Earlier this week I got a text from ChibiBoi saying he will now be offering VHS tapes to those who want them. I know he used the word 'trading' on his page but when I talked to him he said he is also willing to do tapes for cash for those who don't have stuff he wants to trade for.
You'll have to E-mail him to work out the details if you want tapes as he doesn't have a "how to order" page up yet.
I'm glad I can now 'pass the torch' to someone better able to carry on fansub distribution. As he is in the U.S. he'll have a better time trying to get a machine fixed if he has to at some point.
As well he has uploaded all his captures to his page on the Internet Archive for those who would like to download them.
Do keep my site bookmarked as I may have information of interest available in future updates. Also the archive of case and label designs will remain here.
Fortunately episodes 106-113 (SMS Vol. 5 and 6) were the last 2 tapes I successfully copied for Chibi-Boi before the machines failed. They had recently been shipped to him and he has received them and he said he would capture and upload them last time I texted with him.
So if this was what anyone was looking for if he hasn't already uploaded them he probably will at some point.
To the person who offered to give me their AG-1980 to get some stuff I do thank you for the offer but the issue that has me shut down right now goes beyond simply equipment. A big part of why I haven't gotten my newest machine repaired yet is it would be going over the border and there would be potential customs issues. Plus Southern Advantage only ships FedEx so I'd have to go to the FedEx facility to pick it up or send it to a UPS store I use for the few things that don't ship post office, both of which are further than Station Main. Plus it's winter now and I literally can't get anything home that's too big to carry while walking. (I don't drive and the pool of people I can get rides from has shrank over time.) If it was summer anything too big or fragile to strap onto my bike basket with bunggie cords I'd have to find a shopping cart and push it home in that. (Works pushing home from Station Main but the FedEx facility or the UPS store are both too unreasonably far to do that.)
I literally stock my house with supplies before every winter so I don't have to grocery shop over the winter. Since I have a job that smears out over 6 days of the week all my free time in spring, summer and fall seems to get soaked up getting ready for winter then all winter I'm mostly stuck here shoveling the snow around my house constantly. (This is "Winterpeg, Manisnoba" after all.)
This leads me to the other reason I don't want to make promises about fansubs right now, since the tapes and equipment are all so old now even if it is working I have to babysit it while it's running then rewatch the whole tape made making sure it came out OK before shipping. In the old days I could start it up, go do something else, then when it's done maybe do a spot check at best. Since the process takes up much more time now when free time is more limited it's better to stay closed down for the moment than take orders that could drag out longer than expected. To the person who offered to give me a machine even if it was the season where I could get it home I'd be afraid it would fail before I finished your stuff then you would have shipped it and still not gotten what you wanted. I try to make sure I can keep any promises I make.
Also the machine I bought 6 years ago has barely been used so at least I know the heads are good, just maybe some belt or something needs replacing because of sheer age. So when I finally get the chance to do it shipping it off to Southern Advantage for repair is probably the best option since they specialize in these machines and would be most familiar with them. This would be better than someone else giving up their machine and sending it. (Just all the transport/customs issues would be the same.)
Also I am literally running out of space to put things in here, better to have something I already have fixed than have another thing here from a space occupied point of view.
Since then the record deck I was using is refusing to eject tapes so even when I get the AG-1980 fixed I could only capture not record until I also get a second machine fixed.
Finally, COVID is still running. It would be nice if we could just starve it of new hosts instead of the current policy of pretending it's over when it's not. I'd also be a bit less reluctant about going places and getting things done if we could finish this thing off once and for all. Right now I either bike or walk or I don't go anywhere as I'm not getting on a bus with this thing still running.
So right now it's more important to focus the trips out that I do make (when the weather co-operates) on the essentials to ensure I have enough food and other supplies to get through each winter rather than hobby stuff.
It would be nice if the anti-maskers would all disappear... -_-
My play deck (the AG-1980 I bought about 5 years ago) is making some noises then spitting tapes back out each time I try to put a tape in so I have no ability to copy tapes at the moment.
This also means the capture project (which isn't very far along because I've otherwise been so busy) is on hold as I can't play stuff to capture it.
