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Show HN: SubSync – Automatically download subtitles for your movies

74 points by zerratar 8y ago

some_account 8y ago
A tip if you want easy subs is to use Kodi. It has plug-ins for subtitle downloads so you just start playing the movie and go into a list of subs it found from subscene, opensubtitles or similar. Couldn't be easier.
- zerratar 8y ago
  That is an awesome tip! Thank you.
- ragsagar 8y ago
  Smplayer comes with this feature and it works very well too.
  - zerratar 8y ago
    Nice! I will compile a list later of media players that has this feature and put it on SubSync github so it can help people out as much as possible.
  - heinrichf 8y ago
    So does VLC on Android
  - aorth 8y ago
    So does IINA on macOS!
- setzer22 8y ago
  My user experience with Kodi's plugins was not good. It kept finding subtitles for the wrong episode, or even worse the wrong show. And once I found a decent one I had to manually time sync them almost every time. The thing is I didn't have a lot of trouble manually finding the right subtitles in any popular website, it would be different (i.e. not Kodi's fault) if the data was wrong or difficult to find on the first place. I'll give this a try and see if it performs better.
dale-cooper 8y ago
How does this compare to subliminal (https://github.com/Diaoul/subliminal https://github.com/Diaoul/subliminal)?
- zerratar 8y ago
  I have no idea. I've honestly never heard of subliminal until just recently (yesterday) and I've never really tried it out. But on first glance it seem like subliminal is more for developers in general as it provide apis to use it, it also have a bunch more providers than what SubSync currently have and most likely a much better way for guessing which subtitle is correct. It also seem to focus more on individual subtitles rather than trying to batch download them unlike SubSync. Although they do have support for downloading for a whole folder. How well that works I have no idea. In the end, Subliminal have been in development for over 5 years and has been thoroughly tested. Whereas SubSync was a weekend project I made 2 weeks ago and never meant to compete with anything existing. I only knew I had a problem I needed to solve and wanted to share it with everyone :-) TL;DR: I don't think SubSync offers anything unique over Subliminal at this moment. And if you're already used to using Subliminal you should keep doing so if that works good for you. :-)
  - dale-cooper 8y ago
    Yeah, I didn't mean to discourage. It's a cool project and making your own stuff is fun :)
  - StavrosK 8y ago
    I think the implication was more "why don't you incorporate subliminal support into SubSync, getting the best of both worlds?".
- kaarumantis 8y ago
  Actually, one thing. The idea with SubSync is that you keep it running in the background and as soon as a new video file is added to your library it does look for a subtitle to download. I'm not sure if subliminal has that or if you manually have to tell it to look.
- 8y ago
kawsper 8y ago
I used https://subtitlesapp.com/ https://subtitlesapp.com/ for a while, but I think they started charging for it, so I stopped using any subtitles program. Thanks for giving me an alternative :)
- zerratar 8y ago
  I'm glad you find this useful!
senatorobama 8y ago
Does this sync subs to the audio?
- zerratar 8y ago
  Unfortunately, not at the moment. It would be awesome If I could get that nailed. But that feels like it's a whole project of its own. I'm exploring the idea though and doing some research on how this can be done. So it could be a feature for the future. :-)
  - heinrichf 8y ago
    Someone started such a project here: https://machinelearnings.co/automatic-subtitle-synchronization-e188a9275617 https://machinelearnings.co/automatic-subtitle-synchronizati... https://github.com/AlbertoSabater/subtitle-synchronization https://github.com/AlbertoSabater/subtitle-synchronization
    - zerratar 8y ago
      Awesome findings! Thank you.
  - dale-cooper 8y ago
    I experimented with something related, but instead of fixing subtitles i focused on filtering out bad ones. My approach was: * Extract a few sentences from the middle of the subtitle file. * Extract the audio for those sentences from the video file * Run speech-to-text and verify that at least a few of the words were the same. It kind of worked on some shows, but not reliably..
rutierut 8y ago
For mac you can use FlixTools which is pretty decent
tinus_hn 8y ago
Be aware that this is a legal gray or even dark area, if your product becomes big you can expect to be hassled or sued by the media companies.
- zerratar 8y ago
  Interesting, which part of it? The fact it consumes from subscene.com without asking them or because downloading subtitles are illegal? Reason why I'm asking is because I don't know, and obviously I don't feel like getting in trouble for a weekend hobby project.
  - tinus_hn 8y ago
    In a way there is nothing illegal about offering links to another site. But subtitles are a derivative work of the original text so they are copyrighted and also you typically only need subtitles for movies obtained in a questionable way. So you immediately get involved in legally shady stuff. The main problem is that if you get sued you stand to lose a lot of money, even if you eventually win.
- ensiferum 8y ago
  Nothing illegal about this application.
highmastdon 8y ago
I’m using Media Player Classic with the k-lite codec pack, and there you can press D to download subs in specific languages
junnan 8y ago
I use subdl on Linux, a simple command line tool.
Fnoord 8y ago
Not sure about Plex and Kodi but Emby has a feature to automatically grab subtitles. It can search for the specific release (likely synchronised) or be more liberal with the added risk of getting a subtitle which doesn't sync. I think it uses Opensubtitles, and has no support for a different backend. VLC uses Opensubtitles as well, but requires manual interaction. It can search for hash or name. Both require an account (no API I think). Subliminal you can run in a Docker environment (Emby as well, I suppose same with Plex and Kodi) to continuously grab subtitles for new releases. Ideally, you want multiple providers for this. For example, Subscene and Addic7ed. AFAIK this isn't possible with any of the software I mentioned. What I don't understand (actually, I think I do understand: it is because maintainers of subtitle platforms want to profit via ads) is why there's no incremental databases with subtitles (like we used to have with serials for software, forgot the name) so you can just select it offline. The amount of data is very little because its all text. With some compression and a database to search, it shouldn't cost a lot of resources. You can have a base, and then have incremental updates over that, with rebasing every once in a while. Kinda like HVSC (High Voltage Sid Collection).

