Fansubbing: The Quick and Easy Path

[LiMo]

I've been interested in fansubbing for a quite some time and I started a topic enquiring about it a while back: https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/52755-any-active-fansub-groups-out-there/

 

In that thread most of us were unfamiliar with  the process, particularly how to obtain the videos in the first place. I've made some progress and posted my results in the original thread and here also. I can now say that I've found an easy way of obtaining the videos myself.

 

OBS Studio is a free program that you can download online. It's original intent was for live streaming and recording simultaneously, but the screen capture feature works perfectly fine offline and this function seems to be a well known side benefit.

https://obsproject.com/download

 

The interface is pretty simple and you can get started immediately, although it can get more complicated if you want to produce high quality recordings (HD, 60FPS etc.) in which case your computer specs and advanced settings will be really important to you.

 

For me it's been pretty simple to pull up a Chinese drama on Youtube, full screen it with OBS in the background, and use the hotkeys to start the recording. It records in .flv format (which is apparently safer than .mp4 in case the recording glitches out) and then you can "remux" it to .mp4 which you'll need for the next program.

 

For subtitling I use Aegisub, another free download. I've been told it's pretty basic but so far the features seem pretty versatile and have been more than enough for my needs. 

http://www.aegisub.org/

 

As long as you have the video in .mp4 you can open it here and begin subbing. However, I personally prefer to go through the video first and just translate the Chinese subs directly into a text file, line by line. I then open this in Aegisub and half the work is done for me, I just have to adjust the timings (I got this tip from Youtube).

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I haven't yet finished a full episode but it looks pretty good from what I see in the preview screen. Getting the subs timed well can be difficult and it's certainly not a quick process (probably takes a week per episode full time, and I'm on holiday now, obviously it's much faster as a group effort), but I do enjoy being able to make my own subs. I'm currently working on the first episodes of 《一仆二主》 (Servant of Two Masters) and 《欢乐颂》 (Ode to Joy).

 

As far as language learning goes, I've been pretty low on motivation recently so I've mostly just been translating without paying too much close attention, but at a later date I will begin to take down keywords and maybe even put together some sort of translation guide for myself, optimal ways of translating certain structures and so on. 

 

Well, that's all I have so far, happy subbing everyone 

 

[NinKenDo]

Can I ask why you don't simply download the file directly from YouTube instead of screencapturing it?

[LiMo]

As far as I know there's no official way to download most Youtube videos. I've used third party websites for getting audio off Youtube before, but I've not found a way of downloading it directly; or if I have I probably decided not to trust it, you generally have to input the URL and then you get a download link, but you have to trust that they haven't tacked on some malicious software in the process.

 

I've used chrome in developer mode to search through the network (?) on the page and then downloaded the .mp4 from there, although on Youtube there were so many elements that I got tired of scrolling and gave up (I'm testing it as I write this and I'm having the opposite issue, no options at all). I tried it with Qiangqiang San Ren Xing on their own website, but for some reason I only got the first 5 minutes of the video. It seems this method works best with audio tracks on simple websites, like blogs etc. Or maybe content creators got wise to it and worked out some sort of block.

 

If you have a more convenient method please share, the screen capture is far from perfect and can introduce bugs that wouldn't be in the original file.

 

 

[Publius]

Try Firefox + FlashGot as described in this post.

Once the video starts playing, an icon will appear in the toolbar. Wait for 2 seconds, right-click on the icon, it will list all the available formats, such as something_hd720.mp4, something_mediium.webm, etc.

[LiMo]

That's awesome, thanks. The chrome add ons/extensions are pretty crap. I've been trying them out and none of them work on Youtube/Youku.

[Publius]

It has some special support for YouTube (i.e. listing of available formats) and works perfectly.

May not work on some Chinese video sites though. Too many ads, and longer videos are often broken into smaller segments. You need to download them separately and merge them using a video editing software. And at least one site (I forget which) hides its source so well flashgot doesn't work at all.

[wibr]

youtube-dl is great for downloading videos from youtube, also supports playlists etc.

[LiMo]

@Publius

Yes, I had a feeling the longer videos must be being broken up when I saw the 3 or four different files. How tedious. Flash Got isn't actually working for me for some reason, but I'm using another Firefox add on that seems to be fine.

 

@wibr

Thanks, I'll try that out, too.

[MTH123]

Currently, the best and most consistently reliable over a long period of time, like years, that I've found is an add-on in Firefox. It’s Easy Youtube Video Downloader Express. It always seems to be up to date with changes in YouTube.

 

It think it’s more reliable than youtube-dl or its better and more regularly updated version yt-dlp. For example, it can download 720p, while youtube-dl and yt-dlp currently can only download 480p. If you donate $10, you can download 1080p. Also, youtube-dl and yt-dlp are used in the command-line interface, which isn't very accessible to most people.