I do not know when I will be getting the machine fixed as it's hard to get stuff in and out of here until spring. I don't know a good repair place here in Canada and there would be a lot of customs issues going both ways sending it to Southern Advantage for repair. (Even though they are probably my best option as they specialize in these types of machines.) A few pages on the Southern Advantage site seem to be not loading so I'm not even 100% sure they are operational or just the remnants of their web site are hanging on. Hopefully everyone there is still alive and well. Also COVID throws a lot of monkey wrenches into things... -_-
On the plus side I'm still alive and avoided COVID so far.
Which reminds me...
Everyone, do everything you can to impair the spread of COVID! Go above and beyond any local health orders and stop every possible transimission of it.
Drive this virus to extiction by denying it the opportunity to spread!
We are humans, we are supposed to be good at making things extict! ^_-
Get the vaccine to protect yourself in the short term (some protection is better than none) but understand that in the long term bigger picture the vaccine might slow down COVID but that only buys us a little time. We need to throw everything we've got at this thing to end it! Don't have friends over, shop bigger each trip so you can shop less often, work from home if you can. Wear a mask when you have to go out for essential reasons. Really if everyone got their house stocked enough and most people stayed home for the same 4 weeks (and essential workers that had to go out to keep things like power, water and communications working keep as much distance as possible from one another) we could have this thing over. (As in we even close grocery stores for those 4 weeks.) If any of you reading this have any political pull now is the time to use it. ^_-
Really this is another reason I'm holding off on getting the VCR repaired, with Omicron variant running wild and the vaccine being less effective (but still somewhat effective) I don't really think additional trips out to get a VCR repaired are anywhere near 'essential' so I'm hoping to wait until things look better before I deal with that. Hopefully I'm not waiting for a time that never comes.
Let's all try to get along and survive this thing.
OK, back to fansubs...
Once I do get the machine repaired I will probably not take tape orders unless/until the capture project is completed as my experience over the last few years is people periodically asking about tapes then I never hear from them again or them asking if I can do it cheaper. This leads me to believe most people asking simply can't afford tapes and postage never mind the cost of maintaining a pool of antique VCRs. Basically play it once to get a file that can be viewed by many will be a higher priority than doing copying so a tape can be viewed by one. Especially since this has no hope of being self financing like it used to be, this was a different game when the people getting tapes all ended up financing a bit of the equipement that kept this thing going.
Whatever happens this site will remain up as long as I'm alive so those who want the case and label designs will still be able to download them and anything that you might find useful (like links for example) or amusing (like my page toppers collection) remain online.
I am 50 years old and have no known health problems beyond needing periodic chiropractic adjustments so I hope to be around for a long time. But what I've been seeing over the last almost 2 years has me a bit concerned how long any of us will be around. Also my only excercise right now is the weekly walk to the chiropractor and Post Office (a few blocks from each other) and shovelling snow on my own property, in the long term that isn't good. I would like to get back to a gym again at some point. So once again lets get COVID over so I can be around a long time to get things done.
Also I have an other mail order endeavor. Click on over there if you need some high quality T-shirts, that is still running. ^_- Yes, I know I need to update that page, I just haven't been active about promoting it since COVID hit here within a few months of it launching and it's been busy at 'hourly job' (which I can fortunately do from home) so T-shirts have been on the back burner for a while like fansubs have.
Sorry about the delay with the video capture project, Windows Movie Maker proved to be not frame specific so it's rather useless for 'restoration work'. I now have to start over and learn Adobe Premier Elements so the project is now pushed back until I can dedicate a full day to learning enough to get started.
Once I get the hang of the new program I can get some stuff captured and cleaned up. I'll let you guys know once progress has begun.
Sorry about the server outage Thursday night/Friday morning. When this kind of thing happens you can often find out what's up by checking my server status page. (It is a redirect by EasyDNS to a section of my Yuku board so it is not affected by problems on the moonie.ca server. ^_-)
A few days ago I renewed the fansubs.ca domain all the way out to Nov. 15/2026!
The bigger news is that I have aquired a ***BRAND NEW*** AG-1980 that arrived last week. Also earlier in the year I put together a Windows 7 computer with a capture device so I can now capture the fansubs.ca collection and make it available by torrent.
