| 12/9/2011 1:36 PM |
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bammybam
Member since: 9/12/2007 | | Transformers Prime Season One Blu-ray | Glad this got announced.
Once it goes up I'll be preordering it.
I also look forward to finding out the extras.
Are you working on this one Brian? |
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| 12/9/2011 4:25 PM |
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B Ward
Member since: 1/12/2007 | | RE: Transformers Prime Season One Blu-ray | I am, indeed.
Brian
Follow me on Twitter! (@BWard028) |
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| 12/9/2011 11:02 PM |
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Anthony
Member since: 6/20/2007 | | RE: Transformers Prime Season One Blu-ray | | I'm not even happy with this announce! Where the f*@k is closed captions? I've had enough with this bull[shiite]! |
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| 12/9/2011 11:31 PM |
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Deaf Guy
Member since: 8/8/2011 | | RE: Transformers Prime Season One Blu-ray | | I agree! The Shout Factory NEEDS to put the SUBTITLES in each and every DVDs ever released because the subtitles are already standard on most of the DVDs that the other companies such as Sony or Funimation released.
I am the fan of Transformers show and I still can't get what the plot are about when there are no subtitles in it (yep, I am deaf). :( I already owned the first three seasons of Beast Wars, but none of 'em has subtitles in it.
Please, Please, Please, put the subtitles in the DVDs from now on or we deaf people can't enjoy what's going on in the show. |
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| 1/22/2012 10:02 AM |
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Arcee's_boy
Member since: 1/22/2012 | | RE: Transformers Prime Season One Blu-ray | |
I agree, I am very disappointed that Shout Factory continues to release their dvds without captions. I can somewhat swallow the excuse that is given constantly about the cost, etc. On older shows that is, they were never captioned. However shows that have been made in the last few years and ANY show that has been broadcast in the last few years has captions available already. This would include G1 Transformers as the re-runs on the Hub contain them. It is a FCC Regulation that shows must be captioned as well as any video release of material that was broadcast after January 1, 1998. See the link below for the FCC Guideline. If SHout! Factory would include these in their releases they would sell more videos. I know for myself my boyfriend is deaf and I cannot share awesome shows I grew up with like M.A.S.K. and Jem and many of the other amazing shows SHout has released. I do appreciate all Shout! has done to get them out there for the fans but you are definitely neglecting a group of people that would buy your products. Is the cost really that high VS a new customer base that relies on CC?
http://transition.fcc.gov/cgb/dro/captioning_regs.html
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| 1/22/2012 10:09 AM |
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Arcee's_boy
Member since: 1/22/2012 | | RE: Transformers Prime Season One Blu-ray | | Brian can you please tell me how Shout! is getting around FCC Regulation 79? There must be some loophole as the FCC takes this very seriously and can impose heavy fines to companies who violate it. Let me say I am honestly asking the question here and not attacking you or Shout! Factory in any way, just confused as to how. Especially with TF:Prime when it was broadcast with captions that means the captioning has already been done. The captioning file that was used for broadcast should be able to be used for the dvd/blu-ray release. Your insight and comments would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you in advance for your reply.
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| 1/22/2012 5:22 PM |
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FlameStrike
Member since: 4/27/2011 | | RE: Transformers Prime Season One Blu-ray | Obviously I'm not Brian, and I don't work for Shout, but I am interested in the topic as I've had hearing problems of my own, and I appreciate the captions/subtitles on disks that have them. I have looked into things on this issue, and my admittedly limited understanding of the situation is as follows:
1: When I looked over the FCC regulation you posted, I saw nothing that indicates it applies to things like DVD and Blu-ray disks. The FCC has authority over broadcast materials, but not much else from what I've seen. I've repeatedly heard that there is little, if anything, they can do to cable channels for example, and they any compliance of cable channels to FCC regulations is strictly voluntary. If they can't control what's done on cable, I'd imagine they'd have less control over formats that aren't broadcast. I'd expect someone like the FTC might have more authority over DVDs than the FCC, and that's just guesswork on my part.
2: When this topic has come up regarding other shows put on DVD by other companies, I've continually heard that there are no laws requiring DVDs to have captions or subtitles. None whatsoever. Therefore cost tends to be a major factor in the decision about whether to put them in or not. If it's too expensive for the number of sales expected, they won't be included.
