Qop123's Japanese Subtitles Project
Contents
Notice
The Qop123's Japanese Subtitles Project has been shut down and gone. This page is the reminiscence of the past activity.
Japanese Subtitles Project
This page was created to supply information about the status of the Japanese subtitles project at D-Addicts.
How to Handle Japanese Subtitles
These Japanese subs don't work with the raw videos at DA as they are, they need to be edited, and also uploaded to the subtitle section of DA[1], so that people can download and utilize them.
And here is a general instruction.
General Instruction
This Japanese subtitles work is divided into 6 parts, Margin Cut, CM Cut, Timing Adjustment, Discrepancy Check, Gaiji Check, Publishing.
Margin Cut
These Japanese subs have about 30 seconds of margin at the beginning, which needs to be cut out, that is, all the lines need to be made earlier for about 30 seconds. This margin is controlled to be about 30 seconds with a clock adjustment program as nearly as possible. But this margin wouldn't become exactly 30 seconds, and so we need to make a human adjustment later.
CM Cut
As these Japanese subs are extracted from the original broadcast data that has interventions of CMs during the drama, if they are played as they are, they wouldn't match with the raw videos uploaded at DA, as the raw videos at DA are edited to be without interventions of CMs. And so, in a nutshell, these Japanese subs also need to be edited to be without the times of the interventions of CMs.
In Japan, CMs are generally made on 15 seconds units, and so one intervention of CMs becomes multiples of 15. 90 seconds and 120 seconds ones are most frequent, but there are other lengths as well. The ones I have encountered are, about in the order of frequency, 90, 120, 135, 60, 150, 30 seconds ones.
Everytime an intervention of CMs happens, make all the lines after that intervention earlier for the amount of that intervention. And by repeating this process, we can get the synched subs. In the subtitle editing program called Aegisub, there is a good command for this purpose, "Shift Times with Selection Onward", which I have used to this day. Other subtitle editing programs also have similar functions.
As there is a hiatus in the timings of the lines when there is an intervention of CMs, in most cases, just by looking at the script, you can know the length of the intervention.
NHK dramas don't have CMs during the drama, as it is a national public broadcast.
Timing Adjustment
Here we need to make minor timing adjustments. This part is where our skills are tried. A small timing shift makes a great difference at viewing pleasure.
In my experience of synching over a hundred of these Japanese subs, they need to be synched at least with +-0.25 seconds of accuracy for a better result, though I have made +-0.1 seconds adjustments if necessary.
Generally speaking, this synching has tolerance for the - direction, that is, we can set the timings too early than too late.
What is annoying is subs appearing too late or subs disappearing too early. (Subs appearing too early or subs disappearing too late are not so annoying.)
In order to to be protected against subs appearing too late, my recommendation is to shift times slightly overly to the - direction (generally about 0.25-0.50 seconds, but if necessary about 1-2 seconds). That way, even if the timings for some lines are a little late, subs won't appear too late, which is comfortable in many cases. In order to be protected against subs disappearing too early, my recommendation is to do nothing particular, for with these Japanese subs, in most cases, the lines are not timed as to disappear as soon as the pronunciation ends, but remain longer on the display, and that is the reason why we can set the timings a little too earlier without causing any problem.
But again, way too earlier subs are annoying too, and so this is just a principle and guideline, and not a golden rule. Human eyes are the most sure way to check the subs.
Discrepancy Check
Sometimes there are sponsor credits. In most cases, encoders leave these sponsor credits untouched, and so it doesn't cause any problem. But when encoders decide to cut out these sponsor credits, we need to adjust that amount as well.
And there can be other discrepancies depending on the encoder's job.
Gaiji Check
Gaiji means "Outside Character", and it means those characters that couldn't be processed by "Caption2Ass_mod1".
Gaijis are marked as something like [外字:FCDB30A244FB6AAD5255EE2D32FDF7FC], and when we find these Gaijis, we need to manually replace them (or semi-manually replace them with search and replace command).
These Gaijis don't happen so frequently, and the chances are about 1 in 50 files, or 1 in 100 files.
Publishing
I think it is better to synch these Japanese subs at least to the 704x396 Xvid version, as they seem popular and easy to handle. But if you want to synch to the 1280x720 x264 version, that would also be fine and no problem.
I also think it is better to put ".jp" at the end of the naming like "Real Clothes ep01 (1280x720 XviD).jp.srt", because people who are downloading these Japanese subs might download English subs as well, and we don't want to be invasive.
For consistency, please post the following in your op:
"The raw source Japanese subs can be found here http://jpsubbers.positivehosting.com/Japanese-Subtitles/
The tutorial of synching the raw source Japanese subs to encoded videos can be found here: http://fansub.d-addicts.com/Qop123's_Japanese_Subtitles_Project"
Workflow
1, Shift all the lines for 30 seconds.
2, Look for a hiatus of the timings of the lines, such as
- Line 152 0:08:39.64 - 0:08:42.64
- Line 153 0:08:42.64 - 0:08:52.64
- Line 154 0:11:02.68 - 0:11:04.68
- Line 155 0:11:04.68 - 0:11:06.69
and this one has a hiatus of a little over 120 seconds, and so I take this intervention of CMs to be 120 seconds, and so I shift earlier all the lines from the line 154 onward for 120 seconds.
3, Repeat this process as necessary. Generally, we need to shift times for 3 or 4 times per an episode.
4, Make minor timing adjustments to make the viewing more pleasurable.
5, Check if there is no discrepancy.
6, Check if there is no Gaiji.
7, Upload the finished sub to DA.
Done!
