Sonic X Japanese, DVD Quality

For a long time, the state of publically available Sonic X raws on the Internet has been… pathetic, to say the least. Almost no episode was available as DVD quality rips (only 1, 3, 4, 5, and 52), with the others being merely analog TV rips of wildly varying quality. This is an attempt to remedy that situation, by using the video from the french DVDs (which are uncensored) and adding the japanese audio of the best quality raws I can find. (The reason I'm not using the japanese DVDs for this is that they're ridiculously expensive; while each french DVD set costs 10€ with around 12 episodes, I have to pay nearly 4 times that for 2-3 episodes for a japanese DVD. In other words, the japanese DVDs are 16 times as expensive as the french equivalents. No thanks.)

These episodes will be encoded with the H.264 codec, in an MKV container, and they should take up between 100 to 150mb per episode, with two audio tracks (the japanese audio track — the default, and the french audio track — since I have it, I might as well include it) and one subtitle track (english subtitles for the japanese track — basically the existing subtitles by GTW, HEDGESMFG, Hazuki, and Coxy1987 that have been around for years, only with several typos corrected, some of the wording changed (when it's too awkward), decent subtitle styling, and subtitles for the opening, endings and insert songs). Episodes where insert songs were changed on DVD (26 and 52, afaik) will probably have a third audio track so you can change which songs you prefer (though I still don't have the DVD version of episode 26's audio, so you may be 'stuck’ with Kotoba ni Dekinai if I can't find someone to rip that for me. Kotoba ni Dekinai is better than the Hikaru Michi instrumental they used as the replacement, anyway =P).

There'll also be some fun “omakes” as separate files for people who want to laugh a bit =P

The subtitle style was somewhat inspired by PositronCannon’s Digimon fansubs (Candara with a blue border and black shadow). If you like Digimon, I highly recommend them.

P.S: PLEASE, don't watch this in VLC. VLC's support for proper subtitles is, frankly, pathetic. On Windows, just use media player classic or some other similar DirectShow player with the CCCP, and on Mac OS X and Linux, just use mplayer (with the -ass option to turn on ASS subtitle rendering).

These episodes will be regularly posted here. Some omakes and other fun stuff may be posted there too.

Links:

Episode 1 - Enter the Supersonic Hedgehog! (123mb)
Episode 2 (v2) - Infiltrate! Area 99 (122mb)
Episode 3 - Dr. Eggman's Ambition (122mb)
Episode 4 - Get the Chaos Emerald! (123mb)
Episode 5 - Clash! Sonic VS Knuckles (117mb)
Episode 6 - Fierce Battle! School Wars (116mb)
Episode 7 - Giant Free-For-All! Chris' Home Party (117mb)
Episode 8 - Emergency Launch! X-Tornado (116mb)
Episode 9 - Amy at the Beach (117mb)
Episode 10 - Face-Off! The Sonic Baseball Team (117mb)
Episode 11 - The Beautiful Phantom Thief, Rouge (117mb)
Episode 12 - Attack on Eggman's Base! (Part 1) (117mb)
Episode 13 - Attack on Eggman's Base! (Part 2) (116mb)
Episode 14 - Chasing the Hero, Sonic! (122mb)
Episode 15 - Raid of the Egg-Fort, the Flying Fortress! (117mb)
Episode 16 - Aim for it! The South Sea Shipwreck (117mb)
Episode 17 - Knuckles! Fist of Fury (117mb)
Episode 18 - The Great Savanna Battle! (117mb)

Episode 26 - Birth! Super Sonic (117mb) - Kotoba ni Dekinai version
Other stuff:
Opening 1 - Sonic Drive (17mb)
Opening 2 - Sonic Drive (24mb)
Ending 1 - Mi-Ra-I (8.2mb)
Ending 2 - Hikaru Michi (8.2mb)
Ending 3 - T. O. P. (10mb)

 

It's very likely that those are the same TV rips that are floating around the Internet. If you look at, for example, episode 18, you should see a timer on the top-left corner - that's put there by several japanese TV stations. The quality is... varying. Some are okay, some have good audio but bad video, and some are just plain horrible. Episodes 57 will likely also have Jetix logos, outside the opening and ending. Episodes 53-56 and 58-78 should look fine, though, since those are all DVD rips.

 

Umm... mind saying what episodes are those from?

EDIT: Right, 60, 56, and 73. Like I said, 53 through 56 and 58 through 78 should all be DVD rips already.

 

I'll try to do two episodes a day, but on some busy days I may do just one, or none. Depends on how busy I am, I suppose.
If I wait until I'm done with all episodes, then I'll probably get bored of it before I'm done and end up posting nothing at all. As awesome as a massive release sounds, it really wouldn't work out with me.

As for why I recommend against VLC... it ignores font selections for subtitles. Completely.

See scene in MPlayer and in VLC. MPlayer uses all the correct subtitles that I defined, while VLC just ignores them all and uses Courier New of all things on everything. If that wasn't bad enough, the subtitles for insert songs in VLC flicker when someone talks. Just... ugh. If you want a VLC-like player that actually does things right, try SMPlayer - Just remember to enable SSA/ASS rendering wherever it is in the preferences.

 

Episode 2's up!

 

You mean the ones for rental? It's crap. Shittons of compression artifacts. (Trust me, I have some of them)

 

No, I just went ahead and used the TV audio anyway. I'll release a v2 when you can get me the DVD audio. Read the main page for more info =P

Because I really didn't want to be stopped at episode 2 while waiting for audio.