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Question: How can I play back your videos?

Answer: For people using Microsoft Windows or some version thereof, we highly recommend you install CCCP (Combined Community Codec Pack) which you can find at http://www.cccp-project.net  CCCP has everything you need to play back a wide variety of video formats, including our files. Included with CCCP, is the Media Player Classic - Home Cinema media player software.  CCCP, once installed, will work with a variety of media players, so you can use your favorite media player if you don't like Media Player Classic, assuming it supports DirectShow.  For further information, please visit the CCCP website.
 
For Mac users the only answer I can think of is VLC
 
For Linux users (yes i forgot the GNU PART oh well) Hopefully you should have a favorite player by now. Personally I am always switching between mplayer mplayer2 and now mpv-player
 
Another alternative you can consider is the VLC media player, which supports a variety of platforms, including Windows, OS X, and Linux. This player comes included with all required codecs and does not require a separate codec pack installation.  It can also be run from a  Flash or USB drive and can be configured to run without an "installation".  This is handy for those who are using a shared or public machine or who lack Administrator privileges to install software on the machine they're using.
 

Question: What does 8-bit and 10-bit video refer to and what's the difference?

Answer: Many .mkv files are encoded using h.264, which is a video compression standard.  The standard defines 21 sets of capabilities, which are referred to as "profiles" that are meant for different classes of applications.  10-bit video uses a profile (known as "Hi10p" or High 10 Profile) which uses 10 bits of information rather than 8 bits of information to represent the color of a single pixel in the video you watch.
 
 10-bit video offers two main advantages:
 - A smaller file size (generally speaking).  The reason for the smaller file size is due to the lower bitrate needed to maintain the same video quality as an 8-bit file would.  The actual explanation is a bit more complex but this is the basic idea.
 - Reduced color banding.  Color banding is when a "stream" of a certain color forms noticeable "bands", instead of forming a smooth color gradient.  For example, instead of a smooth color transition from red to black, where the color can be seen to become gradually darker it instead forms a band of red, a band of darker red, then a band of black.  10-bit reduces banding, resulting in smoother gradients.
 
 10-bit video also has one major and some minor disadvantages:
 - 10-bit video playback uses more system resources, so this means older system hardware, i.e. any CPU older than an Intel Pentium 4 or ~2006/2007 Celeron or Pentium Dual Core as well as the first generation Core 2 Duo CPU's clocked at lower speeds (especially laptop CPUs) may have performance issues playing 10-bit video at higher resolutions (720p or more).  Newer Intel Atom CPU-powered netbooks may also suffer from performance issues when playing 10-bit video at higher resolutions. 
     - Currently many devices lack official compatibility/support with 10-bit videos, such as some smartphones, video game consoles, and many older and some current hardware media players (i.e. WDTV Live).
 

Question: Why can I play 8-bit video files but not 10-bit video files?

Answer: Currently many devices lack official compatibility/support with 10-bit videos, such as some smartphones, video game consoles, and many older and some current hardware media players (i.e. WDtv).  If you are attempting to play a 10-bit video file on a computer, you may want to check that you have the current version of the media player you are using and an up-to-date version of the codec packs for use with your media player.  We suggest using the CCCP / Media Player Classic combination as described above.
 

Question: Which formats do you offer us and how do I know which is the best for me?

Answer: We currently offer 10 bit MKV softsubbed, 8 bit MP4 hardsubbed and AVI. AVI is in 480p rather then 720p, it will save you hard disk space but this comes with a noticeable difference in quality. Depending on the size of your screen, if you want to play our videos on a device such as a phone, psp or other media devices with, in terms, a smaller screen, you might want to go with avi. In case you're planning to play our videos on a TV, we would advise you to download our MP4. For playing on a normal PC we would advise you to use grab the MKV.

Question: Why are the karaoke effects and logo hardcoded in the videos?

