HARDCODING SUBTITLES IS IMMORAL

[Anonymous No.]

It is absurdly easy to reverse-engineer hardcoded subtitles, so why exactly are we supporting ego-fueled subbers, when they are often the ones responsible for extreme data loss due to their need for internet recognition (as you can see in pic related)?

Translating subtitles to any language is doujin, therefore imposing watermarks is gay and holding information hostage in any shape or form is inherently anti-otaku. Not to say they also obstruct accessibility for the visually and hearing-impaired basement dwellers from this board, all while challenging the survivability of data itself — just remember 2021's Google Drive broken links event, or just the amount of content you tried to find throughout your life as an otaku, but that was nowhere to be seen.

It doesn't take much for anyone to simply go and extract subtitles from any hardcoded video with two simple programs: VideoSubFinder and SubtitleEdit. You use VSF to export the frames as very clean images containing only the subtitles, then you use SubtitleEdit built-in OCR function (it uses tesseract) to transform that into perfectly timed subtitles. That's it. All you'll have to do after running it is to curate the results and you are done. You can do it, and then just publish it, simply share it with your friends, memetics will naturally work out. You can also fix annoying mistakes (most English subbers are ESLs), or even release a better version by adding context subtitles or making the translation more accurate. Centralizing the information in specific subgroups or subbers leave us vulnerable to the same issues we see whenever Crunchyroll translators do the localization of basically any anime. Fansubs aren't necessarily free from homosexuals, and someone who releases their work to the public sphere through softsubs need to be actually confident of the high quality of the final product.

There was a time when hardcoding subtitles was actually the best way to share information through pirate networks, internet was not good enough to handle all that data so low-quality videos with hardcoded subtitles performed better, everything was fine until stuff started getting lost in time. By doing the process I mentioned you can:

1. Actively help information to not get lost.
2. Gain ownership and agency of the information you are consuming.
3. Use old high-quality subtitles and add them to videos of higher quality.
4. Easily retime then whenever a Blu-Ray comes out.

For anyone that thinks I'm probably just being "too autistic", or maybe that "hard subs are better than no sub at all", I can assure you are low IQ or doomed by scarcity mentality. The existence of Whisper as an example assures us that subbers will soon move on from having such a central position in non-japanese otaku communities to one resembling more that of a curator, something that you can't really set your whole internet personality around, so you can expect a few of them to start malding similarly to commission artists when AI art started to become established.

It should go without saying but a market whose entire provided value relies on any kind of intervention is not natural. Subtitles will continue to exist even if the subtitles being held hostage by subbers suddenly ended, because in a free market, if there's demand for a thing, a way to produce it will always be found, if anything, ending this will make it so new incentive models quickly be developed.

If you still disagree with me I ask you to take a few hours of your NEET life to try it out. Find someone who only releases hardcoded subtitles on their shitty low-effort spyware filled websites — way easier to find when you are part of niche otaku communities such as classic anime otaku, toku otaku or idol otaku communities. Go through whatever ad.fly-like alternative they use to steal pennies from your screentime until you get to their GDrive file (they did not learn with 2021, or they simply do no care), download whatever you want to save from them and go through the simple procedure I mentioned earlier in this post. Now you have the .srt file on your PC. Feel free to share it, make sure the person behind it knows you're doing it. Watch them become engulfed in the most basedrage possible. You will finally understand that they do not release only hardsubs simply because they are dumb enough to not even think about the consequences or the ethics of their actions, you will see that they only do that because they enjoy the community attention they get, they enjoy being part of it, they truly believe they are entitled to attention because they are not just a "random otaku" that do things whole-heartedly for their hobby.

They are driven by their egos and there is a way to simply make them stop. Hardcoded-only subbers are the niggers of otaku culture.

[Anonymous No.]

TLDR

1. All data is extremely fragile and ephemeral.
2. Doujin work should be free. Authoring a thing does not give anyone a right to extortion, and the content subbers work with is by default not theirs and often copyrighted. They cannot enforce you to be subject to their own copyright from within pirate culture.
3. Decentralization is good.
4. Some subbers are in fact as corrupt as Crunchyroll, and often of South-Asiatic Primitive Ancestry (probably ruining this thread soon after the time of my posting due to SEA time-zone).
5. Selling information is unethical (paywalled content, ad-filled websites, anything that isn't an optional donation method).

[Anonymous No.]

>>43814832
>>43814844
you make some very good points

[Anonymous No.]

hardsubbing sidesteps colorspace issues THOUGH.

[Anonymous No.]

>>43814832
>hardcoding subtitles
Does anyone actually do this? (Aside from streaming webshites ofc, but surely you aren't streaming in the year of our lord plus two thousand twenty three?)

[Anonymous No.]

>>43815651
Do TV-Nihon still do stuff? They hardsub all their stuff, although that's the least of the problems with them.

