WALLS OF TL;DR

OK so you have a HD transport stream, you encode it and don’t use colormatrix() in Avisynth because you realized back in 2008 or so that doing so was kind of a dumb idea. Now you want to tell decoders what color coefficients the video uses so it will (hopefully) look correct everywhere, even if you downscale it so ffdshow’s/Haali’s resolution-based autodetection fails. What to do?

The answer to this is obviously “flag it in the h264 bitstream” (if you’re one of those scrubs who still use Xvid just ignore the issue, nobody cares about Xvid anymore). The problem with this answer is that nobody understand what the hell vui.txt actually means. However, in some recent conversation in #darkhold Kovensky linked to a paste where pengvado/akupenguin explained it in more detail.

More specifically:

• –colormatrix specifies what coefficients are used when converting YUV to RGB. This is the one you want to use.
• –colorprim specifies what color primaries (see for example the Wikipedia page about sRGB) the RGB uses. Setting this properly most likely requires knowledge of the studio equipment used to master the stream and/or its settings, so just leave it undefined. No one without a color calibrated monitor would ever notice or care, even if decoders/renderers actually supported this.
• –transfer specifies the gamma curve used for the RGB. Like –colorprim, setting this correctly probably requires knowledge you don’t have, so don’t set it at all. Again, only people with calibrated studio monitors will ever notice or care.

TL;DR: Use --colormatrix bt709 if your source is a HD transport stream; --colormatrix bt470bg if it is an SD transport stream.

So I was clicking around on random issues in the ffmpeg bug tracker, and I come across this little gem.

argon, if you want I can simply forward this to our lawyers and they’ll suck the
life out of you (and all your money with it). Keep your cool, please.

You know what, GPL faggots? Fuck you forever. You’re just as bad as the sue-happy proprietary software owners/patent owners you claim to hate so much. The entire point of open source is that anyone should be able to do whatever they want with it. You’re trying to keep the cake and eat it too; either you let the code go and let other people use it freely, or you keep it under locks and sue the fuck out of anyone using it in ways you don’t like. There is no middle ground, and it’s pretty clear which side of the fence you’re on.

The GPL isn’t a “free software” license in any way whatsoever because of its ridiculous restrictions. People who use it are the kind of faggots that are still attached to the “I made it so I should be able to control what happens to it until 90 years after my death” school of intellectual property management, which is about as far from any definition of “free” as you can get. Stop pretending you’re different from the HURR YOU ARE MISUSING OUR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, SUE SUE SUE companies like Adobe and Microsoft.

tl;dr: fuck copyright forever

edit: disclaimer: I have not ever used the kmplayer and from what I read about it on the cccp wiki it is a useless piece of shit anyway

edit edit: YES I GET VERY ANGRY ABOUT THINGS ON THE INTERNET, DEAL WITH IT

edit edit edit:

• number of projects in the ffmpeg hall of shame: lots
• number of ffmpeg license violators actually sued: 0
• number of ffmpeg license violators that are actually likely to ever get sued: 0
• number of companies that give a shit about the gpl: 0

edit edit edit edit: the gpl has actually been tried in court a total of like three times ever in all the time it has existed and those cases were limited to a total of two countries, namely the US and Germany, so don’t go off thinking that it is a well established or even internally consistent legal document or anything

Theory: Haruhi S2 is not supposed to be entertainment. It’s supposed to be an experiment in meta-entertainment; i.e. the show is not actually entertaining in itself, the entertainment is in trolling people who actually watch it, or just observing their reactions/impotent nerdrage. A bold move by KyoAni, moving from the tired old-style “entertainment” into the new age of social networking-based meta-entertainment, but I expected no less from these Gods of Anime!

Alternative theory: Kyoto Animation is the new Gonzo.
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Anime makes you stupid. Watching anime makes you stupid, fansubbing anime too, but apparently professionally working with anime makes you the most stupid. Funimation is the proof of this theory. A brief timeline of history (see earlier posts on this here blawg and koda’s excellent summary for details about earlier events):

