Everything You Never Wanted to Know About Fansubbing

[Peanut253]

Misc:

Patches

• Theory: “Patches” are small scripts that take an existing file, a difference file (patch.vcdiff) and create a new file based on those differences. More theory: Patches and xdelta3.
• Guides:
• BakaBT’s Patching Guide
• 13ack.Stab’s Guide to V2 Patches
• Using patches: a simple example FFF’s Mirai Niki 7 - Patch and [some complicated examples].
• To create a patch: FileA + FileB = differences.vcdiff
  • CLI: xdelta3 -e 9 -s old_file new_file delta_file
  • Or xdelta3 GUI for GUI people.
• A binary version of xdelta3.exe can be obtained from the above patch examples or from xdelta3 GUI.

The Group Blog

• Theory: Provide a way to centralize knowledge about your group including the following:
  • Latest release information, project archive, download options (Torrents/HTTP/XDCC/fserve), contact information (IRC/Email), community feedback mechanisms (chatbox), reserved waifus, guides for the community, and donation solicitation.
• Getting Started:
  1. (optional) Read this, The Internet and Hosting Providers, to know how the internet works and how much services cost.
  2. (optional) Purchase a mygroup.moe domain from Hover for $20 (yearly).
  3. Start a blog on Blogger or Wordpress.
     • Note: Wordpress and Weebly charge for custom domains and Blogger will disable TLS.
  4. Post releases. Example.
• Markdown (formatting for blog posts):
  • Markdown Cheatsheet
  • Markdown Preview and HTML converter

Seedboxes

• Reddit’s Recommended Seedbox VPS List (early 2016)
• For Hardcore DIY People:
  • Mandatory Reading:
    • The Internet and Hosting Providers
    • Port Forwarding: theory and related guide.
    • Setting Up A Server (including a VPS) and Security Policy
    • Configuring DD-WRT to use Afraid.org’s DDNS services: Guide 1 and Guide 2
  • raspberryPi and Ebay Search Link.
    • Hint: Use external storage over USB instead the Secure Digital (SD) card internal storage.
  • RaspberryPi Documentation and Remote Access
    • Be sure to set up SSH and VNC, and maybe Samba.
  • Using Crontab to start tasks at startup. See: [todo: this example].
  • For a BitTorrent client, rTorrent with the ruTorrent frontend is popular but there is also qBittorrent. “sudo apt-get install qbittorrent”
  • For the HTTP Server: List of Static HTTP Server Software
    • Personally, I use a modified “HTTP-Server” implemented using Node.js. See: [todo: this guide].
    • Apache and Nginx have various issues auto-indexing mounted Fat32 formatted volumes via directory junctions. Just FYI~
  • For encryption: check out stunnel: Features List, this install guide
  • For authentication: check out Letsencrypt’s Overview Page, the EFF’s Certbot, stunnel’s letsencrypt configuration and this guide on Configuring Cipher Suites Correctly. Also see this [todo: combined guide].
  • Windows VM only: HFS + stunnel or just sHFS Portable
    • Just here as an FYI, but please no.

Remux

• Theory: Remuxers typically focus on improving work done by other groups, combining work done by multiple groups and/or combing subs with better Audio/Visual (A/V) sources.

1. Obtain raws (See: Capping)
2. Obtain scripts
   1. Find out which groups did the series:
      • Anime DataBase (AniDB)
      • Search Nyaa
        • Shortcut: [AnimeTosho]'s “Attachments” section
      • ar-fansub-db.blogspot.com and arfansubdb.com (Arabic)
   2. Obtain the subs or files.mkv from the group.
      • Check their website for HTTP or torrent links. (Hint: Use Chrome’s translation feature.)
      • Check the BitTorrent tracker the group uses.
      • Check their IRC channel and look for an XDCC bot.
      • If you can find out the exact name of their files, use @find in rizon.net’s news and give it to Google.
      • Ask the group over IRC or email (unlikely to work).
      • This one russian site, subs.com.ru, sometimes has scripts.
        • Use Notepad++ to change the character encoding to UTF-8 if necessary.
   3. If you can obtain the files.mkv, then stream copy or extract them out. (See: Muxing)
      • Only if hardcore: Extracting Hardsubs, docx, by Zalis
3. Fix any issues (like localizations and syncing issues) (See: Filtering, Encoding, TLC, Editing, Timing, Typesetting)
4. Mux to preserve the changes (See: Muxing)
   • It is considered rude to use an existing groups tag in the filename, even if you made only minor changes to their script. Use any other tag, even a throw-away one, or your own tag. To give them credit, label the track with the original source name and credit them it any descriptions.
   • Remember to put the CRC32 in at the end of the filename (e.g. myfile_[1BA919D7].mkv).
5. Distro (See: Distro.)

Edit: Updated grammar, the “Seedboxes” section, added “The Group Blog” and split the “Misc” section into a second post due to forum maximum per-post character limitations.