[Anonymous No.]

>>43814832
Thanks schizofriend, but luckily I am usually unaffected by all of this.

[Anonymous No.]

>>43815651
They still do, I imagine you should probably be able to live without worrying about that generally speaking, but I can assure you everyone who's into more niche otaku culture will have gone through what I mentioned. Smaller cultures seem to be a safe space for those type of parasites because they can easily get status within it, when anyone claiming their sub is copyrighted for any big anime would immediately get called out for that. I'm in particular am an Idol otaku, if any other idol otaku stops by this thread I am sure they would relate to the experience.

>>43815741
I think so, there's no incentive to stop anyways, the only way to counteract is by directly stealing their subs and redistributing it. I told a subber that they were to release the softsubs for an specific show they hardsubbed until Sunday, he promptly deleted my message to keep control of the narrative, so I believe I'll have to proceed with that soon.

>>43815822
It might be just my autism making me get irritated by it, but I just can't stand wanting to rewatch something when a blu-ray comes out and having nothing to work with, no subtitles to re-time or anything. Luckily AI solves this.

[Anonymous No.]

the only somewhat valid (probably not but remember some are autistic enough to use mpv instead of vlc) point in favour of hardsubs is that it may be hard to control visual aspects of softsubs (player fuckup, not having required fonts, poorly written subs)

[Anonymous No.]

If you really care that much about otaku culture and anime you should just learn Japanese instead of being at the mercy of random volunteers.

[Anonymous No.]

>>43814832
Hardcoding can be cool option if subbers do some extra work with it to make it cool.
I remember there was some old Digimon hardsub that had cool animated subs for name attacks.

[Anonymous No.]

>>43817840
>>43818033
This issue originates from the same reason of all the issues present in modern day web browsing. On the web, the lack of compliance to well established standard models led to most of the current websites being completely unusable with javascript disabled, and completely vulnerable and insecure with javascript enabled. It's not something you can opt-in. For most websites nowadays you need to deal with poorly written code and spyware on a daily basis.

Operating with softsubs as the standard model would make it so that people have the need to interact with hardsubs only through their desire to consume something specifically curated and redesigned based on the quality of the derivative work, you transform hardsubs in actual art and properly doujin work. By releasing softsubs you let the information free to be remodeled and redesigned as desired without risking the original content from being lost. Hardsubs do have the value of enhancing the experience as anon noticed and I couldn't agree more, it's overall just a compliance issue for me.

>>43817917
I'm just driven by a very methodological system of highly transparent virtue and ethics, and I wholeheartedly care about keeping information from being lost at all costs. I agree with learning japanese as being the easiest way to remove yourself from the consequences of this type of actions, but all I want is a cohesive community standard where everyone understands that once a work is released into the public domain, it is beyond the creator's control. They can do nothing to stop anyone from sharing it or playing, even if they wanted to. And the consumer has every right to enjoy the game in any way they please. They have no obligation to reward the creator for making it, for any reason. Donation should be always a choice and doujin should always originate from non-grifty intentions and a wholehearted commitment to the media itself. I just want grifters to be recognized as such. Embrace being virtuous, anon.

[Anonymous No.]

>>43818996
>but all I want is a cohesive community standard where everyone understands that once a work is released into the public domain, it is beyond the creator's control
This is a complete pipe-dream considering the fragmentation of the otaku scene, especially the western one.

Look, I think you mean well and everything and you make some legitimate points, but this is just not that big of a deal in most people's minds, especially the more casual audience that needs translations. Also you should lay off the stims man, all these walls of texts just make you look like an obsessed schizo, which seems to be a common thing among the free software Linux bros and is not helping their cause at all.

[Anonymous No.]

>>43817840
>ome are autistic enough to use mpv instead of vlc
VLC is bloatware, mpv has all the features you need and it's faster and more lightweight.

[Anonymous No.]

>>43814832
Just learn Japanese and never use subs again.

[Anonymous No.]

>>43818033
You can do animations and other effects with softsubs too.

[Anonymous No.]

I've always seen hardsubs as an alternative in case your player doesn't support softsubs and/or your playing device is too weak to handle softsubs (especially the crazier / animated ones if the sub-group puts in the extra effort);
but I also assumed it hasn't been a problem for over a decade, at least I haven't seen hardsubs for anything that came out in the past like, ~10 years. (though the sites I browse only really provide the [superior] softsubs anyways, unless there's none available at all).

Is hardsubbing even still "a thing"? I could only see it feasible to want to go for that if you watch your chinese cartoons on weaker smartphones (in which case you should die).

[Anonymous No.]

>>43819214
I understand your point, I just get a very strong feeling of frustration when I see grifters. I started thinking about this when I had to deal with subbers getting mad at Whisper as I mentioned before, that was when it clicked that some of them actually do this for community status and not solely because they are otaku and want to give something back to the community.