74 points by zerratar 8y ago

A tip if you want easy subs is to use Kodi. It has plug-ins for subtitle downloads so you just start playing the movie and go into a list of subs it found from subscene, opensubtitles or similar. Couldn't be easier.

zerratar 8y ago
That is an awesome tip! Thank you.
ragsagar 8y ago
Smplayer comes with this feature and it works very well too.
- zerratar 8y ago
  Nice! I will compile a list later of media players that has this feature and put it on SubSync github so it can help people out as much as possible.
- heinrichf 8y ago
  So does VLC on Android
- aorth 8y ago
  So does IINA on macOS!
setzer22 8y ago
My user experience with Kodi's plugins was not good. It kept finding subtitles for the wrong episode, or even worse the wrong show. And once I found a decent one I had to manually time sync them almost every time. The thing is I didn't have a lot of trouble manually finding the right subtitles in any popular website, it would be different (i.e. not Kodi's fault) if the data was wrong or difficult to find on the first place. I'll give this a try and see if it performs better.

dale-cooper 8y ago

How does this compare to subliminal (https://github.com/Diaoul/subliminal https://github.com/Diaoul/subliminal)?

zerratar 8y ago
I have no idea. I've honestly never heard of subliminal until just recently (yesterday) and I've never really tried it out. But on first glance it seem like subliminal is more for developers in general as it provide apis to use it, it also have a bunch more providers than what SubSync currently have and most likely a much better way for guessing which subtitle is correct. It also seem to focus more on individual subtitles rather than trying to batch download them unlike SubSync. Although they do have support for downloading for a whole folder. How well that works I have no idea. In the end, Subliminal have been in development for over 5 years and has been thoroughly tested. Whereas SubSync was a weekend project I made 2 weeks ago and never meant to compete with anything existing. I only knew I had a problem I needed to solve and wanted to share it with everyone :-) TL;DR: I don't think SubSync offers anything unique over Subliminal at this moment. And if you're already used to using Subliminal you should keep doing so if that works good for you. :-)
- dale-cooper 8y ago
  Yeah, I didn't mean to discourage. It's a cool project and making your own stuff is fun :)
- StavrosK 8y ago
  I think the implication was more "why don't you incorporate subliminal support into SubSync, getting the best of both worlds?".
kaarumantis 8y ago
Actually, one thing. The idea with SubSync is that you keep it running in the background and as soon as a new video file is added to your library it does look for a subtitle to download. I'm not sure if subliminal has that or if you manually have to tell it to look.
8y ago

