Okay, time for a nice long news post. (Bear with me.)
First, the good news.
We are now releasing the next episode. This is the start of the arc on Long Ring Long Land, or as it is more popularly termed, the Davy Back Fight. You'll find out what that actually means in Episode 208. This arc is a refreshing step back from the epic adventures of Arabasta and Skypiea, but still full of the great elements that make One Piece so enjoyable. The arc will last from Episode 207 to Episode 219.
For those of you who are not yet familiar with this arc, Episode 207 marks the point when One Piece began airing in HDTV (High-definition). Unfortunately for us, the Japanese DVDs which we have been using for our fansub source since Episode... 15 or so? o_O have not transitioned to high definition, and instead chose to crop out a portion of the picture to make the video fit in DVD standard fullscreen resolution, 640x480. The simple suggesion is, of course, use the TV episodes, they're higher resolution right? Unfortunately, no, they are not. The TV raws at the time were not encoded in high definition, and are instead 704x396 (which is closer to DVD standard widescreen, which doesn't sound nearly as cool as HDTV). Pulling out your trusty calculator, you may find out that the normal DVD resolution is actually larger than these widescreen raws (640x480 = 307200 pixels ; 704x396 = 278784 pixels).
That's a whole crapload of words for... we hate Toei.
So, what to do? Do we choose the higher quality fullscreen resolution episodes (FS), or the lower resolution widescreen episodes with additional footage (WS).
[Please note, it is incorrect to call the WS episodes HDTV. They are a gross scaledown of HDTV, a hollow echo of HDTV, an incomprehensibly inferior product to HDTV. It's like calling a kazoo a flute. Or calling Naruto a ninja.]
Well, we have decided that it is in the best interest of K-F to release both versions of the episode. This translates into twice as much work for both our timer and encoder, and I am grateful to both of them for supporting this decision. When downloading from our bots and torrents, the WS label will designate widescreen episodes.
Okay, that's half of the news announcements for today.
That was a lot to read, so feel free to take a break. Grab a cup of tea. Watch the released episode that has probably finished downloading by now. Things like that.
Go ahead, I'll wait.
Okay, and now the bad news. Make sure you're sitting down.
We'll start with the old bad news.
One of our guys who works on the episodes moved his apartment back in early September. He was expecting that the brand new apartment would have Internet capabilities readily available. He was wrong. No phone line was installed in the apartment, and his application for even expensive fiber optic was rejected because of area restrictions. That brought his contact with the group to about 0 for about a month. That was the delay for 206. He has since managed to get in contact through his work connection, but has to keep it to a minimum. Being fired would be bad. It was a huge effort, but with his limited contact, we managed to push 207 out in a little over two weeks.
And please, don't ask if we can do the episodes without him. The answer is no.
So now... the new bad news.
He is going on vacation for a month and a half.
[For those of you who have never experienced the "millions of voices suddenly crying out in terror" thing from Star Wars, that's what it felt like to write this post. >_>]
So, that's the story. He will be taking his laptop with fansub work on it, but no one knows if he'll have Internet access, or even any time to work at all.
The short story is, expect the long delays on episodes to continue through November.
But, the one shining ray of hope at the end of this pity story...
His Internet is scheduled to *FINALLY* be installed from a different company while he is away.
May the Force be with him.
One Piece 207 is now released!
Update 1: It looks like our tracker page is showing 207 WS waaaay at the bottom. If you scroll down, you can grab it. Jakobo will fix that issue ASAP.
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