My thoughts and comparisons of groups subbing the shows I'm watching this season. I figured it would be easier to stick all of this together in one post rather than inserting bits here and there into the week in anime posts. The tag listed next to each title is my current group of choice for that anime.
You can also find screen shot comparisons for a lot of current anime on ji-hi.net.
Latest Updates: Eden of the East, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya S2, Pandora Hearts, Tears to Tiara
07-Ghost [SHS-YuS]
[Hatsuyuki]: They left the video at 29.97fps and didn't decimate it. As such, there's tons of duplicate frames that make a lot of the panning really jerky. It also makes the encoding a lot less efficient since there's many more frames than need to be there. On top of that, they encoded at 720p even though the show appears to be a station upscale and not true HD, which decreases the encoding efficiency even farther. The subtitle timing is also full of scene bleeds, where lines continue to display after scene changes even after the character has finished speaking.
[SHS-YuS]: They opted for 576p at 23.98fps with a bitrate that's close to what Hatsuyuki used, which resulted in a better encode that actually has more detail in it despite being lower resolution. However, there were a few scenes with motion on every frame at 29.97fps so those ended up jerky in this release. Seriously, people, learn to decimate to variable frame rate – it's not that hard. There were a lot of translation differences between this and Hatsuyuki's release and I do not know nearly enough Japanese to say which was more accurate.
[DB]: Sigh. Dattebayo still insists on cramming h.264 video into the obsolete AVI container format, which does not support h.264 at all well. It's also got the worst video and audio quality by far. Everything is hard-subbed and the subtitle timing has lots of little errors. But the translation matches up with SHS-YuS's the best so I'm assuming Hatsuyuki is the inaccurate one.
Chi's New Address [KubuSubs]
[Kitty]: This group is apparently just koda and Mandoric of gg Dropped after ep12 due to laziness since Crunchyroll will be streaming it after all.fame drama. They've been doing well enough with Chi so no complaints here.
[KubuSubs]: Encoded at station upscaled, waste-of-bitrate 720p. It's sharper but I think this is due to a sharpen filter rather than the higher resolution since there's a lot of aliasing and artifacting around edges. It looks to use a different raw from Kitty and Eigo since the clock in the corner is in a different font. Uses the same styling and OP lyrics as Kitty. Subtitle timing isn't quite as good.
[Eigo]: Also encoded at 720p, though they used a higher bitrate and there's not as much aliasing and artifacting. They didn't decimate the framerate, so it's at 29.97 and jerky during pans. Hard-subbed OP karaoke. Spotted a timing error in ep12. The translation differs from Kitty in a number of places and from what I can understand of the Japanese it sounds like Kitty stays closer to the original meaning.
[HorribleSubs]: Crunchyroll stream rips with some added subtitle styling to match the Kitty and KubuSubs releases. The video is full of eyecancer, as is usual for CR. It's 24.00fps (not 23.98fps, the difference is important) which causes massive jerkiness, there's tons of chroma ghosting (i.e. colors bleeding over into frames they don't belong in), and there's edge artifacting along the top and bottom that should've been cropped off. The only good thing about it is that the clock overlay from the broadcast sources isn't there. Dropped.
Eden of the East [Frostii]
[Frostii]: A very good release. The translation matches up with Lunar's almost exactly, though the way sentences are phrased seems a bit more formal. They cleaned up some corrupted frames that were in the source by replacing them with clean duplicate frames when possible, which none of the other groups did. Their typesetting is the best but it's hard-subbed. They didn't sub the OP at all, but it's in English so subs aren't required; the ED is soft-subbed with no karaoke effects fill karaoke effects in later episodes.
[sudo]: The translation differs from Lunar's and Frostii's in places and I'm assuming the odd one out tends to be the wrong one. No typesetting except for the episode title. Also no OP subs, but soft ED subs
[Lunar]: As mentioned, Lunar's and Frostii's translations are very consistent so I'm assuming that two agreeing sources means they're accurate. Their phrasing is a bit looser and sounds more natural to me. Though as of ep5, I've spotted some editing errors and a timing error. Their typesetting isn't as good as Frostii's but it's soft-subbed. (As of ep4, typesetting is hard-subbed.) They did nice soft-subbed karaoke for both the OP and ED.
[Koharubi]: Like sudo, the translation varied from Lunar's and Frostii's in places. They typeset the episode title and used a note to translation some other on-screen text. But the part they used the note for was completely unimportant whereas a more important bit of text later was left untranslated. They did soft-sub both the OP and ED, though no karaoke effects.
