History of Digisubbing

[Access]

Edit by NoSanninWa: I made the following comment which was tangental, but related to the discussion at hand here. Unfortunately... or fortunately, I got much more of a response than I counted on! Now this discussion was split off into its own thread.

Originally Posted by NoSanninWa

I admit that bugs me also. People are free, not owned, consequently they cannot be stolen. Still, it does create feelings of ill will when a ...
While it is interesting to think about, I don't have any solid answer about the subject and would be interested to hear the insights of others, as long as they can explain

I hope you mean people names, not group names.
Either way, don't take it as a specific example, just a general one.

In the very beginning (ie. 1999, 2000) you had a bunch of first-phase groups like Elite-fansubs, Animefactory, I can't even remember that many names. I don't believe any first-phase groups still exist today, not actively, maybe I'm wrong.

Then at some point (early 2001), a bunch of new groups started appearing, all at once. The second-phase groups like AnimeCo, I think Live-eviL was also in that phase. Pleanty of others, more than a few of which still exist to this day. It was a 'snowball effect' that ended late 2001.

Most of the second-phase groups were originally not made up of new people. There were made up of dissatisfied people from the first-phase groups, or others who had tried to join the first-phase groups, perhaps been included or 'used' for a short time, and then discarded.

And most commonly the criticism of the second-phase groups (by first-phase groups) was something akin to "you stole our people". But in reality those comments never had any merit. No more than if the same thing were to happen today. People come, go, and leave because they want to, not because they are forced. Things were pretty nasty back then, it's much better now. The group breakups of today are tame by comparison.

[LytHka]

@Access: Perhaps it's time to put together some information about the history of (digital) fansubs and make it public on some website, like AnimeSuki. I've had a "lecture" about fansubbing in january which was attended mostly by my fellow otaku friends, and I must say that I started doing the research on the history of fansubbing (mainly digisub groups from 1999-2002 and some info about the commonly known tape subbers) from one of your posts on AnimeSuki in the past and then extended it further. From what I gather, the first groups were:

Anime-Fansubs (summer, 2000)
Anime-Factory
Anime Haven
Elite-Fansubs
Anime-Central
Anime-Kissatsen
BakaMX (x'mas, 2000)

And Anime-Fansubs is "semi-active" or is this a different Anime-Fansubs?

[Quarkboy]

Originally Posted by LytHka

Anime-Fansubs (summer, 2000)
Anime-Factory
Anime Haven
Elite-Fansubs
Anime-Central
Anime-Kissatsen
BakaMX (x'mas, 2000)

Hmm, on a side historical note... Was the initial motivation for everyone calling themselves "Anime-(something)" because it made it easier for people to find the IRC channel name in a search?
Or were people just completely uncreative?

I guess mad props should be give to "BakaMX" if they were really the first group to have neither "Anime" nor "Fansubs" in their name...

[Tofusensei]

Originally Posted by LytHka

@Access: Perhaps it's time to put together some information about the history of (digital) fansubs and make it public on some website, like AnimeSuki. I've had a "lecture" about fansubbing in january which was attended mostly by my fellow otaku friends, and I must say that I started doing the research on the history of fansubbing (mainly digisub groups from 1999-2002 and some info about the commonly known tape subbers) from one of your posts on AnimeSuki in the past and then extended it further. From what I gather, the first groups were:

Anime-Fansubs (summer, 2000)
Anime-Factory
Anime Haven
Elite-Fansubs
Anime-Central
Anime-Kissatsen
BakaMX (x'mas, 2000)

And Anime-Fansubs is "semi-active" or is this a different Anime-Fansubs?

interactii (of DB/L-E/etc) has tossed around the idea of putting together a wiki for creating a history of the fansubbing scene and eliciting content from people. Old irc logs, etc, would be a blast to look at for old timers.

We're going to attempt to put together some sort of history of BakaMX -> L-E sometime this year, to commemorate our 5 year anniversary, and I told him that that can be the first content on his site, if we wanted to. If other people are interested in contributing they should try and contact him.