The plan is to start out using an open tracker but I do want to upgrade to actually running my own at some point.
Unfortunately due to the current licensing status a lot of subtitled Sailor Moon will have to be held back from release until those licenses expire however there are a bunch of things like fandubs, my odds and ends collection and AMVs that will be amoungst the first materials released. (W.G. in HI, if you are reading this that non-anime thing I taped for you will be high up the capture priority list. ^_-) Then I'll move onto other fansub series that weren't licensed.
Some things will be delayed in release if they need "restoration work" as I'll need to use something a little more precise than Windows Live Movie Maker. (It's a handy tool but it's not "frame specific".) I'm already consulting with Tim Park on some better options.
I've set up a thread on my YUKU discussion board where I'll be posing questions to the crowd both to get advice and where you'll have an opportunity to make suggestions about what you'ld like me to prioritize for capture. There may be some techinical decisions where I'll want people's feedback. If you used to have an Easyboard login it may still work on Yuku but if not you can register, it's free to do so.
Also I'll be setting up 2 mailing lists.
One will be a notification list where I'll make announcements when I have a new release available or other general fansubs.ca news. Unlike the old Studio Chikashitsu mailing list this one will be BCC instead of CC. Like the old Studio Chikashitsu mailing list it will be manually administered by me. (I can't just use the old Chikashitsu list even for an initial mailing because it was lost when the 486 died and it could take quite some time to go through a 2 foot stack of old paper orders, besides that a bunch of people probably don't have their old E-mail addresses anyways. ^_-)
The other will be the "torrent team". This will be a mailing list for people who are ready to help with seeding requests. One problem that happens at a lot of torrent sites is that after the initial interest dies down eventually there is a point where nobody is seeding but you don't really want to seed forever if you are the last person that was on the swarm because it takes up a certain amount of processing power and you need/want to use your computer for other things. My solution is the torrent team mailing list. With this mailing list there will be an e-mail address in one of my domains posted on the fansubs.ca web site that will automatically forward to the memebers of my torrent team. (I will periodically change the 'input E-mail' to keep it from catching too much spam. ^_-) That way if someone wants to download but there are no seeders they can send a message to the list then wait for members to come on to seed that torrent. The plus side for the last guy in the swarm when a torrent dies down is that you don't have to stay seeding into the void when nobody is downloading just waiting for a downloader to show up to do your fair share of uploading so you can pass the torch, just join the torrent team and you'll be notified of when your help is needed.
More specific instuctions to users will be posted when it goes live and I have an actual torrent online. ^_-
If you would like to be on either the 'notification' or 'torrent team' lists or both drop me an E-mail (or AIM message for a faster response) and I'll add you to the appropriate text file.
If anyone ever wants to be removed from one or both of the lists drop me an E-mail (or AIM message for a faster response) and I'll remove you.
If you are about to lose your E-mail address please try to let me know to take you off ahead of that as some bounce messages aren't too clear about which address is invalid. (There was an incident back when I had the Chikashitsu list where I had to break the mailing list into groups and send a bunch of test messages to figure out who's E-mail was bouncing, that was a bit of a pain for everyone. ^_-)
Finally I'd like to thank:
I'm looking for new video heads for an AG-1980, according to the service manual the part number I need is VXP 1537 Upper Cylinder Unit. The Panasonic Parts site and a few others suggest VXP 1750 as a substitute part.
The problem is nobody ever stocked the part and just drop shipped or re-shipped from Panasonic Parts as needed so when Panasonic stopped supplying them to their authorized distributer they become unavailable anywhere.
Places I've established I can't get the part are:
So if anyone out there knows of a local repair place that actually stocked parts instead of ordering as needed that has a left over VXP1537 or VXP1750 or knows of a 'part scalper' that bought a bunch while still available and is now selling them at a mark up or if there is a company making compatible 3rd party replacement parts let me know.
Also if anyone is by some chance personal friends with the CEO of Panasonic please try to convince them to resume production of parts for the AG-1980. ^_- Even if I get my stuff captured to computer I'll probably be finding people with old tapes they want captured for years after so keeping some of these machines running forever really is needed now that there is no 'new' equipment available.