>>43819817
Definitely not a thing in anime, but it's more common than you'd imagine in smaller communities. The pic used in the OP is from a fansub group that translates Nogizaka46 content, the pic in this post is from a japanese TV fansub group. These people are trying to establish themselves as key figures in these communities when in reality otaku culture is about abandoning ego and authorship and working through a framework that only looks at the media. These people are attention parasites and absolute grifters.

[Anonymous No.]

>>43819891
But these people are doing tons of work basically for free and you're shitting on them as if they are the worst humans on the planet because they don't subscribe to your very specific lofty ideals? I think people who need subs should just stop whining or learn Japanese. This kind of shit makes me never want to translate shit outside of random manga pages on 4chan every now and then, it's a completely thankless job.

[Anonymous No.]

>>43819941
No one owes you anything. Recognition should be gained through being committed to high quality work. Donations should be optional and not pure extortion by whatever means. If you wouldn't translate anything for free I'd rather have you not do it at all, because as I've said there's literally no scarcity. Everyone recognizes good work and there are many subbers who are doing a great job, this should be enough incentive for anyone that does this thing wholeheartedly. If your sole focus is on gaining something in return you should try being a commission translator, but I don't think that will make you much money either.

In addition, non-japanese otaku culture is mostly entangled with pirate culture, if your IQ is not lower than the one of a Senegalese female you should be able to understand that it is extremely unethical to copyright something that you stole at first, and if you do so you shouldn't complain that people might go through the effort of re-releasing your hardsubs ethically. Copyright claims work on a trust-based chain, once that chain is broken it is inherently hypocritical to claim it back.

[Anonymous No.]

And on me being "lofty", yeah. I was born in a white family so I'm simply built without nigger DNA and I can think rationally. No thing I said so far was wrong, maybe a worthless argument getting into to some people, but I presented no wrong assumptions. People came in defense of hardcoded subtitles for design reasons, that's fair, I agreed with what they said because it was true and changed my view accordingly. You seem to have been avoiding all of my points by repeatedly screeching "learn japanese", to then eventually reveal yourself as spiritually aligned with the grifters I'm mentioning. It's kinda fitting, isn't it?

[Anonymous No.]

>>43820047
>>43820112
>No one owes you anything.
You're the one demanding people to work for free and in the exact way you want to comply with your autistic ideology. And no, I'm not interested in translating, even for commissions, ungrateful EOP schizos like you can eat shit. Good luck with your gay little mission though, I'm sure you're going to make great progress. Also,
>muh neegars
Grow up retard, sounds like you're just a tourist and should go back to /v/ or /a/.

[Anonymous No.]

>>43820156
You're behaving like a woman while defending copyright on 4chan and I am the tourist. My "autistic ideology" is just integrity, how can you possibly fail to understand that?

It's so good to be virtuous and it comes naturally if you just become adept to thinking about your actions instead of living like an NPC, you should try sometime.

[Anonymous No.]

>>43818033
>>43819648
You can do extremely autistic shit with just ASS subtitles. The truly skilled mofos draw entire canvases of shit for on-screen titling/translation and work it into the artwork. https://streamable.com/e4ze3g
weak example that doesn't even scratch the surface. obviously had to burn them in to link them easily
Pic-un-rel PTE OP subtitles only exist because "Pop Team Epic - 01 [ASS h264-8bit Hi444@crf51 1080p][420fps][HARDCODED][SOFTSUBBED][01B16A55]" made me lose my shit. It's 42.8 GiB. It is a completely black video. The entire episode has been converted to ASS subtitles. You can render 1 or 2 frames if you're lucky before your computer shits its pants.

>>43814832
what garbage are you downloading that has hardsubs? genuine question. I haven't come across something that only existed hardsubbed outside of chink hardsubs on JAV and anime I downloaded 10+ years ago. also consider that whatever you're downloading might've been typeset by someone who can't into ASS - if the actual typesetting/titling was done well. you can drag/drop text and graphics in any NLE. doing complicated shit with ASS requires you to do it by hand, and starts to look like writing the most cursed code ever.

the real problem is motherfuckers still using 10-bit x264 in current year. or doing something even dumber like upscaling chroma as part of their "filtering" to encode directly in shit that fucking nothing can or will ever be able to decode in hardware like 4:4:4 12-bit x265
>GEE, LET ME SACRIFICE DECODABILITY INSTEAD OF JUST LETTING THE USER SET FUCKING PLAYBACK FILTERS UP OR USE madVR IF THEY'RE AN MPC-HC-let!

[Anonymous No.]

>>43820196
You are mentally ill

[Anonymous No.]

>>43820268
This is epic.

>what garbage are you downloading that has hardsubs?
Mentioned it in >>43819891 , I recognize it's not common overall, but seems to be an annoyingly common thing in smaller otaku communities.

