• Count Regal Inkwell@pawb.social
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    1 year ago

    Finally: ClosedSubtitles

    EDIT: Also, MAN, a lot of straight up bootlicking in this thread. What the fuck kind of pirates are you? lmao

  • Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca
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    Jesus, reading comprehension is hard to come by eh? How have so many people struggled to actually read this?

    They aren’t requiring payment, nor are they requiring you to sign in or create an account.

    They are transitioning from an old API to a new one. The new API (and the site itself) is ad supported and rate limited; 5 downloads per day unauthenticated, double that for a free account, or ‘VIP’ accounts have higher limits and no ads.

    It’s not authenticated access only, nor is it paid access only.

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      “It’s not paid, you can pay by watching ads and get a laughable amount of downloads per day for free!”

      Sometimes you have to cycle through many subtitles to find the right one. They don’t even produce them.

      In the era of VPN, many users share the same IP too. You can reach the limit before downloading anything.

      • Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca
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        In the era of VPN, many users share the same IP too. You can reach the limit before downloading anything.

        Then create a free account and it’s no longer limited by ip and you get double the anonymous limit.

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          There is no need to have an account for that. This is a purely artificial measure.

      • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        How many subs do you download at a time??
        Juat spread it out or cough up some cash … >_>

        • java@beehaw.org
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          I’ve already explained the use-case. Spare me of your “witty” remarks with no value added.

      • iegod@lemm.ee
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        “They don’t even produce them”

        Hosting ain’t free, son.

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      It doesn’t say any of that information about non-VIP accounts, go read it yourself, and the information you quoted about anonymous accounts is also wrong.

      edit: I won’t be receiving any replies from this commenter. If anyone wants to say I’m wrong, feel free to provide a screenshot from the blogpost proving it.

      • Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca
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        Since you deleted the comment I replied to:

        There’s six big ass bold numbered paragraphs detailing the differences between the ‘VIP’ (paid) users and ‘non-VIP’ (free) users.

        There’s also a link to the REST API docs where the first thing it details is exactly how authentication is handled. Specifically: an application looking to interface with opensubtitles will have an api key embedded by its developer and without logging in further will have 5 free downloads/day, that can then be expanded by the end user logging in with their (free or VIP) account.

        That documentation lists anonymous accounts (not signed in as a specific user) as rated limited to 5/day. That doubles to 10 for signed in (but still free) users and grows further with VIP.

          • barsoap@lemm.ee
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            Not really, no. Those keys are more or less equivalent to a browser’s user agent, difference is you don’t choose your own but get them from OpenSubtitles. Motivation probably ranges from “that makes it easy to reject random crawlers” to “we’d like to know the people writing software against our API, or at least have a way to contact them”.

            You’ll also be able to find examples of such keys in repositories in the future in case you don’t want to request one of your own but frankly speaking that’s a dick move.

          • Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca
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            To an extent, but it’s only really relevant to developers. End users don’t see or interact with this at all and aren’t required to provide further info.

            For 99% of people, this change makes very little, if any, difference. The way it’s been worded makes it seem like no one gets to use opensubtitles anymore unless they start shelling out cash.

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        The OP doesn’t, but the REST API Docs say:

        Your consumer can query the API on its own, and download 5 subtitles per IP’s per 24 hours, but a user must be authenticated to download more. Users will then be able to download as many subtitles as their ranks allows, from 10 as simple signed up user, to 1000 for VIP user.

        https://opensubtitles.stoplight.io/docs/opensubtitles-api/e3750fd63a100-getting-started

        Though that’s not fully ‘unauthenticated’, as the above is discussing the use of a developer API key. Though that would be built into whatever app is being used.

        • mateomaui@reddthat.com
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          Except the screencap I provided shows different information, and as you say it’s not in the OP, so there’s still no reason for that guy being a jackass about others being confused about the situation.

    • lemmyvore@feddit.nl
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      Title is a bit misleading. Starting with 2024 the site will be moving to a new API. The payment is too be able to continue to use the old API a while longer (for software that can’t be changed yet).

      • danl@lemmy.world
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        Additionally, it’s just a limit on how much you can download. You can still get 10 subtitles a day for free.

        Your consumer can query the API on its own, and download 5 subtitles per IP’s per 24 hours, but a user must be authenticated to download more. Users will then be able to download as many subtitles as their ranks allows, from 10 as simple signed up user, to 1000 for VIP user.

  • originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com
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    ha, i love how their reasoning tried to not point out the obvious: money

    upgrade to vip for a better user experience! (cuz we made the other one shitty on purpose cuz money)

    im not faulting them for charging a price for a service, just dont blow smoke up my ass for why youre doin it.

    • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPM
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      I’m actually faulting them for trying to make money off a crowdsourced service. They didn’t write the damn subtitles.

      • 7u5k3n@lemmy.world
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        …make money off a crowdsourced service. They didn’t write the damn subtitles.

        Ah the reddit formula

        • FigMcLargeHuge@sh.itjust.works
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          And ancestry dot com. That one still chaps my ass. My mom spent so much time in there adding in her work, and they just fucking locked it one day behind a paywall. Fuck these sites that just take the users hard work and then try and profit off it without announcing that from the get go.

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        This will just create new competition for them. I have been watching anime for several years and never once had to go through opensubtitles. Most releases now have the subtitles integrated so what is the value they bring to the whole thing?

        Edit: I just realized I’m replying the one an only db0, you are the best, cheers!

        • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPM
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          Anime is a different culture. Most non-anime stuff doesn’t have them embedded (especially the old stuff) and it’s still useful for finding subtitles for other languages

        • lud@lemm.ee
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          I use it primarily because the embedded subs are often in vubsub which fucking sucks and can’t be played probably on some devices, they also don’t scale probably.

  • Metal Zealot@lemmy.ml
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    How… how could you possibly start trying to profit off of a major resource for accessibility to movies. That’s scummier than scummy. Fuck you OpenSubtitles, you’re the fucking Elon Musk and Steve Huffman of deaf people everywhere. Get absolutely fucked.

    • FigMcLargeHuge@sh.itjust.works
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      I swear I read a thread here (on lemmy) recently that one of these subtitle sites was embedding ads in the subtitles. Now that takes things even further than scummier in my opinion, especially since subtitles are for availability.

      • JGrffn@lemmy.world
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        I mean I’ve been a pirate for a WHILE and you generally do see ads on opensubtitles subs. Generally it’s opensubtitles saying you can advertise with them, or credits for subtitles that stay on the screen for way too long, but this has been a thing forever now, I don’t recall a time when this wasn’t done.

        I don’t think I can take the moral high ground on it seeing as…well, I am a pirate lol. We out here doing our best to stay afloat, opensubtitles included.

        • Takumidesh@lemmy.world
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          So frustrating when a subtitle ad pops up spoiling that a movie is ending.

          Something dramatic happening on screen and then “you can advertise on opensubtitles” appears on the bottom letting you know that there is 10 seconds left and spoiling any tension or drama in the scene.

        • antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          TBH it’s just simple text files, you can open any .srt with Notepad and edit it to your liking. I always remove those dumb ads at the beginning and the end.

      • Petri@sh.itjust.works
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        Correct. They now embed ads directly into the subtitles. There is a python program to strip those ads out, but doesn’t work with Plex directly. It can be setup with bazarr, but that requires sonarr and or radar…

    • lud@lemm.ee
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      Their website is still free and every legal way to watch movies already includes subtitles.

      • Metal Zealot@lemmy.ml
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        Oh, no harm done then, lets keep allowing every online resource to implement shitty money grabbing tactics

        • lud@lemm.ee
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          It sucks, sure. But it’s been free for a really long time, and it costs money to run a service.

          You can’t really expect that a service will serve an increasing amount of people free stuff forever.

          At least making people visit the site will encourage them to upload and help keep the service up.

          Btw, it’s not expensive and if you think it is. Just use some other service.

          • Metal Zealot@lemmy.ml
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            THEN ASK PEOPLE TO DONATE, how tone-deaf can you be about your own community?? What the fuck do they think Wikipedia is doing?
            I’ve found pirates & FOSS enthusiasts are FAR more likely to donate into something they use regularly and appreciate, this is a blatant slap in the face to those people.

