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by gerjomarty 538 days ago
One of the big uses of Aegisub that I remember from many years ago is anime fansubbing, which also drove the specification for the subtitle format it uses, ASS (Advanced Substation Alpha), which continues to see huge use today and is much more flexible than other formats used by DVD and Blu-Ray for example.

In the hayday of anime fansubs, there was often an arms race between different groups to see who could program the flashiest effects and karaoke subtitle styles into their releases. Even then I found them gaudy as all hell, but the craft was certainly respected!
2 comments
rossy 538 days ago
Also, for those who aren't familiar with anime fansubbing, I can't emphasize enough how optimized it was. Shows would be released online within 1-2 days of the original airing on Japanese TV, with fan-translated, high-quality, QC'd subtitles. The community had high standards, and they'd normally beat the official English-language release at accuracy and readability. Aegisub was a big part of that and it's one of my favourite FOSS programs to use.
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Arnavion 538 days ago
Indeed. I think it was Commie's release of Steins;Gate that had karaoke fx for the opening theme that literally blue-screen people's computers, because of the font they used triggering something in Windows GDI, so they had to rerelease a toned-down version.

unanimated's typesetting guide is still up, if anyone wants to see the insane amount of :effort: bored college kids used to put into subtitles: https://unanimated.github.io/ts/index.htm

BTW, ASS subtitles can be used with HTML5 videos in the browser using https://github.com/libass/JavascriptSubtitlesOctopus

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gerjomarty 538 days ago
Yeah, one of my favourite examples from Commie is the treatment they gave to the opening for Lovestory (Koimonogatari) from the Monogatari series.

The visuals of the opening itself flit and transition between old 80s style shoujo animation and a more modern style, so they take the opportunity to also dynamically change the style of the subtitles between the old black-bordered piss-yellow ones of old DVDs and the sharper style of today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLlytsgLcr4

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