the point entirely whereas DDY only tripped back into the bed it shit. Come on, guys. I can’t believe Funi’s Engrish scarred you so badly that you can’t look at it straight anymore.
Vivid sure is prosey. Too bad that doesn’t translate into quality.
tl;dr:
DerpDesuYo > Vivid >>>> Funimation
Funimation is an unacceptable choice for this show, but both Vivid and DerpDesuYo should meet most people’s requirements for quality.
As a general recommendation, I’d suggest DDY over Vivid, but you’ve presumably read the review, so draw whatever conclusion you want. Like I said, it ain’t as cut-and-dry as DanMachi. …which is a show you should definitely watch over this cancer.
>http://www.crymore.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/This-an-extremely-unsubtle-dig-at-Xythar.jpg
Heyo. I’m the editor for Owari on DDY. It’s my first editing gig, so I appreciate the feedback.
Anyway, regarding the bit about the original TL, to my knowledge our TL doesn’t reference Funi at all. I will admit we have occasionally looked at them during the edit, but that didn’t happen for this ep. I can only chalk your observations up to coincidence.
or his alt nick is Elyas
( ¬‿¬)
Been talking with begna. You’re right, the review has been updated accordingly.
>Progenitalia-640×360.jpg
Thanks D_S. Xythar’s twitter is going to be a source of entertainment for days after this.
I wonder who I should trust, all of nyaa staff and the entire fanaub scene or a guy who doesn’t even know Japanese?
Yeah I’ll stick with the A+
Ayy kek, most editors don’t know japanese either, by default all releases suck.
And that’s why they shouldn’t be the ones judging releases.
Look, if I wanted to know what these guys are saying I’d learn japanese, I only come here for the memes.
because the process for granting A+ is always super transparent and unbias
Except it is transparent and unbias.
Please share your conspiracy theories with us then, or do we have to wait for Kristen?
There’s nothing transparent about closed-door decisions made by a bunch of people whose entire self worth is measured by their status in the fansub scene as they grade their friends whose self worth is similarly decided.
Tell me more about this fanaub scene. They sound like a bunch of knobs.
Hurting my feels here man. ;_;
Vivid is better, so watch Vivid :D
okay
I wonder who is behind this post.
Actually, both releases passed the translation review by nyaa. It was only up to herkz to grade the editing because of that, and he preferred Vivid.
http://ask.fm/herkzz/answer/126488378467
Oh this is great. Anonymous, you’re putting stock in Herkz’s opinion on English? Dude’s the whole reason the term “white trash” was coined.
I needed the laugh. Thanks, man. <3
The TL. But Vivid’s mainfont, encode and typeset is better (imo)
How is Vivid’s typesetting better when they only typeset the episode titles?
Because their ts for that was much better. DDY only used one font when there were clearly two.
I mean, I liked Vivid’s title better. But there was only one fucking sign in the episode they had to actually typeset and they couldn’t even manage that.
Has it really gotten to the point where y’all would rather have slightly prettier titles than actual typesets in the show?
I was just explaining why that guy said vivid were better.
I also preferred DDY over Vivid since they ts’d more.
http://www.crymore.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Tarpsetting.jpg
I don’t really care about the book name. And yes, the same Anonymous said, the episode title ts was better. Or are there more than the book ts in that episode?
Just the two episode titles and the book. Whatever works for you, though. I don’t have a horse in this race.
Even if he didn’t pick anyone, I’m pretty sure Vivid would’ve still won solely because their encodes are substantially better.
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/120848/picture:2
http://diff.pics/fz64RowOJPLg/1
Of course they would.
DDY don’t even see issues with their encode. It’s comical.
You’re right. Vivid’s encoder is so much better. I bet he could even make just MBS alone look just as go— No! Better than the funi video!
Trying with inferior sources is folly enough as it is. At least Vivid’s encoder understood that.
Just because your encoder refuses to do it like Helltilt did, doesn’t make it acceptable when it won’t measure up. That’s just looking for a bad excuse to be lazy.
Again, I must concede to your wisdom. Those lazy encoders never even told us they could use funi video before! How dare they!? I’m insulted just thinking about the number of releases I’ve watched with TV sources when they were hiding this untapped quality-mine right under our noses! Join me Fyurie. We must go mock them relentlessly before burning them all at the stake! We need just one encoder, our lord and savior, Helltilt. Amen.
You should really go speak to Saxa, man. They’d love to buy shares in the salt mines you’re currently playing host to. (You may need to google that one, it’s a British thing)
Stay mad, begna.
The real story here is that it’s 2015 and people are still naming themselves shit like Helltilt.
Dark_Sage is a handle people typically choose when they’re 14 and looking at their own wrists a lot.
rekt
I don’t know what does it means but, okay. We are stuck with our internet names for the rest of our lives. And by that, I agree Dark_Sage sounds cool if I was 10 years younger.