          • Metal Zealot@lemmy.ml
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            This unfortunately helps sets a precedent for what the internet is going to look like in the future. Even the most basic things will be behind a paywall.
            You cant even read a fucking news article from New York Times, who made 173.91 million dollars last year

            • emax_gomax@lemmy.world
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              A lot of things are already like that. IIUC this is restrictions on the API not the subs themselves. If you’d like you can still go to the site to download specific subs. What you can’t do is use bazarr to bulk download subs. Personally I bought vip since I found the free tier API limit pretty bad and I didn’t think the price was so bad for what you get back. Feel free to disagree tho. Before I automated my setup I was just manually searching for subs for movies I wanted and that worked pretty well and will continue to do so if you’d prefer that.

            • lud@lemm.ee
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              News has never historically been free, only recently through the web and founded by ads.

                • lud@lemm.ee
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                  Lots of ads

                  Edit: also tv news is also a new concept.

                • lud@lemm.ee
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                  How much money do you think they would have made if they gave away all their content for free.

                  News is pretty expensive.

              • Spazsquatch@lemmy.studio
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                True, but just look at how much better it has gotten in the last couple decades. Putting the news behind the paywall runs the risk of ending the battle for impressions and might force nuance into well researched stories.

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            But it’s been free for a really long time

            Of course it has. You need to offer the world a useful service for some length of time before you have dominated the market to such an extent that you can cut the quality and jack up the prices without there being any meaningful competition to worry about.

            • lud@lemm.ee
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              You talk like they are owned by some huge corporation and this was their plan from the beginning.

              • kbal@fedia.io
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                So who exactly does own OpenSubtitles Group Limited, and what are their motivations? If you’re claiming to know, I assume you must be some kind of insider? Because they don’t seem to be all that open about it. Otherwise we can only judge by their actions.

                • lud@lemm.ee
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                  I don’t know who they are but it’s quite evident that they at least we’re a very small group in the beginning.

                  I also haven’t seen any evidence that there is an evil corpo controlling them or something.

                  Occam’s razor

        • lud@lemm.ee
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          It’s often more comprehensive than what opensubtitles have to offer. I often struggle to get tv episodes with subs in my native language, but all the streaming services obviously has it.

  • Metal Zealot@lemmy.ml
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    My wife is deaf, and I take this VERY fucking personally. This is predatory to an already (unfortunately) overlooked demographic of movie lovers, I will absolutely rally against this bullshit.

    • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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      I’m not deaf but I fucking love subtitles.

      There’s a lot of mumbly actors out there.

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      My wife is deaf. So subtitles are a deal breaker for any media implementation I implement.

      That is why I pay for open subtitles. I get no ads, continued access after this change and I’m helping maintain a service we use daily.

      • 𝒍𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒏@lemmy.one
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        That is why I pay for open subtitles

        Lost me right here. Personally I’m not ever going to pay for a service where the work done by volunteer users, for free, is filling some random person’s pockets. An argument can’t even be made a la RedHat here - there’s literally no value being added to the volunteers’ work by OpenSubtitles…

        OpenSubtitles literally has pulled a shXtter here IMO

        • thesmokingman@programming.dev
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          What about infrastructure costs? Are you comfortable making someone else pay for your access? What about the design and implementation of the API? Should all software be free?

          Please note that I’m not trying to support this decision at all. I personally feel like API access is similar to SSO for enterprise stuff (check out sso.tax). I also feel like there should be some level of compensation and even profit so people can focus on building stuff like this. It’s really hard to define what that is, especially without transparent costs, which I don’t believe OpenSubtitles shares? Also they use super predatory ads so I don’t think they have any high ground to even suggest what I’m talking about.

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            They host incredibly tiny text files. We are talking in the single KB range. Even serving millions of these a day is minor load to current hosting environments.

            Most modern webpages load the equivalent of 1000s of subtitles to every user on every page load, including small sites like personal blogs.

            I would be surprised if their hosting costs were even in the $1000s/month instead of $100s.

            Thats the likely reason they don’t share the costs. It’s that cheap to run. Even asking for donations might be pushing it. Demanding payment? Bullshit.

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          I’m paying for the fact it’s popular with submitters so has the most subs available (this could change with the recent announcement, we’ll see) and an API that allows automated download of subtitles including matching of the scene file that is being played, supported by Jellyfin/Plex.

          Is there another, free, as popular resource with an API? If so, please share.

