Samurai Champloo »
Torrent / MD5 / AniDB
Note: This is NP-Complete’s second version of Samurai Champloo. The original release’s subtitle track used a font which produced some annoying issues (via lack of punctuation) on some systems. This version includes both the original subtitle track and an alternate track which utilizes a different font and a more subdued color palette.
Source: R1 DVD
Video: VFR, 704×480 Anamorphic, x264 840-1720Kbps
Audio: Japanese DTS 5.1 768Kbps, English AC3 5.1 384Kbps
Subtitles: English, Styled ASS (Two Tracks: Character-Specific and Alternate)
Size: 10.8GB
Encoded By: cestfait
January 1, 2009 5:54 PM Spiricore
Thanks!!
January 1, 2009 10:23 PM cestfait
nice subs, partner!
January 2, 2009 1:44 AM Nite Phire
Thanks. Nice encode, partner. Ha ha…
January 2, 2009 2:19 PM Lemon
great release! thanks!
What other series do you plan on doing? :P ;)
January 2, 2009 2:56 PM Nite Phire
Well, in the immediate future I’ll be doing a few more Ghibli films followed by Serial Experiments Lain. After that I have a long list that I’m not going to divulge yet since it’s subject to drastic change. ^_~
January 2, 2009 10:48 PM SaberBlaze
Thanks for the release Nite Phire. Do you think it’d be possible to also include a subtitle stream with no character-specific subtitle styling? No that there’s anything wrong with them it’s just that sometimes when I watch anime with somebody we prefer generic white subtitles for the most part, but it’s just a minor personal quirk. Thanks again.
January 3, 2009 2:10 AM Nite Phire
I can’t say I’m willing to make an alternate version of the subtitles at this time. If you’d like, you’re more than welcome to open up the files in Aegisub yourself, change the style around a bit, and remux. It’s not too hard. I just can’t say I support it for any sort of official release. I typeset it the way I felt it should be. Maybe that’s a bit close-minded of me, but I’d rather not do the extra work on something I’ve already released for something I don’t personally see as worth it.
That said, I’ll consider including an alternate track in future projects that use character-specific styling (which won’t be all of them).
January 3, 2009 12:07 PM Lemon
I would readily swap my zx Lain ogms for your new encodes ^_^
I am looking forward to all the future projects =)
January 3, 2009 6:51 PM Gumma
Great Release ! Audio and Video are just awesome, really love your work.
However I’ve got a Problem with the Subtitles :( Letters are just working fine, but instead of Numbers and . , ‘ ! and Stuff im just getting these square-shaped boxes where the Numbers and Stuff should be, which kinda spoils the fun watching it, as every Sentence contains some of them :(
The Font you used is called “Babe Bamboo” right ? It seems my PC can’t show Numbers and periods etc in that Font and I dont get why… it wont even show them on Control Panel/Fonts. I know this is not a problem of your release, since its my PCs fault for not showing them, but maybe you guys can tell me why it wont ?
January 3, 2009 8:34 PM Nite Phire
To be honest I’m not entirely sure why it wouldn’t be working. I’d say make sure you have the correct font libraries installed for your operating system. I work a fair bit with Linux and I know that it can have trouble rendering various fonts, but at least on both my Windows and Linux machines this release plays fine. That’s all I can think of really. You could potentially try extracting the font from the MKV and installing it on your system to see if it helps at all. I’m sorry but I really don’t know. :(
January 4, 2009 4:44 AM SaberBlaze
Thanks for the response. Perhaps editing subtitles manually could be something I can look into. I connect my comp to a tv to watch anime, and sometimes subtitles from certain groups’ releases are too small to see from a distance forcing me to sit up closer, so that’s another thing I could take into consideration. Too bad directvobsub/vsfilter is virtually useless at modifying subs on the fly, at least from what I could see. I know I read a post somewhere from someone claiming to have been able to modify vobsub type subtitles (yellow ugly ones) with directvobsub/vsfilter but I’ve never been able to achieve it with any type of subtitles (srt/ass/vobsub)
One last question, I notice the resolution says 704*480 instead 720*480 like some DVD rips. It’s not cropped right? It’s always confusing when people talk about all these resolutions. From what I’ve read, the 720 pixel size came from adding 8 pixels left and right of the screen for broadcasting on a tv or something right? So technically the viewable area is still 704*480 and both resolutions have the same pixel aspect ratio. So it’s better to encode an anime at 704*480 to remove those 8 pixels on both sides? I’m just curious since I’ve seen many anime DVD rips encode at 720*480 and some at 704*480 and some other strange variations as well like 704*384 or 704*400 or 8(something)*4(something). Although I believe some of those have to do with widescreen aspect ratios.