[Shinsen-Subs]: The translation is basically the same as Lunar's and Frostii's, just a little less literal. And they changed the name order to given name first, family name second and dropped the honorifics, so that when the spoken dialogue says, "Takizawa Akira-san," the subtitle reads, "Mr. Akira Takizawa." No subs at all for the English dialogue (except for one line, oddly) or the OP; soft-subbed ED with no karaoke effects. Hard-subbed typesetting, except the only thing they typeset besides the episode title was the opening credits. They cleaned up the corrupted frames as best they could, and the video is a little sharper with a slight bit more fine detail than Lunar's and Frostii's.
[gg]: OMG the over-subbing. I'm going off of ep2 here since they didn't bother doing their own encode for ep1. Though the video quality on other episodes still isn't as good as Frostii's. It's fully soft-subbed with no karaoke effects, as usual. Good release, up to gg's usual quality and speed, didn't notice any errors. But they only typeset the episode title – koda posted some notes on her blog for on-screen text translations but I dislike external notes. The batch torrent with v2's includes moar typesetting.
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood [Eclipse]
[Eclipse]: Near perfect, as expected from Eclipse. The video quality is minutely worse than Shinsen's but you would never notice unless comparing side-by-side. I would prefer full soft-subbed OP/ED and typesetting, but the karaoke effects and AFX typesetting are by no means bad.
[Shinsen-Subs]: The only thing I can really fault this release for is a lack of typesetting on some of the minor bits of text that Eclipse typeset and the subtitle timing not being quite as good. However, I prefer Eclipse's editing and subtitle styling.
Hatsukoi Limited [m.3.3.w]
[m.3.3.w]: Looked good and I didn't spot any faults, though they switched from soft- to hard-subbed typesetting after ep1. But the OP and ED are still soft-subbed without karaoke effects. They were a little inconsistent about translating "onii-chan" or leaving it untranslated, but whatever.
[Yuurisan-Subs]: I watched three minutes of this release, including the hard-subbed karaoke OP, before deleting the file due to massive amounts of grammar errors.
[Tsukasa-Chihiro]: Station upscaled 720p that doesn't look any better than m.3.3.w's 480p release. Hard-subbed typesetting and karaoke OP and ED. They left "Onii-chan" untranslated all the time, and in one line... Well, here, see for yourself: "There it is. Koyoi's 'Onii-chan~~~~~!'" I don't care about onii-chan being left as is, but WTF was that? Otherwise, the translation is mostly the same as m.3.3.w's, but I don't like Tsukasa-Chihiro's editing and styling as much. Their subtitle timing also isn't quite as good and they missed translating a line ("Baka!" at 20:13). I haven't watched their ep1 v2, though; they could've fixed stuff.
K-ON! (16:9) [CoalGuys]
[CoalGuys]: Fully soft-subbed (though they mainly used notes instead of typesetting on-screen text), koda style OP/ED typesetting (think Maria Holic's OP), good timing, and probably about as good an encode as is possible from BS-TBS source. (I.e. the source is crap, there's going to be artifacts no matter what.) The line darkener they used made some ghosting artifacts a little more apparent but they also cleaned up the rainbowing better than Chihiro did – and you'll probably never notice either unless you're watching for them. The translation differs from Chihiro's in a few places but I dunno which is more accurate.
[Chihiro]: They're using ordered chapters and, for their 480p release, anamorphic widescreen. Except they didn't set the OP and ED to be anamorphic, so they display at 720x480. Which, depending on what media player you use, either means they display at 720x480 while the rest of the episode is at 853x480, or as in the case of the latest CCCP with MPC-HC, the entire episode displays at 720x480. How the heck do you possibly miss that when quality checking?
As for their 720p release, it's marginally sharper than CoalGuys' 480p release is when upscaled to 1280x720 upon playback but it's not even noticeable when watching it in motion. And there isn't any more detail in the 720p version since it's a station upscale. Chihiro's 480p release doesn't fare as well in comparison but still probably wouldn't be very noticeable.
The OP and ED karaoke is hard-subbed yet very plain and I would've prefered the subs to be nicely styled rather than have karaoke. The typesetting is also hard-subbed, though it translates more text than CoalGuys' notes. The timing's pretty good, I only spotted a couple little errors. Their editing could use some work, what with emphasis being completely inconsistent between italics and all caps (and you shouldn't use all caps in the first place), subtitling laughter, using three dashes (not two, but three) instead of an em dash, mixing tenses with, "...did you think you can just quit," etc.
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya S2 [a.f.k.]