        • emax_gomax@lemmy.world
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          No work? They host, maintain and provide access to a massive catalogue of subtitles providing metadata needed for matching media to subs and up until recently we’re giving free access to everyone. Might I suggest if you care about your wife’s access to subtitled movies this much that maybe you should buy the 10 euro per year subscription for her to help keep the platform alive? Alternatively you can find a subtitles group that does all this for free and choose to solely download their subs (also I assume donating to them since you’re so appreciative of their work).

      • Metal Zealot@lemmy.ml
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        you know… most companies include subs in the DVD or file.
        For free.
        You’re paying for a service that should be the universal standard.

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          True, but some scene members strip the subs from the media, although it’s getting rarer these days.

          I also use Bazarr to fetch SDH subtitles which include subtitles for background sounds and the names of who is talking.

          I agree that ideally subtitles should be included on all, but we don’t live in a perfect world.

        • Takumidesh@lemmy.world
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          They often do not include many languages, sure if you want English subtitles it’s likely they will be there. But good luck getting subtitles for movies and shows that didn’t have an official in the given country.

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      Accessibility features are already scarce and paywalling them seems to be a trend that’s going on, like how reddit closed it’s API so blind users couldn’t even use it anymore. The /r/blind subreddit needed non-blind mods because their native app doesn’t support accessibility.

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      Why do you take this personally? Just use opensubtitles.com instead of their old opensubtitles.org?

      They are only changing the old .org API, because they are moving on to their new website and REST API that they’ve been working on for a while. The new REST API is still free for 5-10 subtitle downloads a day.

      Or you can download directly on the website.

  • bogdugg@sh.itjust.works
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    If you’re looking for an alternative, I’ve had luck with https://subscene.com/

    I don’t really know what the best or most popular website is because this one has never really led me astray. That said, I don’t need to use them too often, so your mileage may vary.

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      Am I the only one for whom "open"subtitles.org hasn’t worked in years? I literally cannot find the download button, like in those okboomer memes. Never used the API. Switched to subscene.com and haven’t had problems since.

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      Making a burner account isnt that hard and hardly a shittification in my books.
      Just a measure to ensure the free api access is correctly monetized which is a valid reason for a service to me.

      Would you work for free for your workplace without a compensation beyond a $5 bill and a pat on the back at times because your boss felt generous?

      • Venia Silente@lemm.ee
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        Would you work for free for your workplace without a compensation beyond a $5 bill and a pat on the back at times because your boss felt generous?

        Misleading question. These kinds of communities are volunteer-fed, so you are basically asking me if I would work for free for a charity, which is the point. Things change notoriously when the boss then decides to monetize the entire thing for themself and not for you.

        • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          Well yes.
          I go with the 2nd view because IMO the first option barely applies anymore with the current business course and decision.

  • iso@lemy.lol
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    Subtitles are the easiest material to pirate :) I’m sure they don’t have a copyright either.

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        Yeah probably all integrations are gonna break 😐

        I hate them for injecting embedded ads to subs anyways, so hopefully they ruins the platform more so an alternative can emerge.

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          I was OK with the ads. Just a message before the dialogue and a message after the movie dialogue was over.

          But paying for subs? Good luck.

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      Technically subs are copyrighted as they’re usually ripped from official sources. They’re selling copyrighted content

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    man, they’ve change so much since 2017, where they were giving VIP membership out for free as a Christmas gift. Now they’re making it so can’t access the API for free anymore as a Christmas gift to themselves lmao

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      1 year ago

      Now they’re making it so can’t access the API for free anymore

      No, they’re not.

      They are switching from the old API to the new API. You can pay to continue using the old one, use the new one for free (max 5 downloads per day), or pay for less-restricted access to the new API.

          • rifugee@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            You used to be able to download without signing up.

            Edit: Apparently not everyone is being asked to login like me now. I’m not sure if it’s a regional thing or maybe my VPN is triggering something?

              • rifugee@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Really? Every time I visit, it asks me to sign in. Maybe it’s by region or something?

                • Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca
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                  1 year ago

                  Mind posting a screenshot?

                  I can view opensubtitles.org click on a random title, click download, and a .zip containing an .nfo and .srt downloads no issue.

                  Presumably that’s the old method; there’s also a ‘download (beta)’ button. It puts up a 20sec timer, then lets me click download and lists how much of my quota (1 of 10, not signed in) I’ve used.

                  Supposed to remain free, just rate limited to 10/day.