Petty annoyance #1543

Just Passing Through

Just Passing Through

The Wildcard
I don't know who exactly puts subtitles onto DVDs, whether it's Manga, Madman or Funimation. But whoever it is really needs to get an old TV set.

We're talking missing subtitles, bits of punctuation or the odd letter that vanishes off the edge of the screen. It's not a FMA: B level of a screw up, it's just a matter of one or two characters at the edge of the longer subtitle captions.

You can tell whoever it is, probably Funimation, has nothing but new flat panel displays, and that they've turned the overscan off. Of course if you can see the whole image, it doesn't matter where the subtitle goes.

But if you're one of those people who aren't technically minded, you may not even know what the overscan option on your shiny new HD TV does. You'll just be cursing the fact that that bits of subtitle are going walkabout.

It's even worse for people with CRT sets. Overscan is usually part of the set's design, and you can't do a thing about it.

That's how I was watching Nabari no Ou Part 2 yesterday, and why I'm cursing the subtitler today. Muppet! :x
 
Hmm, can't say I've ever noticed that before. Is this just a problem with Nabari no Ou or something more common?

But while we're on the subject of petty subtitle complaints... if you think viewers' eyes are bad enough that subtitles need to be enormous, so that each line contains no more than 5 or 6 words, they're probably already wearing glasses. Smaller, please, DVD subtitling people.

Oh, and white >>>>>>>> yellow.
 
fabricatedlunatic said:
Hmm, can't say I've ever noticed that before. Is this just a problem with Nabari no Ou or something more common?

But while we're on the subject of petty subtitle complaints... if you think viewers' eyes are bad enough that subtitles need to be enormous, so that each line contains no more than 5 or 6 words, they're probably already wearing glasses. Smaller, please, DVD subtitling people.

Oh, and white >>>>>>>> yellow.
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I see it on quite a few Funimation discs. The thing is it's either half a letter, or a full stop or a question mark that goes walkabout. It's rarely enough to complain about, the mind usually fills in the missing characters automatically, and it's easy to forget afterwards. Nabari is fresh in my mind, which is why I mention it.

It's also a TV specific problem. A modern flatpanel display is accurately tuned. Turn overscan off, and you get the whole image. (The Ghibli DVDs get windowboxed), turn it on and you get the industry specified amount of overscan exactly. With CRTs it's a bit of pot luck, due to tube geometry and how the electron guns are focused onto the screen, but can be anything up to 10% of the image wiped off the edges.
 
But white or yellow >>> the beige which Manga bafflingly decided to use for Summer Wars. The idea behind yellow is that it's easier to see against other colours which I dare say it is (especially when white subtitles have little to no border around them) but beige is hard to read against just about any light or pastel colours - which tend to form a large part of most animation colour palettes.

And what's this FMA:B subtitling screw up then? I haven't noticed anything, but perhaps I'm either blind or it's in Vol. 5 which I haven't got yet.
 
Volumes 1 and 2, significant portions of text in the subtitles went off the edge of the screen at times, enough that you'd actually have to guess at the meaning of what was said. Escpecially noticeable in episodes 21, 22, and 25
 
Hmm. You watching on DVD or BD? I don't remember that happening on my BD copies... I'm going to have to go look now to satisfy my curiosity, damn it.
 
ayase said:
Hmm. You watching on DVD or BD? I don't remember that happening on my BD copies... I'm going to have to go look now to satisfy my curiosity, damn it.
Click to expand...

Like I said it's an overscan problem, ie SD TVs. So yeah, DVD only. You don't have to worry about Blu-ray. On HDTV overscan is an optional extra, which if you want true HD, one to one pixel mapping, you'd be well advised to turn off. It's just a hold over from the bad old days of SD television, just in case you can see the edge of the set, or a boom mike hanging into shot.

Wikipedia explanation
 
Yellow subtitles is where its at for me, white wouldn't be such a problem if they at least switched to yellow ones during the moments where its up against a white background thus usually forcing me to turn on the dub to find out what was said, but it seems thats too much to ask. I'm in your boat JPT, I only have a big back TV and it appears no one gives us any consideration these days.

The situation is even worse with videogames, have you tried playing FF13 without an HD...its bloody awful. All the lovely cutscenes are made highly unenjoyable and jaggedy with lines going everywhere. But hey I guess you shouldn't be playing games if you don't have an HD yet right?
 
Can't say I've ever had a problem with reading white subtitles as they always have a black outline. Yellow is just too bright for me. Really, though, a bigger problem is that DVD subtitles are generally eyesores, partly due to the technical limitations of the format and partly due to the often bizarre choice of ugly fonts. Animeigo's are probably the most attractive, despite being mostly yellow.

It's another thing to be thankful to Blu-ray for.
 
Yeah there's not usually too much of a problem with white subtitles, but occasionally it has been a bit tricky to read. I had a pretty bad experience with the white subtitles in Yakuza 3 though (again maybe due to my lack of HD TV).
 
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