[DB_L-E]: Some of the phrasing reads a little awkwardly and I spotted a few spelling and grammar errors. Fully soft-subbed with simple karaoke on the ED. There is no OP in the first new episode. Their typesetting could use work, especially all the text flipped up vertically when it doesn't need to be. The timing is mediocre with lines disappearing too soon, leaving small gaps between them, and some scene bleeds not getting fixed. The timing of some of the typesetting is off, too. The encode looks okay; it's not especially high quality but the source isn't that great to begin with. From checking the encoder settings in the H.264 stream header it looks like it was a fast encode, possibly made to be semi-compatible with an AVI container – assuming it wasn't edited, Dattebayo is involved after all. (ref=1 subme=5 trellis=0 threads=1 bframes=1 b_pyramid=0 b_adapt=0 etc.) Though I have no idea why they'd encode to fit AVI's restrictions when it's in an MKV and they also released an Xvid in AVI version.
[CoalGG]: Their translation is pretty liberal, and they didn't include honorifics, but it's not inaccurate as far as I can tell. And some of their lines are pretty hilarious. Also fully soft-subbed with better typesetting. No karaoke but I actually prefer their ED styling to the karaoke in [DB_L-E]'s release. The timing is not quite perfect but still good. The encode is identical to the one used in the [DB_L-E] release – seriously, I extracted the H.264 and AAC streams and compared them in WinDiff and the only difference was a bit in the headers of the H.264 streams (not related to the encoder settings by the way). The difference in file size comes from the huge fonts [DB_L-E] used.
[a.f.k.]: They did an awesome job on the first season and their work on the second is no different. Unfortunately, that also means it's still encoded in 704x396 Xvid in AVI with hard-subs. Though, ironically, the video quality isn't actually much worse since the source is so crappy to begin with. The translation, timing, and typesetting are all great and I don't care that there's no karaoke effects.
Natsu no Arashi! dropped
[Shinji]: No OP or ED subs, no typesetting. Apparently Shinji just uses other group's scripts with their own encodes, and I'm guessing they used the CR script. The encode is pretty nice, though – yay for variable frame rate! Either way, I won't care enough to compare with the other releases unless my interest in the show picks up.
Pandora Hearts (16:9) [Mochi]
[PHT]: They're the fastest about subbing the 16:9 versions but still not as fast as the 4:3 even after accounting for the three week delay. Hard-subbed OP and ED karaoke, soft-subbed dialogue. They have a huge AFX group logo on the title screen yet they don't typeset on-screen text and it looks like only the most important stuff is translated at all. There's quite a few errors, like scene bleeds, lines appearing late, triple lines, and a few small bits of dialogue missing completely. The styling is easy to read. It's broadcast on BS-TBS so the video quality is crappy, not much to be done about that.
[Mochi]: Slower about it, but also subbing the 16:9 versions – I'm comparing with ep2. Hard-subbed OP/ED karaoke, mix of hard- and soft-subbed typesetting, and full soft-subbed dialogue. And they actually typeset more than just the next episode previews. The sub timing is much better than PHT's, though still not perfect with some one-frame bleeds and such. The translation also reads smoother. The video quality is a little better than PHT's overall, being less blurry and with more detail intact, but there's also some rainbowing that didn't get cleaned up. The audio quality is also slightly worse than PHT's.
Phantom ~Requiem for the Phantom~ [Underwater]
[Chibi-Formula]: Soft-subbed OP and ED. Good timing, smooth editing, nice styling, translation matches with Menclave's pretty close. Formula happens to be one of my favorite sub groups and they're doing an awesome job on this. The only question that remains is, who will be slower, them or Menclave? No, really, they actually dropped it this time out of fear of getting their sites shut down.
[Menclave]: Awesome quality as always from Menclave, though how they'll do for speed on this series is anyone's guess. Also fancy-pants, hard-subbed typesetting and karaoke as usual, but at least they put AFX to good enough use to actually warrant it. Also dropped. Sometimes I really hate Funimation.
[Underwater]: Uses the translations from the Funimation streams together with high quality encodes encodes from transport stream source. Ordered chapters link the separate OP and ED files into each episode to save space since they're already pretty huge. Fully soft-subbed, no karaoke. There's one little thing that bugs me about the way they do timing but that's mainly just me being OCD.