kawsper 8y ago

I used https://subtitlesapp.com/ https://subtitlesapp.com/ for a while, but I think they started charging for it, so I stopped using any subtitles program. Thanks for giving me an alternative :)

zerratar 8y ago
I'm glad you find this useful!

senatorobama 8y ago

Does this sync subs to the audio?

zerratar 8y ago
Unfortunately, not at the moment. It would be awesome If I could get that nailed. But that feels like it's a whole project of its own. I'm exploring the idea though and doing some research on how this can be done. So it could be a feature for the future. :-)
- heinrichf 8y ago
  Someone started such a project here: https://machinelearnings.co/automatic-subtitle-synchronization-e188a9275617 https://machinelearnings.co/automatic-subtitle-synchronizati... https://github.com/AlbertoSabater/subtitle-synchronization https://github.com/AlbertoSabater/subtitle-synchronization
  - zerratar 8y ago
    Awesome findings! Thank you.
- dale-cooper 8y ago
  I experimented with something related, but instead of fixing subtitles i focused on filtering out bad ones. My approach was: * Extract a few sentences from the middle of the subtitle file. * Extract the audio for those sentences from the video file * Run speech-to-text and verify that at least a few of the words were the same. It kind of worked on some shows, but not reliably..

rutierut 8y ago

For mac you can use FlixTools which is pretty decent

tinus_hn 8y ago

Be aware that this is a legal gray or even dark area, if your product becomes big you can expect to be hassled or sued by the media companies.

zerratar 8y ago
Interesting, which part of it? The fact it consumes from subscene.com without asking them or because downloading subtitles are illegal? Reason why I'm asking is because I don't know, and obviously I don't feel like getting in trouble for a weekend hobby project.
- tinus_hn 8y ago
  In a way there is nothing illegal about offering links to another site. But subtitles are a derivative work of the original text so they are copyrighted and also you typically only need subtitles for movies obtained in a questionable way. So you immediately get involved in legally shady stuff. The main problem is that if you get sued you stand to lose a lot of money, even if you eventually win.
ensiferum 8y ago
Nothing illegal about this application.

highmastdon 8y ago

I’m using Media Player Classic with the k-lite codec pack, and there you can press D to download subs in specific languages

junnan 8y ago

I use subdl on Linux, a simple command line tool.

Fnoord 8y ago

Not sure about Plex and Kodi but Emby has a feature to automatically grab subtitles. It can search for the specific release (likely synchronised) or be more liberal with the added risk of getting a subtitle which doesn't sync. I think it uses Opensubtitles, and has no support for a different backend. VLC uses Opensubtitles as well, but requires manual interaction. It can search for hash or name. Both require an account (no API I think). Subliminal you can run in a Docker environment (Emby as well, I suppose same with Plex and Kodi) to continuously grab subtitles for new releases. Ideally, you want multiple providers for this. For example, Subscene and Addic7ed. AFAIK this isn't possible with any of the software I mentioned. What I don't understand (actually, I think I do understand: it is because maintainers of subtitle platforms want to profit via ads) is why there's no incremental databases with subtitles (like we used to have with serials for software, forgot the name) so you can just select it offline. The amount of data is very little because its all text. With some compression and a database to search, it shouldn't cost a lot of resources. You can have a base, and then have incremental updates over that, with rebasing every once in a while. Kinda like HVSC (High Voltage Sid Collection).