Yes, I know I should be capturing my library to the computer and will be looking around for the best capture device I can get to do so but even at that I'd prefer to do so with a machine with the best possible video heads and/or other parts to maximize video quality.
I really wouldn't want to send the work of transfering tape to digital out to be done because of the risk a multi-person organization might loose my tapes, some of which are the best or only known copy in existance. (There is a reason fansubs.ca has mostly been a 'one man show'. ^_-) Seriously 2 members of HMTV contacted me about getting their videos back because they've lost their tapes! Unfortunatley I can't yet accomodate them because I haven't set up capture capability yet and they no longer have VCRs so they couldn't use a VHS or SVHS tape.
As for everyone who wants DVDs, since I don't have a capture set up I can't do that yet unless it's one of the few things I already have on a DVD. (The one DVD order listed on my stats page was for a copy of 3 of my Japanese region 2 Wedding Peach DVDs.) Even those I need to do a Windows re-install first, computer is getting a bit slow because it's been a few years since I last did a re-install.
Good news, Chibi-Boi has completed the remainder of the Sailor Stars labels and I've finished the matching cases. They are now up for download on the case and label page.
If any of you were here earlier in the day you may have noticed the server was being worked on. I was able to pull backups and figure out what else needs to be done but at some point there will have to be annother day offline. The next server maintenance will be to do a re-install of Windows. I'm not 100% sure what day it will be done yet but updates will be posted on my message board. A quick way to jump to it is at http://status.moonie.ca. Most web and FTP hostnames in the moonie.ca and fansubs.ca domains will be affected by the server maintenance window.
E-mail was unaffected as it is outsourced to EasyDNS.
First off I finally got off my butt using the Victoria Day holiday to finish the Sailor Stars Vol. 4 case and upload it along with Chibi-boi's labels for Stars vol. 4.
My order stats have been updated. Total tape copied are up in 2013 over 2012, though it was all for one guy. Hi Nelson. ^_-
I've also updated the U.S. exchange rate for this month. Your U.S.$ will (for now ^_-) go a bit farther. See lower on the page for that.
I'm a bit skeptical about the 'all 200 episodes' claim as fandom has been lied to before. I still remember ADV burning us with 'all of Sailor Moon R' that was missing episode 67. That derailed fansub efforts, had we know Studio Chikashitsu could have done one final tape with episode 67 so people would have the complete season when the ADV DVDs came out. Instead they made us wait until they released packaging designs and a sharp fan noticed the discrepancy. -_-
The upcoming Viz Media release may result in my distribution of certain forms of Sailor Moon being suspended during their license and release period to avoid competing with the new commercial release. It may be unnesseccary if they follow the lead of other recent releases (like the re-release of Fushigi Yuugi) and price it low enough that it's cheaper than fansubs anyways. In that case I could continue to offer them to the 'hard core' collectors who want all versions without causing them any competition.
Either way I plan to outlast whatever their license period is and return everything to distribution afterwards. Just this time I'll try to do it quicker than I did after the ADV and Pioneer/Geneon licenses lapsed. ^_-
Of course since they are doing a new dub I will likely continue to offer the previous dubs to people who also want to see the older versions. (The same goes for the few fandubs I have. ^_-) There should be a whole new generation of fans now and some of them will get curious.
Besides that you never know if Viz Media might be members of the conspiracy and try to depict the two cousins as lesbians when they get to the 3rd season. ^_-
Either way when I formulate my policy I'll post it here.
If someone from Viz Media is reading this page before I do a policy update and you want me to pull anything from distribution that's 'too similar' to your offering drop me an E-mail (from your company E-mail address so I know it's not a fake from some guy using a disposable E-mail from one of the free E-mail services ^_-) letting me know what you want pulled.
If you have a newsreader and a different usenet server you can use the group can also be accessed without Google Groups. Just Google Groups is the easiest way to read and post and also has the longest archive of old posts.
