Did Anime Producers Go From Embracing Fansubbers To Blaming Them?from the not-so-good dept
Petréa Mitchell writes in to point us to an "open letter" to the anime industry, that is apparently struggling economically, with anime producers starting to blame its biggest fans outside of Japan for creating "fansubs"...
Techdirt articles are almost always worth a read for me, and this also seems to be related to some things I saw the last few nights in passing but it finally prompted me to reply. I've done so both on there, and I'll copy my reply here...
However following this upstream/back to the sources would be a good idea for anyone interested. (Anime is a topic of high interest for those attending an Anime/Manga/Videogame convention, right?)
The obvious solution is to emulate the methods current fansubs use to achieve their success within an organized profit-making structure.
* Priced at a point which a customer feels Value.
* Timely out on a regular basis, likely not more then 1 week from air/release In Japan (further details later)
* Quality as good as current competition or better (the -good- Fansubs)
* Distributed digitally, your target audience is already technically competent enough to download episodes from the internet.
* The Catch, do it all Legally.
* Use Open standards that work for Every operating system.
First, to cut down on costs, and easy adherence to standards, open source protocols, and even software, should be used whenever possible. Hire an in house programmer/web admin or two, preferably cross trained, and have them make sure it functions well and has no security holes.
Next you have the sticky issue. While containers (EG AVI/OGM/MKV I prefer them in reverse order) are free, and audio has options that are free and still great (ogg/vorbis), video codecs, sadly, are not. Most of the efforts in producing codecs were researched early by huge groups of experts who patented their work (Excellent news in the future when the patents come off the stack.), and we've relied upon them sense. They simply got there first and won market share for it. Open source alternatives simply have not reached the level of maturity that VC1 or h.264 have. The sticky point here is something I've not carefully researched or asked.
V1.a) How much does a licence to produce/sell works made using said codecs cost?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_video_codecs#Codecs_listV1.b)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264#Patent_licensing seems clear on Shipping products which have encoders/decoders. However it is entirely UNCLEAR about shipping content, or the use but not distribution of the GPL encoder for such content. I imagine such use would require V1.a for legal reasons...
V2) As an alternative how much does a good VC1/h.264 encoder cost?
With video encoding out of the way, a container (MKV preferably), and commodity server hardware/internet access the business model can come together.
* Contact (or be) a studio in Japan and acquire worldwide licensed fansub enhanced distribution rights.
* Build a community among the fansub translators, video editors, etc, to turn existing amateurs in to staff compensated based on work completed. Compensation can come in many forms. The obvious one is money, but offers of download credits, internet access, a place to host a server, all sorts of other non-monetary or not necessarily directly money related forms of payment could work. This would depend on a project by project, and/or staff by staff basis. Obviously a free copy of whatever they're creating should be a given. (They'll have to really love it to not be sick to death of it, and maybe they'll want to watch it again later during a marathon.)
* Provide your translators earlier access to the material they'll need to translate. Stills of notes/signs, audio recordings, even the original script if possible.
* Have high quality (Not necessarily high bandwidth, simplified versions for mobile video players or less capable playback systems should also be produced) encodings, HD/DVD quality or better as the basis.
* Sell on line, as soon as the original audio and video streams are ready. (Actually given credit card fees... more likely 'preorder by the series/season')
* The fansubs (maybe even multiple versions (like a Fast and High Quality later or even Censored/Americanized)) and if later dubbed English audio tracks would be properly priced additions.
* Recognize you are competing with free, not just no cost, but no -restrictions-.
This is the hardest part of all, you MUST sell these at an actual value for them to have a good reception. Bleach for example has 150 episodes. You will simply not be competitive at over a dollar per episode for this series, or really, any other series. I'll look to Stargate DVDs I recently purchased, they had actual -value- for me. ~212usd for everything Stargate SG1. That's 10 seasons and 214 episodes, or about a dollar per 45 min of actual show. It even had bonus features, audio tracks, and 5 whole DVDs of extras. Plus these where on actual DVD disks, in a format I could play in a 20 dollar DVD player if I wanted. I had absolutely no need for fancy (expensive) hardware, managing my own storage space (hard drives/burning DVDs), or even providing a nice stylish case to store them in.
Those above reasons are all arguments to sell for even Less then 1 dollar. Probably something on the order of 25-50 cents when in buying whole series (or at least 'multiple seasons'). It's not all high action stuff either, every anime series of any length has filler episodes. The exceptions are those which are meticulously planned, like Hellsing (only 13 episodes though... but I don't recall -any- fillers).
My personal recommendation is to actually provide the end user a detailed breakdown, showing them the cost of each component when they're shopping so they can see the value (and provide feedback on things that look overpriced.).
The proof of purchase would probably need to be mailed, but a digital version may suffice.
Another item that could be sent through the mail (or sold to places like Netflix) would be officially licensed on demand DVD runs (Probably burned, but with actual proof it is legitimate).
Still, the primary form of distribution I haven't covered yet. Bit torrent is excellent for completely free things, and server based is fine, but realistically costs more (and should be seen as the middle ground between something peer to peer like bit torrent, and something direct like DVDs), and should be billed as more. While most of your users, the peek demand weekly ones, will instead want to use a peer to peer method.
The solution is to add security to it, making white lists for sharing to specific internet addresses based on account logins, only publishing peering data to them, and possibly even adding transport, but not content (that is tunnel unencumbered content via a secure pipe), encryption.
My highest recommendation design wise is to transfer the video, audio, and other component streams separately, so that they can be re-multiplexed in a normal container like MKV whenever an additional or updated track is available.
In this way, by planning ahead, providing a community and point of content synchronization, you can not only embrace and truly extend the fansub model, but legitimize it as well.
Most realistically this should work best when a studio themselves recognizes it as a new method of distribution. Every major studio would be best setting up their own, while independents and small studios would probably be better off with some shared service.
Most of the components that are really required already exist, and it's obvious to anyone technical that a solution (several in fact) could be built from those or similar pieces. However I don't think marketing executives, corporate directors, or anyone not technically inclined or in the fansub production/consumption community (or other extremely similar ones...) actually Gets that fact.
The Internet's two biggest advantages are Speed and far more easily scaling production (No physical production, maybe something commodity like burned DVDs or printouts snail mailed on the side.) to exact demand, in either real or extremely close to real time. It's high time every country's content producers realized it's a global market. There are no more information or distance barriers.
- edit -
I feel stupid... I didn't even realize normal users could edit the subjects too... (Of course this is my first topic-post edit, not just a reply edit.)
