

Why do fansubbers merge video and subtitle into one file?

Sometimes its an mkv file and I can just extract the sub.

On some sites they hardcode it into the video frames as image overlay.

This is so silly. Why not just have the one video file which several languages
or translation versions (corrections) can **share** , instead of re-encode and
re-upload? And if someone wants a sub they can download **just** the sub.
Distributing subs must also be easier because the subtitle files are smaller,
so no wasted **bandwidth** , and it might not even be **illegal** to share
just the sub. Plenty of reasons!

Do they have some reason which I do not realize?


CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-07-12T13:24:44.797
34223
2016-07-12T15:46:54.983
2016-07-12T14:43:12.577
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question
anime-production
Why do fansubbers merge video and subtitle into one file?


I'm not sure about the whole scope of hardsub usage, but here is at least one
widely used case:

There are tons of sites where people can watch anime online. And most of these
sites are using really primitive embedded video players, which are usually not
capable of any manipulation with subtitles, like switching between subtitles
of different languages, or even enabling/disabling subtitles. So, the only
viable method to include subtitles in such cases is hardsub.


CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-07-12T14:58:58.227
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2016-07-12T15:46:54.983
2016-07-12T15:46:54.983
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answer