It is? More like something you’d get from an MMORPG. Can’t tell if sarcasm or not, or just plain out trying to insult :>
Given D_S and fnord’s history, I believe I can safely say that insulting was his intention.
Yeah, I thought as much.
Well, I mean it is a handle I chose at 14, for… Wait, I haven’t told this story before?
ww, I hate to make this thread about me, but let me write something up and put it at the bottom of the comments section so we have more room.
Helltilt sucks my balls, he is synonym of stalling and he believes he is god of encoding. Maybe his encode is decent but if u check translation and adaptation, u’ll prefer kill yourself.
@Ar learn to English, mate.
Why don’t you make comparisons upscaling vivid to 864p instead?
Isn’t whole point of the 864p thing is not downscaling the shit out?
The Vivid screenshots in the second comparison link (diff.pics) are upscaled to 864p, and unsurprisingly DDY’s snake oil doesn’t look any sharper.
You know, it’s funny to see people coming up with this stuff when for every single show they just don’t give a fuck about encoding :>
But that’s okay. It just means a lot more people care about my work than I thought.
I’d say it’s more that you stuck out so much for your autistic decisions, none of which actually paid off.
You’re just this season’s Hatsuyuki F/SN (Spoilers: that also looked like shit). Don’t let it go to your head. ;)
You must live a sad life, Fyurie.
What makes you say that? I’m having a pretty good time, personally.
Sorry for having standards. I know you guys lack those. My apologies.
I can’t imagine any other reason you’d have turned out the way you are.
I see.
Sorry for expecting anything of others. :^)
As if this had anything to do with subtitles. :)
Well, it did, but DDY is chronically bad so I might as well label the group’s work as a whole instead of limiting it to the one project.
Once you learn that your projects not heavily based on CR usually fail, you’ll make some strides. Take from that what you will.
We talked about this so I don’t really get what part you don’t understand. But hey, I guess I’ll take this chance to explain myself again.
This is a list of options I thought of when we decided to pick Owari:
1: Just wait for BS11. Unfortunately this would mean wait 2 days after first airings, so it was discarded right away;
2: Using MX since it’s the first. LOL.
3: Using MBS since it’s out just a few hours after MX. Now this sounds reasonable, so that’s what we decided.
Extra: Since I was hyped for the show I offered myself to encode a higher resolution version using a better source (read: BS11). My suggestion was accepted.
tl;dr if there were no v1 there would only be v0. So I don’t really understand what you mean with my decision paying off or not. It’s literally just an option more, nothing more, nothing less.
If seeing a “1536×864” in the filename bothers you so much, I’m sorry, I’ll keep that in mind for future decisions.
You could have done what vivid did and used funi.
But that would require actual effort
But isn’t funi hardsubbed?
You can mask the hardsubs by taking the TV source and slapping it on top of the parts that have subs on them. It takes some extra work, but if your objective is to have the best encode possible, work isn’t the problem.
It’s usually only worth it when the TV source is so shit Funi is actually a marked improvement and worth doing a little cleanup work on. As an example, going with Funi would have been a solution to the problem with Rolling Girls, where even BS11 was awful in high motion scenes.
Oh, that explains why compression artifacts seem to “jump around” and details appear and disappear so often.
I thought it was the usual MPEG2 keyframe garbage, but switching sources does explain the color differentials in some scenes.
@Anonymous: We could have. In hindsight it was probably the best choice, I guess. It’s my bad I didn’t think of comparing that to BS11. But hey, nyaa rules don’t say anything about releasing stuff > 720p for encodes based on HS. Or if you consider them “web source video” there’s actually a rule for that.
In any case, it does require a bit of effort but less than you probably think.
@Anon: It is, but there are ways to work around that.
As of late 2013/early 2014, BS11 does the worst with preserving details
( http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison.php?id=121151 http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison.php?id=114618 ), so going with just MBS instead would’ve been the better choice.
And of course, the ideal solution would’ve been to go with a mix of MBS/Funi.
Oh the hilarity of editing being graded by someone who’s never truly edited a script in his life.
It’s all a herkz ;)
Well, if you don’t trust D_S, you can compare the images yourself. If you have a different opinion at the end, fine. But if you’re going to go with the blue just because it’s blue, why bother even looking at a comparison?
I hope that someday releases will be judged not by the color of their nyaa entry but by the content of their subs.
Hi, DDY’s dirty ESL kfx monkey here.
I forgot to mark my layers in the ED, so libass helpfully highlights my mistake by randomly shifting that blurred line thing from behind the subs to in front of them. Problem is, I don’t use libass because it’s not the generally recommended renderer, so I never knew.
Now, on the issue of the shadow effect not being reversed on the second half: it totally is, it’s just quicker and only does it on the lines where it makes sense, so you must have missed it. I can see it even on the webm you have up right now. I should probably adjust the individual times it takes for the shadows for each line to recede.
Thanks for your input Sir D_S-chama-dono-hakase!