Well at any rate thanks for all your hard work.
January 4, 2009 6:16 AM SaberBlaze
One more thing, although I am far from finishing the download of the torrent, I have enough to preview an episode and can indeed corroborate what Gumma has said about the subtitles, squares appearing where commas and periods should go. So far in the file I tested there was the aforementioned Babe Bamboo font and Ghostwriter font, which I’m assuming is specific to the episode or something. Well, I won’t worry about it just yet until I’m done downloading, but the since the fonts are included in the .mkv files this shouldn’t be a problem.
January 4, 2009 9:38 AM Nite Phire
The 704×480 resolution is indeed from the extra black pixels on the sides. This release, just as all our others, use anamorphic resizing. It’s kind of a soft-resizing that happens at playback to give the correct aspect ratio,and it’s what DVDs use as well. The other resolutions like 704×400 use hard-resizing and end up losing pixels (down-sizing!), which is bad, especially if you ever plan to view the video with any zooming (like with fullscreen).
As for the subtitles, if it continues to be a problem for multiple people after the download is completed, I’ll have to address it more seriously. As for now, I just don’t even know what it is yet that’s causing it yet. Please keep me informed and I’ll do my best to fix it if it is indeed something that’s a serious issue.
January 4, 2009 10:41 AM Gumma
Well, I’m still trying to figure out whats wrong. I googled the Babe Bamboo Font a bit and in fact I didnt find any versions which could display numbers or periods oder commas. And I even read somewhere that this Font only contains 58 Symbols, which would mean that this font doesn’t contain them.
For example on this Site (I hope its ok to post this URL, otherwise just go ahead and delete it):
http://www.urbanfonts.com/fonts/Babe_Bamboo.htm
Usually the “other characters” contain the numbers, periods and commas etc, but Babe Bamboo doesnt. I dont really know what this means, is it possible that the missing symbols are from another Font ?
January 4, 2009 11:16 AM Nite Phire
Well, I just verified that on my computer. The font doesn’t have the other characters. So it would seem that my machines are replacing the characters with those from another (default I would assume) font. What I’m now wondering is why it works on all my machines and neither of yours. Can I ask what operating system/codec/player/etc. you’re using? I’ve tested with Windows XP/CCCP/Media Player Classic, Vista/CCCP/Media Player Classic, and Ubuntu/mplayer.
January 4, 2009 1:29 PM Gumma
Im using Windows XP with SP2, the only codecpack im using right now is the newest version of CCCP and I tried playing the files with Windows Media Player and Windows Media Player classic. So its nearly the same as your System.
January 4, 2009 4:45 PM SaberBlaze
I’m using Windows XP SP2 as well, with the K-Lite Codec Pack. I’ve tested with my two main players, Zoom Player and Media Player Classic, but they display the same result. I also tried VLC, which I rarely use since it’s not a very good player imo, but unlike the other two it did correctly display the “other characters”. I’m not sure why VLC displayed them correctly, it could be because it uses it’s own built-in codecs but I’m not sure why the subtitles would be affected. I didn’t really test much more because it sucks at playing incomplete .mkvs.
I also have Linux installed but don’t currently use it for video playback. If I have some time I might test it in Kaffeine or install MPlayer (I think I have it installed already), but like I said, it’ll probably be a while till the torrent is done.
January 4, 2009 6:04 PM Gumma
I just tried VLC Media Player and I can confirm that VLC 0.9.8a shows the subtitles just fine!
January 4, 2009 6:09 PM Nite Phire
I can’t say I recommend either VLC or K-Lite for normal playback. In this case it may be a workaround though. Again, please keep me informed when you have some complete files to test.
January 4, 2009 7:54 PM SaberBlaze
Well to be honest, I’ve been using K-Lite Codec Pack for as long as I can remember and I never really had any issues. I know that the CCCP is the standard in the anime community but I just prefer K-Lite. I only install what is really needed for playback and not the extra encoding stuff or really rare codecs. Plus some of the tools like “media info” are pretty handy. I pretty much use ffdshow for decoding most things. For something like h264, I use coreavc, which is another good reason why I don’t use VLC.