>" consider that whatever you're downloading might've been typeset by someone who can't into ASS"
My problem is not exactly regarding quality or not, and also I don't think anyone from the cases I'm referring to makes any effort in the design of their subs, and actually are actively denying people from refining it and making something cooler than they were capable of by holding it hostage. Setting subtitles free would only enhance the creative possibilities if anyone ever intends in doing so. I'd personally rather just watch something simpler and that fits a general standard that focuses on compatibility, but I think those high-effort subs are epic and I'm glad there are people out there doing this solely for love, but these grifter subbers are definitely not. And yes, I agree with decodability being important.


>>43820355
Yes

[Anonymous No.]

>>43818996
Nothing tickles me like going on the internet and seeing parroted opinions that were obsoleted by reality decades ago.

[Anonymous No.]

No one cares what you want, useless parasite

[Anonymous No.]

>>43821380
Why are you still tweaking while adding nothing to the thread? If you don't like my points and can't refute them you should let this thread fade away. The fact that you keep returning to make screeching sounds just shows I somehow struck a nerve with just words. Don't go off-topic, just go ahead and tell me why I am wrong.

[Anonymous No.]

hardsubs only happen nowadays because it's usually the person translating who is also timing it too and they might be tech-illiterate when it comes to that area
of course if hardsubs bother anonymous that much he could always lend a hand, right? :)

[Anonymous No.]

>>43820538
>This is epic.
The OP? No it's not, b-b-b-aka. Thank you.
The 42 GB episode-as-subtitles? Epic is not strong enough a word. Seriously, read his description on nyaa, dude had to change how the MKV muxer fucking worked just to have a file at all. It's also somehow the only comment section on the entire site worth reading, kek.
>Nogizaka46
Oh, idoru stuff. Yeah, I imagine that'd be a rather tiny English speaking audience. The twats burning the subtitles in probably realize said audience has to take what they can get. If the source material is available elsewhere, OCR that shit out and make your own idoru subs like you said, fuck em. Ganbatte angryman.
>but I think those high-effort subs are epic and I'm glad there are people out there doing this solely for love
Oh dang you really did mean the OP. Epic would've been if I'd have been able to figure out an obnoxious effect for "muishiki bias" - it's the only line that displays normally.
(Anime) Fansubbing died when anime became more mainstream in the English speaking world. Can't compete with crunchyroll and Netflix having day 0 subtitles, and a non-zero amount of subbers probably got a kick out of being "FPBP". Best you can hope for is someone making corrections to those same scripts, and if you're lucky, doing the crazy shit to make on-screen text to look like it was part of the video all along...that video was a love letter to all the great fansubs I've seen over the years.

[Anonymous No.]

>>43821874
I'd be more than happy too, actually, I will be doing that without them even having to ask me to whenever I feel like it as I don't plan on consuming any hardsubs in the near future. We'll see how many are just tech-illiterates who have no idea how to release softsubs but who of course would if they knew how, and how many are blatant scammers and will start coming after me for defying their copyright over the doujin they made with content they stole. If the proportion ends up as anything greater than 10% for case A to 90% of case B I'll personally come back and apologize for assuming a majority those people had ill intentions. I highly doubt I will be wrong about them as I'm generally right about people, but rest assured that I'll return with the outcomes of this small scale experiment in the future.

[Anonymous No.]

>>43817917
to get to the point of being fluent enough to understand nuance and meanings would take a decade or more and probably need to live in Japan too

[Anonymous No.]

>>43822973
you don't have to be native level. Within 2-3 years you'll already be ahead of 90% of people doing subs, who as the OP mentions, are often ESLs as well as JSLs

[Anonymous No.]

>>43823215
maybe true compared to subs, but still not even close to understanding nuance and sublety, not to mention references

[Anonymous No.]

>>43814832
I have a similar strain of autism as you OP. I've spent many hours shopping watermarks from manga raws before reuploading the anonymously. But I've also done a tiny bit of fansubbing (I did one movie out of love and never again), so I have to echo the sentiments in >>43820156. Subbing is thankless and (if you care about your work) extremely time consuming. To do it on a regular basis you'd either have to feed off the attention or be seriously mentally ill. I don't think there are enough people in the latter category to cover all Japanese media

As someone who enjoys Sakamichi as well I can tell you the girls are infinitely more charming in their own words, rather than through the filter of some E+JSL. You'd be better off channeling this autism into learning the language so you can forget about subs altogether. The time you spend watching this stuff can double as study, and sooner than you think you'll be ahead of where you were with subs (this is a low bar)

[Anonymous No.]

>>43814832
I generally agree, however
>holding information hostage in any shape or form is inherently anti-otaku
By this line of reasoning, attempting to keep normalplebs out of the hobby is anti-otaku, which is obviously self-defeating.