There's never been a really sufficient history of digisubbing available for others to see.

I've got some of the earlier releases on CD somewhere too... (2000ish)

-Tofu

[bayoab]

Originally Posted by LytHka

@Access: Perhaps it's time to put together some information about the history of (digital) fansubs and make it public on some website, like AnimeSuki. I've had a "lecture" about fansubbing in january which was attended mostly by my fellow otaku friends, and I must say that I started doing the research on the history of fansubbing (mainly digisub groups from 1999-2002 and some info about the commonly known tape subbers) from one of your posts on AnimeSuki in the past and then extended it further. From what I gather, the first groups were:

Anime-Fansubs (summer, 2000)
Anime-Factory
Anime Haven
Elite-Fansubs
Anime-Central
Anime-Kissatsen
BakaMX (x'mas, 2000)

And Anime-Fansubs is "semi-active" or is this a different Anime-Fansubs?

I can tell you right now that Access's history is flawed because of certain things. (If you track who subbed Love Hina, you will find there were subbers before the so called "original subbers".) This is OT though. A wiki would be nice. The problem is much of the information has been distorted since the first phase groups were either friends or enemies.

Anime-fansubs is same one that is still on efnet. They actually have their subbing entire history on their website.

The stealing staff issue exists because many people consider fansubbing like a little mini job so that if someone else comes along and goes "Oooooh dump ftp if you me instead" the same thing as leaving a company and joining a competing one. Also, groups used to be possessive over t/l's since they were like a rare natural resource. Now, the two year japanese students are becoming dollar a dozen.

[Access]

Originally Posted by LytHka

@Access: Perhaps it's time to put together some information about the history of (digital) fansubs and make it public on some website, like AnimeSuki. I've had a "lecture" about fansubbing in january which was attended

I'd be glad to send you some of the stuff I have or archived (like the a-f-a charter and such) and what I can remember, but like he says below I shouldn't be the only source. I only know what I saw. I can document how what I call the first-phase groups were trying to start wars and conflicts between the second-phase groups, etc. and about things like the "Not Elite-Fansubs" spinoff group that upset a lot of people, I can talk about what distro was like back then (you can get a taste of that if you follow the link I gave earlier about the three-tier distro system), and so on.

[LytHka]

I think I'm not the person who'd make the most out of the received material, since that lecture is done and gone, but I guess you can offer those materials to Tofusensei or interactii. Maybe they'll find it useful for the noble cause of putting together the historical records of our hobby. I'd just use the info, the logs to satisfy my own curious self (the whole subject does interest me, since I'm a 3rd phase fansubber, self-made in the wrong era of digisubbing ^^; ).

P.S.: Thanks for the ChuChu link.

[Access]

No you got it all wrong, what we have now is the best "era", compared to how things were back then. Now you got BT for distro, pleanty of shoujo or other non-shounen shows, pleanty of people out there, joint projects rather than conflicts between groups, etc.

[Kanna]

Originally Posted by Quarkboy

Hmm, on a side historical note... Was the initial motivation for everyone calling themselves "Anime-(something)" because it made it easier for people to find the IRC channel name in a search?
Or were people just completely uncreative?

Anime-Fansubs was called that because we were hoping that it'll be in the top 10 search results when people typed "anime fansubs". Of course back then there were so few groups it didn't take much effort to do that.

As for this being the best period for fansubbing, I beg to differ. With a new group popping up almost every day, it's hard to keep track of them. Quality of fansubs are also starting to go downhill, with emphasis on karaoke effects (hell, people made fansub tools especially for styling karaoke!) and speed. I enjoyed the good ol' days when groups took at least a week to polish their work instead of putting it out in 20 hours and hoping to grow their e-peen by bragging about the amount of leechers they have on BT.

[TheFluff]

Kanna is not only the loli master, he also seems to be the master of generalizing.

[Kanna]

Please, prove me wrong.

[TheFluff]

Risking rant here... I tend to get annoyed by the Four Yorkshiremen clones going around whining about how everything was so much better (last month|a year ago|three years ago|in the laserdisc era|before anime was invented).