Answer: Subtitles can usually be soft subtitles (subtitles are included in the container file but are separate from the video) because not much processing power is required to display text.  For things like karaoke effects and logos, however, certain effects can only be achieved with multiple layers or with other CPU/GPU intensive processing.  As such, slower machines may experience lag, frame skipping, or other unpleasant effects as a result of the extra work the CPU/GPU has to perform to display the karaoke effects accurately.  Thus, it is easier for karaoke effects and the logo to hard subtitle (karaoke and/or the logo are encoded directly into the video and can not be turned off) so that everyone has a uniform experience when viewing karaoke or other effects that might otherwise cause unpleasant side effects on certain machines.
 

Question: I am tired of visiting your website. Can I automatically download only the series I want?

Sure! You can do that on any number of torrent trackers that have RSS feeds. Let's pick nyaa.si as an example (but you're welcome to use your tracker of choice).

Navigate to https://nyaa.si and put in the terms you'd like to search for. Let's say we want all of our releases of "Series X." You can type in the search box on the upper-right "Hatsuyuki Series X mkv" and then click on the search button. Review the results meet what you were expecting, and then click on the RSS menu item over to your left and the resulting URL is what you can use in your torrent client to get the latest releases that meet your criteria.
 

Question: I want to join your group. How can I join you?

You can contact us on our IRC channel on the Rizon network by clicking on the IRC menu item above, (#hatsuyuki on irc.rizon.net), or you can email us at hatsukiyuki @ gmail.com and we'd be happy to discuss it with you!
 

Question: How do I download via IRC?

You can download our releases via IRC as well. Some users have graciously allowed their computers to be used to host our releases on what are known as IRC bots. There are a variety of IRC bots that idle in our channel (as well as other channels, like #nibl and #news to name two other channels which have a large number of bots) which you can communicate with to request files to download.

If you're connected to the #hatsuyuki channel, you can use the commands "!find {keyword(s)}" or "!search {keyword(s)}" to search for a particular release to see if any of the bots in our channel have it available.  So if I wanted to seach for episode 10 of the show Masked Rider, I would type in "!find Masked Rider 10" and the bots would reply to you with information if that bot had the release and what you would type to get that release.

Just a note that you must have an IRC client installed on your computer to receive files via IRC. If you log into our IRC channel from our website, you will not be able to download files. Likewise if you connect to our IRC channel from the www.mibbit.com website, you will not be able to download files. Please check here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Internet_Relay_Chat_clients to find an IRC client for your operating system.

Our friend Kaitou[Kid] made a nice guide how to download from IRC (also known as XDCC) that you can find here.

 

Question: Will you do the show "insert the name of your show here"?

We consider every request we get from our fans. However, often due to lack of staff or lack of interest in a given series, we are unable to work on all shows that may be requested or even all shows we might want to work on. We usually announce our plans for what shows we will be working on for an upcoming season prior to the start of that season. So if you don't see the show you want listed, sorry about that and better luck next time.

 

Question: Will you do a batch of every show? What about Blu-ray's?

Batches and Blu-ray's totally depend on the staff, mostly on the editor/encoder. We do not promise to do a batch of every show. Sometimes (depending on the editor) we check all the scripts and fix mistakes we made in the weekly releases and sometimes we just grab all the episodes and release as a batch (again, this depends on the staff). 

Blu-ray's will depend mostly on the encoder. We will announce it somewhere if we're going to do blu-ray's of a certain show. In Blu-ray's you'll not get a SD release from us. The only case when we consider doing this, is when the show has heavy censoring in the TV show which are gone in the Blu-ray's (as in To Love Ru: Darkness for example).

Note: If we're doing Blu-ray's of a show, it's very likely there won't be a batch of the show. Maybe at the end of the Blu-ray's we'll give a Blu-ray batch, but there's a small chance we will release a TV batch.

 

Question: How can I offer feedback?

The best way to offer feedback to visit us on IRC at channel #hatsuyuki on the Rizon IRC network (#This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).

You can send an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. however we check that infrequently so we may not get it in a timely manner.

Also our SEO (that nice url layout at the top of the website) has been acting up. Please contact us if you run into any website issues.

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