Saki [Underwater-Mahjong]
[Underwater-Mahjong]: Seems to use the official translation from the Crunchyroll streams, with honorifics. Ep1 had really horrible IVTC/deinterlacing but they cleaned that up in a v2 and the encoding looks pretty good now. The typesetting is nicely done and soft-subbed. There are no subs at all for the OP and ED but I'm guessing they weren't included in the CR translation. (If I remember right, there hasn't been OP or ED translations for any of the streaming anime from Gonzo.)
[SubDESU]: Also uses the Crunchyroll translation, without honorifics. But what a fabulous station upscale this is. It's 720p and 121 MB larger than Underwater-Mahjong's 480p encode, yet manages to retain less detail! It looks like it was run through some horrible combination of smoothening and sharpening filters because the backgrounds are blurry while the line art is jaggy and aliased. The dialogue font they used is huge and their typesetting sucks. No OP or ED subs as expected with the CR script.
[Shinji]: Uses the same script as Underwater-Mahjong's release only they stripped out all the mahjong terminology notes and typesetting except for the episode title. The encode is a little better in some ways (not as much contrast, thus preserving a bit more detail) but also a little worse in others (the deinterlacing is not as smooth and leaves jaggies). I also don't like the dialogue font they used as much.
Sengoku Basara [Shinsen-Subs]
[Shinsen-Subs]: Shinsen usually puts out decent to high quality releases and this one didn't disappoint. It's got good sub timing, easy-to-read styling, soft-subbed OP and ED karaoke, and a nice encode. Haven't compared with Frostii's release, though, and probably won't care enough to bother unless I hear they're better.
Tayutama -Kiss on my Deity- [Ayako]
[Ayako]: Ep1 has a lot of jerky pans because it was decimated to 23.98fps instead of variable frame rate but ep2 onwards is vfr. Ep1 v2 is re-encoded to also be vfr. Though some of the panning is still a little jerky, so I dunno what the heck is up with it. The dialogue font styling is ugly (white with orange outline, ew), plus it's a bit hard to read since it's so thin. The timing is good, though. There was an insert song with nothing but fade effects on the subs yet it was hard-subbed. (Why?!) Also hard-subbed OP and ED karaoke. Of course, for a series like this I don't really give a crap about the quality as long as the video isn't horrible and I can understand what's going on.
Tears to Tiara [Solstice]
[CoalGuys]: Fully soft-subbed, no OP or ED karaoke, good sub timing for the most part (there were a few errors in ep3), good styling, good encode. The only big error I've spotted was that they forgot to typeset ep6's title even though they included it in ep5's preview.
[Solstice]: Hard-subbed karaoke for the OP and ED, soft-subbed dialogue and episode title typesetting. The translation was very close to CoalGuys' but some of the lines were phrased awkwardly. I picked them back up at ep8 because CoalGuys apparently has no translator for the show anymore. I found one timing error and a couple grammar errors, but they seem to have improved a bit since ep1 and it's plenty watchable if CoalGuys can't continue.
Valkyria Chronicles [AnY-Conclave]
[Ayako]: Soft-subbed OP and ED with no karaoke. The sub timing is full of little errors where subs appear or disappear a frame or two off from when they should, and their dialogue font is a bit big for my taste. They didn't crop their raw properly so there's a line of two black pixels along the right side of the video, and their deinterlacing left some jaggies in some scenes. There aren't as many compression artifacts during action scenes as in twrev-Doremi's encode because they used a higher bitrate, but there's also very slightly less detail during slow scenes. Not a horrible release, but I'm waiting a bit to see if Conclave, qq, or C1 can get something out in a reasonable amount of time, since this looks like it will be one of my favorites of the season.
[twrev-Doremi]: I have no idea WTF goes through the head of Doremi's sub timer on Marimite and now this. They added so much lead-in time that some subs appeared on the scene before the character started speaking. It's like reverse scene bleeds... How can anyone possibly think that is a good thing? Also, they did hard-subbed karaoke for the OP and ED, but with an ugly mix of brown, red, and orange colors, I would've prefered they hadn't even if it was still hard-subbed. At least the translation matched up with Ayako's release pretty well.
[AnY-Conclave]: As I expected, AnimeYuki and Conclave delivered. The translation matches up with the other two except for some of the names (it looks like AnY-Conclave is sticking the closest to the official names from the game, but I only know the ones on its Wikipedia page), the timing is great, and the lines read smoothly. The encode is sharper and retains more detail than Ayako's – and it's properly cropped. The typesetting and the OP and ED karaoke is all hard-subbed but it looks nice. My only real complaint is that the dialogue styling is a bit hard to read at times, but that can easily be fixed by bolding it in MPC's style editor (Play > Subtitles > Styles) if you use its built-in sub renderer.