• Yesterday: Funimation announces (well, mentions in its official twitter feed) that it will be resuming FMA streaming after “additional security” is implemented for all videos.
• Five hours ago: Funimation’s representative says he/she doesn’t know when FMA streams will be back.
• Two hours ago: Certain people do some poking around and find that most series are still available via the old method of using video.funimation.com/FLV/[ANIMENAME]_[EPISODENUMBER]_JPN_640X360.flv directly. They just changed the name of some files, i.e. instead of FUN_PHANTOM_06_JPN_640X360.flv it’s now PHNTM_06_JPN_640X360.flv. FMA, however, is not available through this method. This is mentioned on IRC.
• One hour ago: I poke at Funimation’s FMA page and find that while you can still access the FMA page and watch episodes, you don’t actually get the episode it claims to be; instead you get what appears to be the “default” episode, which for some bizarre reason known only to Funimation is episode 8 of Dragonaut: the Resonance (why the christ did this ever get licensed in the first place? seriously Funimation, what the fuck?).
• Half an hour ago: Some enterprising individuals find out that it seems that Funimation has switched to RTMP streaming for FMA. They poke around for a bit, guess the URL to episode 9, dumps it with rtmpdump, remuxes it to MKV and posts a torrent to TT (which currently has like 30 peers; obviously everyone is hot for Funimation’s version of FMA when the fansubs have already been out for three days). The episode in question still hasn’t been posted to Funimation’s official site. Nor has the older FMA eps.
• Right now: Funimation’s entire website goes down for unknown reasons.

The website is now up again, but God knows why it went down in the first place. “TORRENT? OMG, PULL THE PLUG!”? Who knows.

More on this story as things develop.

Edit: By the way, Funimation, didn’t you say it took four days to finish the translation and script QC? Why did you already upload a finished episode to your website then? Hasn’t it only been three days since Sunday?

Edit edit: Oh and for those of you who are going to go off screaming OMG HAX SUE THEM ALL: guessing URL’s IS NOT HACKING (and hence it isn’t illegal in all sensible jurisdictions; see for example this German court case (warning: in German)). The W3C agrees in a quite interesting article; for those of you with ADD I’ll go ahead and quote the most relevant parts:

[A]ny attempt to forbid the practice of deep linking is based on a misunderstanding of the technology, and threatens to undermine the functioning of the Web as a whole. The two chief reasons for this are:

• A Web Address (“URI,” or “URL”) is just an identifier. There is a clear distinction between identifying a resource on the Web and accessing it; suppressing the use of identifiers is not logically consistent.
• It is entirely reasonable for owners of Web resources to control access to them. The Web provides several mechanisms for doing this, none of which rely on hiding or suppressing identifiers for those resources.

[...]

Two analogies have been proposed to help illuminate the question of deep linking through parallels in the real world.

The first analogy is with buildings, which typically have a number of doors. A building might have a policy that the public may only enter via the main front door, and only during normal working hours. People employed in the building and in making deliveries to it might use other doors as appropriate. Such a policy would be enforced by a combination of security personnel and mechanical devices such as locks and pass-cards. One would not enforce this policy by hiding some of the building entrances, nor by requesting legislation requiring the use of the front door and forbidding anyone to reveal the fact that there are other doors to the building.

The second analogy is with a library, which has a well-known street address. Each book on the shelves of this library also has an identifier, composed of its title, author, call number, shelf location, and so on. The library certainly will exercise access control to the individual books; but it would be counterproductive to do so by forbidding the publication of their identities.

These analogies are compelling in the context of the deep linking issue. A provider of Web resources who does not make use of the built-in facilities of the Web to control access to a resource is unlikely to achieve either justice or a good business outcome by attempting to suppress information about the existence of the resource.

Edit edit edit: When they went to repost the FMA streams they also “accidentally” posted Phantom episode 10, at least 18 hours before it was supposed to air in Japan. Someone immediately downloaded and torrented it, of course. :golfclap:

It also appears that instead of actually implementing security measures, Funimation seemingly found it sufficient to add 16 characters of pseudo-random garbage to the end of each filename so it isn’t possible to just guess the URL’s anymore. GUYS GUYS LET’S CONTINUE WITH THIS SECURITY THROUGH OBSCURITY THING I HEARD IT WAS THE COOL THING TO DO, IT HAS WORKED SO WELL FOR US IN THE PAST AFTER ALL LOLOLOLO

ETA to someone figuring out that the seemingly random stuff really isn’t all that random and leaking something again? Not very long, I’d bet.

Some of you might have heard about a site called animenewsnetwork.com (I wrote a bit about them in my last post). As the name indicates, it is a site that aims to publish anime news (lol); in fact it claims to be the internet’s most trusted anime news source (I wonder who they asked trusted them). A reliable news source to me is one that does its own research and journalism, and checks as many sources as possible. ANN, unfortunately, does not do this.