What I’ve done is upped the download priority of the first episode in my torrent client so it can finish faster, which is probably what I should have done before hand, seeing as how there’s only about 1 or 2 seeders and around 20-something leechers. Mostly likely the results will be the same with a completed file at hand.
January 5, 2009 6:51 AM SaberBlaze
Ok, I have tested the complete file of episode one. Zoom Player and Media Player Classic both display square boxes when commas periods or other symbols should appear.
Here is a picture to illustrate what is shown:
http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/3384/incorrectsubsmy7.jpg
VLC on Windows and MPlayer using the SMPlayer frontend on Linux both display correct subtitles.
Here is the end result (ie, the way it’s supposed to appear):
http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/1826/correctsubsoq0.jpg
I have only found only one discrepancy between VLC and MPlayer, and it is that for dashes, like in “W-Wait”, it substitutes a division sign instead of a dash, as illustrated here:
http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/7223/vlcsubsrz1.jpg
Well, I’m not sure why VLC and MPlayer both display the missing characters, why VLC substitutes the wrong sign for the dash. I can only assume that Zoom Player and Media Player Classic don’t display those characters because those characters are not included in the font. The other two players must be substituting the missing characters from another default font perhaps. Well I hope this information can be of use.
January 5, 2009 9:36 AM Nite Phire
Well, the “division sign” happens to be the hyphen character in the Ghostwriter font that’s used for the ending credit lyrics. So it kind of makes sense that it draws from that. Odd though. I have to say I still don’t understand why my VSFilter replaces the characters and yours doesn’t. I don’t believe I’ve changed any relevant settings from the defaults…
January 5, 2009 6:09 PM SaberBlaze
Well it seems VLC does replace the missing characters with the Ghostwrite font, I just checked and the commas indeed are from that font. So it seems the main issue is VSFilter then. I test the internal subtitle filter of Media Player Classic, and while it still shows squares boxes, and there is nice font style dialog windows where I can change the font. Much more useful then VSFilter’s dialog I should say. Didn’t even know I could change fonts and colors on SSA/ASS with this…
http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/1429/mpcfontdialogal8.jpg
Well, I guess the only solutions are to use VLC, MPlayer (not sure about the Windows version), or use MPC’s internal subtitle filter and change the font. The problem with VLC is no CoreAVC and I believe MPlayer has to be compiled with CoreAVC support. Although I’m not sure why your VSFilter substitutes missing characters Nite Phire when ours doesn’t. I should add that I also test the file on another computer with the same codecs and players installed, and I get the same results. So I don’t know if you want to maybe release a patch that modifies all the files and replaces the Babe Bamboo font with another font? That might be too much work though. Or if a new torrent is made I’m not sure if just changing a font would require to redownload a whole file again or just a specific part containing the font and subtitle files.
January 6, 2009 11:16 PM IGChris
Awesome job! I watched the first episode using Media Player Classic and Vista Codec Package on WinXP SP3 and the subtitles seemed to work perfectly, except, as you mentioned, the hyphen in the ending credit lyrics shows up as a division sign. I probably wouldn’t have even noticed it if you hadn’t mentioned it though. Quite a beautiful encode also. My only complaint, if I have one, is the large file size, but that’s the price you have to pay for such good quality.
January 14, 2009 8:32 PM wat
actually on the vlc pic all missing characters have been substituted with those from the Ghostwriter font.
as for the (presumable) vsfilter issue itself I’m afraid I have nfi what’s going on either. I took a quick look at vsfilter and haali splitter config dialogs and didn’t even really see any settings that should make a difference. – font autoloading in haali input config is the only thing even vaguely related, but it’s on by cccp default and I kinda doubt SaberBlaze toyed with *that* of all things.
so… huh?
January 15, 2009 6:22 PM Foyle
One way to deal with the problem is to change one option in DirectVobSub. Go to General, then bottom part of the window, select DO NOT LOAD in the Loading section. That will make VobSub ignore the embedded font and display the subs with the font of choice (VobSub’s Main tab).
As for the possible v2, I guess patches would be the best way to go. Although that is a lot of work that I am not sure is really necessary :-)
January 15, 2009 10:45 PM cestfait
Subs aside, this may have already been mentioned, but it is not the video that makes for such a high file size. With just japanese stereo, the whole series would be like 5gb. However, the surround sound, especially the japanese dts were huge, and we decided not to compress them. So 200mb of each episode is just the audio… :3
February 8, 2009 5:57 AM Nite Phire
It would seem that what I thought might be a minor and fairly isolated issue is in face rather wide-spread and will warrant a v2 release with alternate subtitles for those experiencing problems. That said, there’s not really an ETA since I’m not at all sure when I’ll get to it.