It's a question of quantity. Refer to my posts in the "why retire from fansubbing" thread. The statement "more people == more assholes, statistically" applies to fansubbers as well as leechers. Fansubbing used to be done by a very small amount of people, and back then it was really HARD to fansub, so noone but the really dedicated people really got into it. Today it's much easier, and naturally we see some crap groups of newbies and people who only want epenis points forming. HOWEVER, the good groups have not gotten worse - quite the contrary - and there are more good groups now than there were. There has also been an amazing technological development during the last few years - everything from BT to new or improved codecs.
Your trolling about karaoke doesn't really have anything to do with the topic at hand. I know of no group (except, of course, Kuraki-Fans - but they don't really count) that really focuses on karaoke - as far as I've noticed, that's something only the leechers care a lot about. Karaoke is made because it's fun and because it might be nice to look at. The "sing along" aspect has kinda gotten lost over the years somehow.
The speed is likewise irrelevant. Fast release speeds does not mean you spend less work on a release - it's just a matter of having everyone around at the appropriate time and ready to do their stuff. I've seen releases with two edit passes, two QC passes, TS and TC done in 24 hours or less. If it's done, why NOT release it? Leaving it on the FTP dump for a week won't magically improve it.
Of course, it depends a lot on the group - I'm not saying that all fast subbers are good, or that all good subbers are fast.

In any case, if you want back to a world where less anime was subbed and enjoyed by less people at lower quality, I'm not going to try to convince you that you are wrong about wanting that. I will, however, point and laugh.

[Mentar]

I guess it's within the nature of mankind to glorify fond memories, so I'm not surprised by the recurring "the golden era has passed, things are going down etcetera" theme, but I doubt that it's really true.

Don't trust me? Dust off your CD stacks and check the releases of the "name groups" of old - something which I recently did to fill up my new RAID5-enclosure. And then open these files and watch them with an open mind. Imagine that these releases were put out today by a new group and imagine your reaction...

...I can tell you one thing, in most you'll be unpleasantly surprised. These results would be dissed into oblivion by our self-appointed "old guard" today. I can tell you that much.

Yes I know, it's an unfair comparison. Today nearly every aspect has much better tech support - timing, typesetting and especially encoding. What was a good or even great encode 3-4 years ago looks like a newbie mess today. That's the way of life. AFX signs which look like nailed down in nonlinear motion and are barely distinguishable from the background today wobbled across the screen back then. The one thing which seems fairly much the same back then and today are those little self-announcing gimmicks. Animated credits and the likes. Which isn't important to anyone except for the fansubbers themselves. And the fact that typos still happen - back then just like today.

No, I don't see any era lost. Qualitywise, mediocre releases today easily beat good releases of old (naturally). The distribution has become so easy that it's almost like programming your VCR - look into the program guide and click on what you want. Nearly every show worth mentioning gets coverage, and much more than before.

For anime fans, things have gotten better and better. And with the advent of better raws, I don't see the trend changing anytime soon.

[Access]

Yep, but in the end it all comes down to opinion. If some guy has the opinion that the old days are the best, the best times are behind us, and hates the way things are now, you'll never be able to convince him otherwise. B'cos it's just his opinion of the times. He is perfectly entitled to his opinion that today sucks, though I think he's in the minority. You have to take the good with the bad, if you only look at the bad and awful things, you can find reasons why any time period sucks.

And some of the old releases are the best, I still have to dust off Kero Kero Chime from time to time, it's a favorite of my rl friends and been real popular with all the clubs I've been in.

[StarCreator]

Originally Posted by Kanna

As for this being the best period for fansubbing, I beg to differ. With a new group popping up almost every day, it's hard to keep track of them. Quality of fansubs are also starting to go downhill, with emphasis on karaoke effects (hell, people made fansub tools especially for styling karaoke!) and speed. I enjoyed the good ol' days when groups took at least a week to polish their work instead of putting it out in 20 hours and hoping to grow their e-peen by bragging about the amount of leechers they have on BT.