I don’t think that’s a libass problem either; the blurred line thing never got shifted to the front at all when I played this in mpv.
And for what it’s worth, I’ve been able to hardsub the OP perfectly fine with ffmpeg+libass: http://a.pomf.se/abjfez.webm (from episode 3)
Yeah, just uploaded a better webm encode. Should display now.
no sound
…son of a bitch.
Edit: Okay, fixed. For reals. Actually watched the fucking thing this time.
Vivid > DDY. I like Vivid’s dialogue more. The Better encode also makes Vivid’s superior.
But you’re from the cartel!
Is he? I dunno, is Chyuu Cartel-aligned?
Everyone’s in the cartel. Even my brand-new-only-done-one-show group is apparently cartel-aligned.
Hell, we’re not even done with one show, we’re a third of the way through it (roughly).
Someone close the door, everyone’s getting in now. :<
By the way Fyurie, why the fuck is your new group called Good Job! Media? It sounds like a shitty Chinese licensing company. No offense.
Felt like it. No real reason.
Just as bullshit as Kaylith was. It was a made up word, after all.
Guess it’s tradition, naming all of my shit after whatever nonsense I can come up with.
Even my name is a bullshit bastardisation of the word Fury.
Hope that explains it. :P
Fair enough. I always did like the sound of “Kaylith” though.
Lucky break. w
I’m not even in a group ( ¬‿¬)
I like trains.
Another Crymore #controversy. You guys, can’t we just get along?
yeah man i’m #triggered
I love my station.
Why there are so many Vivid fanboys here?
Only a little bit comparison about the encode and people here are panicking. LOL!!! (Like end of the world)
Please go home, you are all drunk!
#ImtoolazytopressthespacebuttonbtwGayweatheristhebestrunnerofalltimeandGayweatherhuggedMannymoretimesthanmygirlfriendhashuggedmeinmywholelife(Error404GFNotFound)
Don’t worry, you’re in a hugbox now. <3
xDev a sh*t
because regardless of what d_s says, a bad encode is really annoying
Saying “A is better than B” is different than saying “A is bad”.
If you judge it by the hand-picked comparison screenshots it seems worse than it actually is, but even then it’s nowhere near the “Oh-my-god-this-is-so-bad-it’s-unwatchable” level.
If you find it so, then you should probably avoid the major part of the fansub releases.
>vanity screenshot
Proper tenses are for the lowest class of fansubbers.
All right, story time.
@fnord, http://www.crymore.net/2015/05/02/subtitle-comparison-derpdesuyo-vs-funimation-vs-vivid-owari-no-seraph-episode-04/#comment-273228
>Dark_Sage is a handle people typically choose when they’re 14 and looking at their own wrists a lot.
Probably because it’s a name I came up with when I was around 14. Though of course, I wasn’t suicidal, cuz unlike some people I’m replying to in this comment, I wouldn’t fail at it.
Story goes back 30 years to when I was still normalfagging it up. My little brother was too young to create an account on the official website for “Kirby Right Back At Ya”, so he asked me to help. Since we’d just watched an episode of Yu-Gi-Oh together (at the time I didn’t even like it or anime; was just being brotherly) I was like “Hey, let’s use the name of that card that just showed up cuz it sounds good enough.” And since the site didn’t allow spaces in a username, I went with the underscore to tie “Dark” and “Sage” together. Bam, Dark_Sage.
Well, he ended up abandoning the account, and a year later when I was trying to register for a forum, I used the name as a throwaway. Then I kept using it on sites, and before I realized it the name had started to stick. Since I haven’t ever known shame, I just kept with it, cuz why the fuck not?
I’d ask what your excuse is for that shit username, but I honestly don’t care. You’ve got your own blog; maybe you could entertain your reader with the reasoning there.
More importantly…
>little brother
D_S such a loving onii-chan. Awww…
Also he’s apparently 44 years old.
I didn’t get this wise over night~
Please funnymation is the winner.
>Best typesett
>best grammar
>best encode
>best sub ever
Figures they’d copy the one weird translation from the manga:
http://i.want.tf/to/that/ypTRM6bh.jpg
But… blue on Nyaa… Vivid MUST be better.
In the meme cartel we trust.
FUCKING FUNIMATION STRIKE AGAIN
this is from episode 8 of seraph (yes i need my shitty vampire anime fix really quickly)
http://imgur.com/vBeA3Ho
happens at 11:29 + now funi’s intro is 1 minute long LOL
your thoughts, dark?
>yes i need my shitty vampire anime fix really quickly
I don’t even understand this. Fansubs may be slower than the official release, but you’re not technically waiting any longer BETWEEN releases if you go with a fansub. Episodes are one week a part, and, at least with this show, both fansub groups have been releasing it in a consistent manner (roughly one week after their last episode). So what quick fix do you need? You’re still waiting the same amount of time between episodes and you’re not watching something as terrible as Funi’s release.