3: As far as existing captions go, Brian has said elsewhere that the closed caption format is different for DVDs than it is for broadcast. I don't understand why or how, but then I don't work in that industry so I just have to take his word for it unless I can find something that explains how and why this is or is not true. At the moment, I'm giving him the benefit of any doubt on that. I do know, however, that not all DVD and Blu-ray players will read the closed caption formats on DVDs, thereby making the captions useless for many setups. The way around this is to use subtitles, activated from the disk menu instead of through the TV, which appears to be a completely different format from any closed captioning format. In either case, it seems some kind of format conversion would be required to adapt captions for broadcast into a format that could be used on DVDs, and that costs money. If it's too expensive for the number of sales expected, it won't be done.
My only first hand knowledge is regarding the uselessness of captions on DVD as I've had 4 different setups where I was unable to use closed captions included on DVDs, and only 1 setup that could display closed captions from DVDs. All the setups could, however, use subtitles if they were an option. Everything else I've said comes from following discussions on other websites, about other companies and other shows, on this same topic.
I'd love to find out that I'm wrong in my understanding of these things, and that it is easier and less expensive than I have heard, and that there are laws requiring it to be done. I'd love to have someone here, especially Brian, reply to me and point me in the direction definitive information proving me wrong. Unfortunately, everything I've heard, even from Brian, says it comes down to cost. If it's expensive and/or time consuming, then the cost of the sets goes up. If the cost of the sets goes up, fewer people will buy them, and the company makes less money. For smaller companies, that can make a difference, unfortunately. |
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| 1/22/2012 8:23 PM |
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Shipwreck
Member since: 4/16/2010 | | RE: Transformers Prime Season One Blu-ray | | This show is more than popular enough for subtitles. The main thing that has been stressed in the past by Shout! Factory on past releases that they didn't subtitle is that it wasn't a popular enough show to justify the costs. This one is. If they don't put subtitles on this one, then I don't think we'll see them put on any of their future releases as well. |
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| 1/23/2012 12:42 PM |
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B Ward
Member since: 1/12/2007 | | RE: Transformers Prime Season One Blu-ray | Allow me to clarify this impression. It has nothing to do with popularity. It has everything to do with budget. The cost of captioning is exceptionally high. And the cost of subtitling is nearly twice that cost. As I said in another thread, if we were to caption and/or subtitle all of our titles--despite our desire--we'd be unable to stay in business, unless captioning houses brought their prices down substantially.
FlameStrike, broadcast signals use .CAP files, while DVDs use .SCC files. They are not compatible, in that, the DVD player cannot read the file .CAP and transmit it to your television for it to translate into text. The cost of formatting an existing .CAP file into .SCC file is only marginally cheaper than creating the .SCC file from scratch.
Brian
Follow me on Twitter! (@BWard028) |
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| 1/23/2012 6:50 PM |
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Shipwreck
Member since: 4/16/2010 | | RE: Transformers Prime Season One Blu-ray | | Don't popularity and budget go hand in hand? The more popular a show is, the mores sales it will get, and therefore a higher budget. Plus, you'd get a lot more hearing impaired people to buy your set. Frankly, I'd rather see closed captioning for the hearing impaired than extras on the set that I'll probably never watch and I don't even have a hearing problem. |
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| 1/24/2012 12:36 PM |
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B Ward
Member since: 1/12/2007 | | RE: Transformers Prime Season One Blu-ray | Nope.
Profit and loss are dictated by a number of things, but mostly the amount earned versus the amount spent. If we acquire a show for little money and spend little to release it and it sells well, it can make us more than a show we spent a lot to acquire and produce. So, in some cases, a really popular show will require a high amount to acquire it and a high amount to produce it and, therefore, may be one of our least profitable series. In other cases, a show that costs less, but we feel could outsell a lot of expectations may warrant a higher production budget BECAUSE it was acquired for so little.
Also, I answered this elsewhere, so I'll copy and paste it here:
Sadly, here comes the debate. For you, subs are more important because you'll never watch the bonus material. But for a lot of people who don't use the subs or captions, the bonus material is more important because they want to know how the show was made or they want to see things they didn't when the show aired on the Hub or wherever they saw the episodes. And the bonus material is still cheaper than the captions or subtitles, so it's not even really a question of either/or.