Actually, back in May 2001 (so, if going by the timeline this thread has started with, HnK would be part of this second wave), one of the founding principles was that I wanted to prove that you could produce something of near-perfect quality without a significant time lag - something that can only be produced by a very small and highly skilled group of people. Certain members of the group have slowed, but I'm hoping the recent unmentionable-here releases are proving we have some life in us yet. =p

[DaFool]

I like this discussion.

I think part of the reason why it felt like the golden age then was because it was a perfect transition period for anime....anime on VHS transitioning to anime on DVD, and concurrently, fansubs on VHS transitioning to digisubs. Nowadays everyone knows the anime market is saturated...sure everyone can enjoy (except maybe mecha fans) but we all know the banquet can't last forever. So this apprehension sort of feeds into the 'good old days' mentality.

Maybe we can subdivide phases in history according to dominant networks used?

i.e.

I. EFNET / self-made IRC server / others
II. ETG / aniverse
III. mircx / rizon

[Access]

Originally Posted by StarCreator

Actually, back in May 2001 (so, if going by the timeline this thread has started with, HnK would be part of this second wave), one of the founding principles was that I wanted to prove that you could produce something of near-perfect quality without a significant time lag - something that can only be

And you guys were lucky to have Kira / Kirabot (if I remember the name correctly), which was one of the best / fastest XDCC bots of that time. So things never got 'held up' in distro, you would release something and the next day everyone had it and could talk about it. The queue was never full, I don't remember ever having to wait longer than 5-10 minutes for a download to start, and once it started it was done in 10-15 more minutes if that. Most of the new groups back then weren't so lucky to have something like that.

[bayoab]

Originally Posted by DaFool

Maybe we can subdivide phases in history according to dominant networks used?

i.e.

I. EFNET / self-made IRC server / others
II. ETG / aniverse
III. mircx / rizon

From what I remember (and have gotten from speaking from others)... It was more fractified:
1. Myriads of little groups on various networks
2. Groups concentrate on Efnet/Dalnet. Toward the end of this period, some groups began jumping to ETG and Aniverse.
3. July 11th(?) 2001, Efnet is DDos'd into oblivion and goes down for nearly a week. Most efnet groups jump to Dalnet, ETG or Aniverse
4. Dalnet goes down and then kicks off the warez groups. Everyone Flees To ETG/Aniverse. Big group boom 1 occurs on ETG/Aniverse.
5. Aniverse goes down, groups flee to mircx. Big group boom 2 occurs on Mircx.
(Somewhere around here, ETG is DDos'd and the ETG groups start trying to form bakanet which fails).
F. Mircx is ddos'd, after taking down 3 other networks, most groups flee to Rizon. Big group boom 3 occurs on Rizon.

[LytHka]

MircX stopped services because of the 3-day attack. That's what I remember.

[Access]

AnimeCo was the first group to move to ETG. One member in AnimeCo was friends with Whiz (ETG admin) and got the OK to use their network. Apparently there was some kind of controversy among different ETG admins since they did not want what they saw as a piracy group on ETG. But in the end, any fansub group that would play by the rules (no mp3s, licensed anime, etc.) was welcomed. Like Bayoab says, I remember some of the big exoduses to ETG when the other networks were failing or becoming unreliable and pretty much every group out there was making the move off those unreliable networks. It made some AnimeCo members quite nervous, having remembered the bad experiences before with members of other groups. It was even brought to Whiz's attention, but he insisted on nonfavoritism and welcoming any group that would play by the rules.

Wasn't the move to Rizon and other servers prompted by the fact that the enforcement or rules were not as restrictive as ETG? ETG for instance required that any fserv hosting mp3s or licensed / pirated be asked to remove the files, or be kicked. I remember ETG bouncing up and down a few times, but it never went down for more than 2-3 days and it always came back.

Eventually AnimeCo left ETG to create it's own network. But to this day, there's still pleanty of groups on ETG.