March 15, 2009 6:25 PM Nite Phire
Okay, v2 released.
March 15, 2009 9:18 PM 138
Thanks.
March 16, 2009 2:19 PM cestfait
I will seed this for as long as possible. Gokurousan!
March 19, 2009 12:36 AM djoes
is the md5 for the older v1 release of samurai champloo?
cause mine doesn’t match with it
March 19, 2009 6:29 AM Nite Phire
Indeed it was the old version up until a minute ago. It’s now updated to reflect the changes in v2.
March 23, 2009 3:58 AM Ego
Any way you can share just the new subtitle files? I’d like to just use mkvmerge, to merge them with my v1 download. I’d hate to have to re-download the whole thing
March 23, 2009 7:51 AM Nite Phire
That’s a good idea. I’m on spring break right now so I don’t have access to all my encoding files that are back at school, but when I get back next week I’ll upload a zip archive with the new subtitles and link it here.
April 13, 2009 12:56 PM Zalsi
Sorry to add yet another complaint about subtitles… I’m glad to see the excellent English audio track included in this release, but why no “Song/Signs Only” subtitle stream to go along with it? I know the DVDs have them. The problem with omitting that subtitle track is that it forces English dub watchers to either:
1) Leave the subtitles off and miss out on “true” episode titles, the ED, and various amounts of onscreen text, which detracts from the viewing experience.
2) Keep the main subtitles on the whole time, which is distracting as there are always some differences between the translation of the Japanese track and what’s said in English.
3) Switch subtitles off and on as necessary, which is a pain.
I know “what’s done is done” and I understand you likely don’t want to go out of your way to release a 3rd version of this series. (After all, there are other releases dub watchers can DL, like E-D’s and a4e’s, that do have both subtitle tracks.) However, I hope you’ll consider including the Song/Signs Only track on future dual-audio releases, assuming one is present on the DVDs.
April 13, 2009 2:08 PM Nite Phire
I’ll take that into account for future releases. There were few enough signs in Champloo that it wouldn’t have bothered me not seeing them while watching the dub (for instance, the way I first watched it on Cartoon Network). But obviously others would prefer to have them, so I’ll try and provide them when they’re available.
April 22, 2009 2:44 AM Ego
Did you ever get a chance to zip up the new subtitles?
May 2, 2009 11:51 AM Nite Phire
Ah, I haven’t yet. Actually though, I’d recommend trying to download the new version over the old one (using a second copy of course do you don’t potentially bork your copy) and seeing if the hash tables let you just do a partial download (for instance you start out at 95% or so), or if it just tells you your data sucks and you need to re-download the whole thing. I don’t have a copy of the old version anymore or I’d test it myself.
Let me know how that goes, and if it won’t just let you do a partial download to patch it essentially, I’ll be glad to upload the subtitles alone, though it might not be for a bit since I’m heading into finals time here at school. o_O
May 14, 2009 4:38 PM omes
hey NPC,
just wanted to leave a shout telling you guys how much i look forward to watching your release of champloo. it’s my all-time favorite series, and i’ve already downloaded and watched most of the encodes floating around out there in search of something better.
looks like there’s a good chance i will really enjoy yours :)
June 8, 2009 2:24 AM Yrael
Just wanted to pop in and say thanksm from what i’ve seen so far this is a great series and that goes for the quality as well, i’m glad i got lucky and found this because all the other versions of i’ve found weren’t that great to be honest they either had stupid watermarks or logos or just were out of sync completely, this one is actually worth my time to convert (hopefully mkv2vob works lol) so i can stream it on my ps3 :)
Ow well enough rambling,
Thanks a bunch Nite Phire
Rock On \m/-_-\m/
July 18, 2009 5:59 PM f
This same encoder did Haibane Renmei, but I can’t find it anywhere. Could you make a torrent here for it?
July 19, 2009 12:23 AM Nite Phire
cestfait’s Haibane Renmei release is currently available on BakaBT.
August 1, 2009 3:16 PM fearamon
hey, about the subtitle issue, so how to correct it?mine still shows those square things.
August 1, 2009 5:53 PM Nite Phire
Watch it with the Alternate subtitle track. It uses a different font which shouldn’t have the missing character issues.