Plus, there are no definitive numbers of people guaranteed to buy the sets just because there are captions or subtitles. People can tell us the estimated numbers of deaf or hard-of-hearing folks in the U.S., but those aren't guaranteed sales when the show comes out on DVD or Blu-ray. Not every deaf person is a fan of Transformers. Not every deaf Transformers fan is a fan of Transformers: Prime. Not every deaf Transformers: Prime fan feels the need to own the set or watch the show anywhere but on the Hub. So we're kinda in the middle of a theoretical quandry. How many more sets do we project selling, due to putting captions or subtitles onto the discs? And how do we know how many sets we sold were to the hard-of-hearing when the numbers come back? How do we validate the costs with factual numbers?
Look, I agree with you. We all do. My girlfriend is practically deaf in one ear and often needs to turn the subtitles on when watching a movie. You think I'm a fan of telling her we can't turn them on on something I produced? So, believe me; I get it. It's just not financially possible when you're talking about a cost of THOUSANDS of dollars to create the files. Honestly, it's not even us and other small labels with whom you should be angry. It's the captioning/subtitling houses that charge a mighty premium not per episode, but PER MINUTE. And until those costs come down or people come to us willing to sponsor those captions/subtitles--because, believe me; we've gone looking for some sponsorship ourselves!--we have to pick and choose carefully.
Hope that helps.
Brian
Follow me on Twitter! (@BWard028) |
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| 1/24/2012 7:30 PM |
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FlameStrike
Member since: 4/27/2011 | | RE: Transformers Prime Season One Blu-ray | Thanks for the clarification. I assume the .SCC and .CAP formats are both caption formats, and subtitles would be a third format? Either way, it clarifies things, and I know from experience that the caption format doesn't work on a lot of setups so I'm not as upset knowing that it cuts costs by getting rid of a format that isn't going to help everyone who needs it anyway.
Knowing that you have to hire the subtitling and how they charge helps me understand why it's so expensive to do it. Just out of curiosity, though, would it be more cost effective to set up your own in-house captioning/subtitling setup as opposed to hiring it out? Or would it not really make a difference due to the costs of setting it up and hiring the people to do the job?
Thanks again for the answers, and for putting out some of these shows that we might now otherwise get on DVD. |
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| 1/25/2012 9:30 AM |
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B Ward
Member since: 1/12/2007 | | RE: Transformers Prime Season One Blu-ray | Correct. If a DVD were to have captions and a Blu-ray, for instance, were to have subtitles, we'd actually have to pay for two separate files to be created from scratch. The .SCC files are not the same files as subtitles. Caption files are rendered through your television, while subtitles are controlled by the DVD/Blu-ray player itself.
Unfortunately, hiring someone isn't really a feasible option, either. The overhead that goes into paying someone to do this on top of the professional equipment and software which is quite a bit more than just a computer sitting on a desktop wouldn't make it any more affordable. When it boils down to it, we're still not a production/post production facility. We're just the producers, who hire the facilities to do the grunt work.
Brian
Follow me on Twitter! (@BWard028) |
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| 1/26/2012 3:08 PM |
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UkyoConvoy
Member since: 1/26/2012 | | RE: Transformers Prime Season One Blu-ray | | I'm surprised that a lot of people are that passionate for subtitals/Closed caption on there DVD's.
To put in my two cents I'm really excited that this is coming to Blu-ray, and while I will be crying tears of twin waterfalls because of the sub titles are missing I am excited for the 15 Audio Commentaries (I have watched 13 seasons of the Simpsons with the Commentaries on as will as all the Futurama eps along with many others). I'm also excited to see the Original Making of Special (as long it not one of those for little kids).
On that note is it possible to get a little more info on the special features? like who's on the commentaries (who from the cast and crew), How long is the Making of special, or any other tidbits to get us excited for the sets release. I really love to here the creative processes of shows/movies from both a writing and film creator aspect.
I cant wait to see the series in Hi-Def and am hoping Shout factory will consider releasing other Hub shows on BluRay as well like MLP, G.I. Joe renegades, and Dan .Vs. (searsouly, MLP:FIM needs to be on Blu-Ray) |
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| 1/26/2012 3:25 PM |
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ILDC
Member since: 12/20/2010 | | RE: Transformers Prime Season One Blu-ray | I think Anchor Bay would have the rights to Dan Vs.