Claiming ANN does journalism is like claiming fansubbers create anime. ANN:

• Copies R1 industry press releases; usually verbatim, without comment or criticism of their content
• Translates 2ch gossip and Moonphase comments and reports them as “news”
• When they do the above, they invariably cite the source as “2ch” or “Moonphase comments” and link to the respective site’s front page, which makes it about as easy to check the source as if they had cited “the internet” as the source
• Bowdlerizes English blog posts/other news site posts and reports those too as news
• Trolls people in general and fansubbers in particular with snarky comments in the Answerman column
• Makes unpaid volunteers earn advertising money for them by maintaining their anime database
• Writes season previews that are obviously based on warez/fansubs (don’t try to tell me all of your season preview writers live in Japan and speak Japanese, ANN) while having an official position amounting to “fansubs are the root of all evil”
• Builds the entire site layout around gigantic R1 industry ads
• Refuses to publish anything remotely industry-critical since it would hurt their advertising income (for example, they have not published anything about the fact that Funimation outright lied in a press release recently)
• Accuses people calling them out on their bullshit of being tinfoil-hatting conspiracy theorists (Danish)

Most news sites would at least try to pretend they are neutral and independent. ANN does not. Most news sites would be at least vaguely ashamed of doing very little but bowdlerize second-hand sources (blogs, moonphase comments, 2ch gossip, etc etc). ANN does not seem to be.

If you look at the last ten main news items at ANN’s front page right now, you get the following:

• Moribito Returns to Adult Swim — At Least in Repeats
• Vaguely rewritten English livejournal post plus some links to older ANN news. Original first-hand source linked to inline but not cited as source.
• Japanese Box Office, May 9-10
• Translation and currency conversion of a Japanese box office listing plus some very brief comments.
• Fullmetal Alchemist Not Streaming from Funimation.com (Update 2)
• Information about a link on Funimation’s webpage is not currently working plus some links to older news items. Updates with more information and the fact that the link is working again contributed by people who seem to be volunteer outsiders.
• Funimation Cancels One Piece Simulcast (Update 2)
• Verbatim copy of a Funimation press release. No mention of the fact that said press release contains at least one blatant lie. Updates contain reports that links elsewhere are broken, too.
• Key’s Angel Beats! Anime Promo Videos Streamed
• Presumably a translation of a 2ch post plus some links. Source cited as “2channel” with link to the front page and nothing else, so original source is impossible to check.
• GTO: Shonan 14 Days Marks Return of Great Teacher Onizuka (Updated)
• Another presumed translation of a 2ch post plus two sentences or so of background and licensing info. No useful source, as usual.
• M and N, Heart no Kuni no Alice Listed by Amazon.ca
• Bowdlerized English blog post that states that Amazon is listing something that may or may not be released by Tokyopop. No link to original firsthand source (Amazon).
• One Piece’s Newest Episode Leaked Before Japan’s Debut (Updated)
• A considerably more accurate portrayal of the “Funimation debacle” events. No mention of Funimation’s lie about “strict security measures”. No source cited other than Tofusensei and some other third party; presumably because the actual source (Tokyotosho/word on the IRC street) is unquotable by a Serious Business news outfit since they couldn’t possibly have contacts with those dirty fansubbers.
• Anime Network Taken Off Comcast, Put on DirecTV (Updated)
• Rewritten press release/official forum post plus a few sentences of background info.
• Gokusen the Movie’s Trailer Streamed Online
• Slightly rewritten notice about a new trailer, taken from an English news/blog site (including the exact same original source links), plus the usual three sentences with background info.

In summary: maybe two of these news items contain any actual journalism. The rest are copypasta and rewriting/translating news other people wrote about. The citing of sources is really wobbly at best; in several cases you either get no reliable source at all, or at best a link that gives you a link that gives you a link to something that could be a first-hand source.

Why is this shit so popular? Pure momentum? Probably. I guess once you’re big you don’t really have to do anything but sit on your butt, receive news tips, browse 2ch, check RSS feeds and rewrite stuff other people researched for you.

When I accepted that interview offer I had mostly one thing in mind, namely to troll Funimation. I could not in my wildest dreams have imagined how hilarious it would actually end up being given Funi’s amazing screwups, but neither could I have imagined what a golden opportunity of trolling ANN it would give me, either. At least that’s one thing I suppose I should thank ANN for.

Edit: by the way, I should mention that all of this raging doesn’t have anything to do with ANN’s apparent (apparent because they still haven’t replied to emails) refusal to publish that interview. I never really expected them to, given what I said in it.

(Oh, and by the way, the worst anime site on the internet is Sankaku Complex. Nothing else even comes close.)