admiration is the emotion farthest from comprehension

Hello and welcome to the world of the JE fandoms!

This post will be a sort of introduction/guide that will hopefully teach new fans the proper ethics, process and basic knowledge that will be needed. My sister and I both decided to make one.. so here goes..

If you are absolutely new to the fandom, you might think that almost everything will be on youtube but as you go deeper into the fandom, you'll find youtube insufficient. You'll crawl through download links that might be floating around the net, and find some people having access to subbed files.

the subbed files. These are completely free and can be found inside lj by subbing communities. If you find someone asking for money in exchange for videos, they're scamming you.

Now i believe that new fans need to know the hard work placed in these subbed files. What you watch happily for about 30 minutes take, like, weeks to do.

so here's the whole process:
-Subbed videos originally come from raw providers. Raw providers get their videos from sometimes unknown sources or ripped from websites. The videos come in their raw form. Big, cumbersome, ts and with no translations.
-Next come the translators. These people translate the japanese into english or to another language. This takes a few days for veteran translators. And weeks for others.
-Next come the timers. Timers time the subs to the voices and words written on the screen, they do this line by line and by the millisecond.
-Next come the encoders. Good encoders are able to reduce the files to downloadable bite-sized pieces for other convenience while retaining the quality and sharpness of the video. They merge the subs to the raw files to make them hardsubs.

Don't ever forget that these set of people do these for absolutely no money. These people have real lives. They have real jobs or homework or lessons or stuff. They do these for free and during their free time. They don't earn money for subbing these videos. So new fans will do well to abide by the rules of the subbing communities. They are doing these stuff for free the least you can do follow their rules right? by following these communities rules, it shows that you respect them.

To access these files (raw and subbed) you will need to create a lj account. This lj account will be your golden ticket to all the goodies.

When we were starting we were fortunate enough to find a veteran in lj who had like an open community and subbed lots of videos, from there we crawled our way up. To be able to gain access to those veteran and highly respected community, you need to be active in lj. You need to prove that you are not just a leecher and that you are a genuine fan. It's not that hard. Join new fledgling communities for starters, Just a single post once in a while in lj would do, just like what you would normally do in twitter and such.

And if you're going to download a video from someone's lj account or community, it would be common courtesy to thank them in the comment box. This will also help the mods of the lj community keep track of the members.

Once the video is downloaded or you got hold of the download link. Please don't redistribute it elsewhere. If you have a friend who wants to watch the video, tell her of the community where you got it from.

WHY??? Just keep it in mind that basically what these community/individuals are doing here is not particularly legal, and japan's copyright laws are really tight. Communities are already toeing the line as it is and they are keeping these things as closed as possible. Mods and maintainers are always trying to keep things in check. We don't want this to spread like wildfire and we are keeping our head down so as not to attract attention. Redistributing subbed videos to streaming sites or earning money from the subbed videos are not allowed because they might attract attention.

Hell, communities don't ask for money for all their hardworks. Because if things go wrong, you won't be able to watch your beloved boys anymore, not unless you go to japan live there and learn their language. Now some new members might find these stuffs annoying, all these rules and stuff. But don't you think it's a small price to pay for enjoying free subbed videos that's always there?

So our darling new fans we hope we've told you everything you need to know.