----- Original Post -----
by UkyoConvoy at 1/26/2012 3:08:43 PM
I'm surprised that a lot of people are that passionate for subtitals/Closed caption on there DVD's. To put in my two cents I'm really excited that this is coming to Blu-ray, and while I will be crying tears of twin waterfalls because of the sub titles are missing I am excited for the 15 Audio Commentaries (I have watched 13 seasons of the Simpsons with the Commentaries on as will as all the Futurama eps along with many others). I'm also excited to see the Original Making of Special (as long it not one of those for little kids). On that note is it possible to get a little more info on the special features? like who's on the commentaries (who from the cast and crew), How long is the Making of special, or any other tidbits to get us excited for the sets release. I really love to here the creative processes of shows/movies from both a writing and film creator aspect. I cant wait to see the series in Hi-Def and am hoping Shout factory will consider releasing other Hub shows on BluRay as well like MLP, G.I. Joe renegades, and Dan .Vs. (searsouly, MLP:FIM needs to be on Blu-Ray) |
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| 1/26/2012 3:26 PM |
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B Ward
Member since: 1/12/2007 | | RE: Transformers Prime Season One Blu-ray | You're definitely going to get A LOT of perspective from just about every possible angle on the 15 commentaries, which includes 26 different participants, including voice cast like Peter Cullen ("Optimus Prime"), Ernie Hudson ("Agent Fowler"), Jeffrey Combs ("Ratchet"), Sumalee Montano ("Arcee"), Tania Gunadi ("Miko"), Josh Keaton ("Jack") and Andy Pesosa ("Raf"). There are also producers and key crew members like Jeff Kline, animation directors David Hartman, Vinton Heuck, Shaunt Nigoghossian and Todd Waterman, composer Brian Tyler, art director/character designer Jose Lopez and character/prop designer Augusto Barranco. I don't think there's a single aspect of this production not discussed. And these are FUN commentaries, too.
The original making-of is around 15 minutes, I think. And the toy featurette is also somewhere around 15 minutes or so. Maybe a little longer. Finally, for those joking about the relevancy of the teaser for S2, when S2 will have already begun airing, we think about the BIG picture here. Not everyone watching these episodes on DVD/BD will have seen S2 when it aired. So we're giving them something to tease future DVD and Blu-ray sets!
Hope this helps!
Brian
Follow me on Twitter! (@BWard028) |
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| 1/26/2012 4:57 PM |
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UkyoConvoy
Member since: 1/26/2012 | | RE: Transformers Prime Season One Blu-ray | | I'll be waiting for it's realize. Thank you. |
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| 1/26/2012 9:59 PM |
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Designer
Member since: 11/20/2011 | | RE: Transformers Prime Season One Blu-ray | Would it be viable to let fans volunteer the computing or skill to get it done?
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----- Original Post -----
by B Ward at 1/25/2012 9:30:15 AM
Correct. If a DVD were to have captions and a Blu-ray, for instance, were to have subtitles, we'd actually have to pay for two separate files to be created from scratch. The .SCC files are not the same files as subtitles. Caption files are rendered through your television, while subtitles are controlled by the DVD/Blu-ray player itself.
Unfortunately, hiring someone isn't really a feasible option, either. The overhead that goes into paying someone to do this on top of the professional equipment and software which is quite a bit more than just a computer sitting on a desktop wouldn't make it any more affordable. When it boils down to it, we're still not a production/post production facility. We're just the producers, who hire the facilities to do the grunt work.
Brian
Follow me on Twitter! (@BWard028) |
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| 2/6/2012 6:02 AM |
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VincentVinyl
Member since: 2/6/2012 | | RE: Transformers Prime Season One Blu-ray | | I am from Germany and would love to know if the Blu-ray is going to be region-free? If so I´d immediately preorder it. If it is region A locked, I will not be able to play it :-(. |
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| 2/6/2012 10:26 AM |
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B Ward
Member since: 1/12/2007 | | RE: Transformers Prime Season One Blu-ray | Unfortunately, like most of our licenses, we only have the legal right to sell in the U.S. and Canada, so it is region-locked. I'm sure there's a European DVD/Blu-ray label that would love to get the rights over there.
Brian
Follow me on Twitter! (@BWard028) |
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