If you don't know what Usenet is you can check out the Wikipedia page. It was the main way almost any topic was publicly discussed on the internet before proprietary message boards became common. It even pre-dates the World Wide Web and was still a stong presence when I first got internet access. (Nov. 28/1997) since Google makes it easy for you I figured I'd give it a plug, ^_-
This has a few more items than on my old Autobahn site as I found a tape with some RendeCo Anime Music Videos on it as well as a few other odds and ends.
I've also made a few minor revisions to the how to order page today.
I've put the cases and labels for all of SMR up on the case and label page now so I don't forget to do it later when the final version of the fansubs are completed. Also things like episode names are known at this point so I was able to finish the graphics work off on the cases.
I've now set up separate pages for links and contact info, both are linked to on my miscellanious page.
If you read this after that date please AIM or E-mail me for the current exchange rate if not paying in CDN$.
I'm also flexible about accepting other major currencies so contact me for details if you'ld like to pay annother way.
Sorry, I can't currently accept PAYPAL because of Wells Fargo bringing in new monthly fees I closed the bank account I had attached to PAYPAL thus have no way to get the money out of the PAYPAL system currently. I'm not willing to attach my other U.S. bank account to PAYPAL due to PAYPAL's lack of human staff. If their system ever goes wonky I want to limit the damage they can do because I know there are no people there to fix it. This I won't be able to fix until I get down to the U.S. again and am able to open a new checking account that I can use as a 'financial firewall'. ^_-
If you should for some reason find any licensed anime listed on my anime lists contact me by AIM (preferably) or E-mail to let me know:
Also if you remember me having something that's missing from the list but you think isn't licensed let me know, I may have removed it accidentally or might have simply missed it in the shuffle.
I still have quite a bit to go on catching up on people that have E-mailed me over the past few years during my "E-mail Dark Ages".
On the good side I've been able to retain the old Autobahn Access E-mail address through an arrangement les.net made with prairie.ca. (Though most of you should be using the moonie.ca address by now unless you haven't been here in a long time. ^_-) I will be checking both on an ongoing basis but the moonie.ca address is preferable for all future use.
The downside is that there has not as of today been any arrangement made to make the old member web space URLs available for rental so if you are wondering where any web page that used to start with...
http://members.autobahn.mb.ca/~glenap/
or
http://www.autobahn.mb.ca/~glenap/
...went you can find the correct re-director (or in a few cases legacy graphics that weren't included in the new site) by substituting that part of the URL with:
http://www.moonie.ca/autobahn/~glenap/
If you or anyone you know have a link on your site to one of my old Autobahn web pages please update them.
Also since my main E-mail terminates at an Easymail mailbox now staying entirely within the EasyDNS network instead of EasyDNS forwarding to Autobahn I've noticed E-mail coming in quicker and more reliably, at least from most of the internet.
Any left over money (after materials and postage) from your orders as well as any 'tips or bribes' will go back into fansub distribution operations. Things I would like to do as money becomes available are get the 3rd AG-1980 and my Sony VCR repaired before it becomes impossible to have them repaired. (I had to run around a bit to find the place I got the AG-1980 fixed and parts will become scarce over time.) Other things that would be important would be to get a decent capture device to preserve my anime library in digital form. The main impediment over the last few years has been available funding as I don't have a lot of money of my own and fansubs has been less 'self financing' over the last few years as postage rates have increased and my distribution volume has shrank.
I'll only be offereing NTSC (North America/Japan) format tapes from here on in as I no longer have the economies of scale to bring back PAL (Europe/Australia) format conversion capability. The history page now has an explanation of the debacle that lead to discontinuance of tape format conversion.
So the end result is that I do have in good working order a SVHS deck to play tapes and a machine to record them.
So if there is something you want go ahead and get the tape. Ironically it's the limited demand for VHS that makes me doubt how worthwhile it is to put the resources into any kind of physical media in the age of Bit Torrent. (Also distribution no longer throws off the cash flow to pay for it's own gear so I'm limited by my own funds. ^_-)
Gotta Book It!
Signed:
That stuborn old VHS distro that won't go away. ^_-
(Counter was at 6224 as of Dec. 24/2007 when all Autobahn pages were re-directed here)