August 2, 2009 3:31 AM fearamon
can it be fixed?cause alternative subtitle looks lame.
August 2, 2009 8:46 AM Nite Phire
Well, if you know how to edit fonts, you can add the missing characters. Otherwise you’d have to edit all the subs to use a different font with otherwise the same styling and remux. It’s a lot of work though.
October 23, 2009 8:49 AM Kuri
Just wondering, are these the official subs from DVDs or from another group?
October 23, 2009 1:08 PM Nite Phire
These are the R1 DVD subs with slight modifications. That statement holds true for all NPC releases unless the release page says otherwise.
October 27, 2009 1:27 PM Napster
One of my favourite anime. Good job.
December 2, 2009 1:17 AM IGChris
So I think I may have figured out the issue with the primary subtitle track. If you don’t want to read my little story, feel free to ignore the next paragraph.
I was recently going through the anime fansubs that I’ve downloaded and was updating them (replacing older series with low quality video with DVD and BR rips, etc.) when I ran across this release (version 1) and noticed that I was having the subtitle issues as many others, even though, as you will see from my above post (from nearly a year ago, wow), I was not previously. When I was looking at some other series, I noticed them having the same issue in places, namely in the JAPANESE CHARACTERS in the op/ed karaoke. I realized that I had probably forgotten to install the Windows East Asian language package, and sure enough, a quick visit to the control panel confirmed this. After a search my windows disc and a restart later, the Japanese characters in the subs were all fine. On a hunch, I checked out Samurai Champloo too, and lo and behold, the punctuation characters were no longer boxes! I did still have the division sign in place of a hyphen in the ending karaoke, however (I still cannot for the life of me figure this out).
tl;dr – To try to fix the issue, install the Windows East Asian languages through Control Panel –> Regional and Language Options –> Languages.
On a side note, Samurai Champloo is being released on R1 Bluray in a couple weeks (http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/releasedates.html). Is there any interest from you guys to do another release using encodes from the Bluray, assuming it’s not just an upscale?
December 2, 2009 1:23 AM Nite Phire
Ah, that explains a lot, actually. The division sign is actually just part of the font. That is, the hyphen looks like a division sign.
As for the Blu-ray release, everything I’ve heard has said it will be an upscale. Depending on the quality though, there’s a small chance of re-doing it anyway, if it’s better than the DVDs. It’s a very, very small chance though.
December 12, 2009 8:30 PM wayland
you might have seen this but there a bluray/dvd comparison at this link http://comparescreenshots.slicx.com/comparison/24906/picture:7
December 12, 2009 11:16 PM Nite Phire
Yep, saw that a few days ago. Confirmed: not re-doing Champloo from that source. Maybe if they come out with a Japanese Blu-ray with a proper remaster, but not from that one.
January 4, 2010 8:51 PM The Sunflower Samurai
Great release. Though, the re-release introduced a new problem. ;)
The fonts “Babe Bamboo” and “Ghostwriter” are not attached to the V2 of episode 26.
April 5, 2010 3:38 AM phun
Could someone please seed this?
I really want to see this! :D
April 27, 2010 2:50 PM T0ST3R
Solved the problem with *boxes* in subtitles my own way – added missing characters to Babe_Bamboo font (I’m not realy sure it’s legal – fell free to delete post if its not =)
http://rapidshare.com/files/380910932/Babe_Bamboo.ttf.html
April 27, 2010 4:22 PM Nite Phire
Oh, that’s awesome! I’m not going to make a v3 release, but hey, at least if I ever want to use Babe Bamboo again (though I doubt it), I don’t have to worry about this issue. Thanks!
October 20, 2010 11:30 PM hplinkett
somebody should seed! i’m 6 episodes in, and this sub rocks. please, help a fellow leecher get his samurai champloo!
November 7, 2010 12:05 PM exodus07
thank you, it’s the best dvd-rip!
November 12, 2010 3:16 PM Luschig
Could somebody please seed? I’m stuck at 99.9 % for a week now. only two pieces are missing.
November 26, 2010 2:02 PM Boba F
Could someone please seed this? I’ve this torrent for weeks now in my client but it never starts…
I’ve heard very good things about this release!
Thanks :D
July 14, 2011 4:50 AM Zazax
Please someone seed ! Thnx :)
November 20, 2011 12:07 PM za decu
Niceblog about cartoons