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Saying Goodbye to OpenSubtitles.org API
- elmerfud 3y agoSo long and thanks for all the fish.
- pca006132 3y agoNice, so now we have OpenAI and OpenSubtitles that has 'Open' in their name and not open :)
- em-bee 3y ago"open" as a term has been abused for decades. anyone remember X/Open?
- dragonwriter 3y agoShame on X/Open for using “Open” but not in the OSI sense... 11 years before the OSI existed.
- gumballindie 3y agoA classic tactic used by conmen. Make the victim trust you, then snatch their belongings. Easier than open confrontation.
- b112 3y agoWell, imdb.com did that without open in the name. Its entire initial database was crowd sourced, end users entering in data about movies, series, tv shows, basically it was wikipedia like. Then one day it said "oh, so sorry, now this is commercial"
- sumtechguy 3y agoAlso wasnt CDDB also the one where basically we ended up with creative commons license? The basic problem though is servers cost money and time to run. No one really wants to pay much for it. So these sorts of metadata sites come and go because they end up as the destination for popular 3rd party items to basically harvest their data. Then basically whoever runs it runs into an issue (job loss, crazy bill, anger, whatever) and says screw it this now costs money.
- solardev 3y agoEven open confrontation isn't open anymore
- timeon 3y agoLike Facebook/Instagram and others. Attract community and when they achieve network effect they can change rules the rules.
- sofixa 3y agoOr, people realising that their envisaged way of working is no longer or was never practical or self-sustaining. As much as you might love doing something for the sake of it, or for a community, at some point there are bills to pay. OpenSubtitles is something someone has to pay for, at some point. Especially with such cases, assuming malice is weird. The site wasn't acquired by some shady private capital or whatever entity jacking up prices for profit (like Broadcom with VMware), it's the same people(person?).
- dudeinjapan 3y agoThe “open” means “open your wallet and pay us!”
- Aardwolf 3y agoAnd OpenOffice, which then got the LibreOffice spinoff
- dartos 3y agoDone forget all the “open source” LLMs based on Meta’s llama. We have neither the source code nor training data.
- infecto 3y agoNot even similar, you can still get dumps from OpenSubtitles. But I suspect your comment like many others are from users who don't even really use OpenSubtitles often/ever.
- mynameisvlad 3y agoPlease, go right ahead and grab one of those dumps to see how useful they really are. It’s just a list of subtitles with download links. > But I suspect your comment like many others are from users who don't even really use OpenSubtitles often/ever. I suspect your comment is a whole load of projection.
- infecto 3y agoIf you are going to disagree with my opinion than please disprove what I said instead of dismissing it as projection. I use OpenSubtitles a lot. You can still freely download subtitles, but their will now be limits on the new REST Api they build. You could in theory scrape the site. You can jump on and download things freely. There might be full dumps including the subtitle text itself out there, I would guess nobody cares given the community around it but thats just a guess. The move is from I understood over the past year to 1) Deprecate the old hard to maintain API 2) Get applications that are using OpenSubtitles to either introduce a OpenSubtitles link in their app or to work with OpenSubtitles to pay for direct access. 3) Help support continued work on both the site and the API. The new daily usage limits against the API still allow unauthenticated users from using the API, downloads are limited to 5 a day per IP. Authenticated users but non-paying get a bump up from that, and paying (VIP) users get 1k per day. Is it change from the old API? Yes but my impression is the core user base are happy to support. It costs money to maintain the entire system and you can still download subtitles without signing up. The data is still freely available but the transport, API, has new limitations. Do you use the OpenSubtitles API or website?
- CRConrad 3y agoWhat you said had been disproven in this discussion hours before you said it.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- k4rli 3y agoPossibly misleading. Opensubtitles.org is still up and running.
- CornishPasty 3y agoUntil the new year, when it will be closed down, unless you pay
- agileAlligator 3y agoIf I read the post correctly, they are making changes to the API, not the website itself, right? You will still be able to visit the website and download the subtitles you want. You just won't be able to make use of the API without paying for it. Edit: Nvm they are going to insert ads everywhere
- yorwba 3y agoThey're already showing ads... maybe you don't see them because you're using an adblocker.
- agileAlligator 3y agoI completely forgot I had that active haha
- drexlspivey 3y agoThey’ve been injecting ads during credits for like a decade
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- CrazyStat 3y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20231116140232/https://blog.opensubtitles.com/opensubtitles/saying-goodbye-to-opensubtitles-org-api-embrace-the-20-black-friday-treat https://web.archive.org/web/20231116140232/https://blog.open...
- workfromspace 3y agoOr https://archive.is/UiG9s https://archive.is/UiG9s
- alwayslikethis 3y agoI predicted this moment when they switched to opensubtitles.com domain. Realistically though, their importance has diminished noticeably with tools like Whisper.
- gtirloni 3y agoIf you mean OpenAI's Whisper, has anyone created an actual product that people can use with downloaded videos?
- clarionbell 3y agoWell. I don't know, but in my experience it shouldn't be too hard. The most difficult part would be timestamps I guess.
- Anunayj 3y agoThe Whisper API provides timestamped subtitle files, so that's a non issue, all you have to do is extract the audio, split and upload
- sethgecko 3y agoI've made this little wrapper to do all that locally. `makesub video.mp4` will split the stream and create video.en.srt locally via whisper.cpp https://github.com/mcdallas/whispersub https://github.com/mcdallas/whispersub
- foobarqux 3y agoBazaar supports using Whisper as a provider. I don't know how well it works. https://wiki.bazarr.media/Additional-Configuration/Whisper-Provider/ https://wiki.bazarr.media/Additional-Configuration/Whisper-P...
- drexlspivey 3y agowhisper.cpp runs locally and can output .srt, I’ve been using it a lot (takes a while though)
- HeadlessChild 3y agoReminds me of the excellent Swedish website undertexter.se which was a community based site for Swedish subtitles. The owner of the site was convicted for copyright infringement. It is a sad world we live in.
- Sharparam 3y agoI much preferred DivXSweden, which is also dead now. They had some notion of quality control on that site which pretty much every other site I've tried lacks.
- petemir 3y agoActual title: “Saying Goodbye to OpenSubtitles.org API: Embrace the 20% Black Friday Treat”.
- danjc 3y agoWe do love a good embrace
- dang 3y agoWe changed to that now. Submitted title was "OpenSubtitles is not open anymore". Submitters: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22level%20playing%20field%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
- daeros 3y agoI'm going to end up paying them. sad.
- crazygringo 3y ago> 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. > If you wish to offer subtitles without prompting for an opensubtitles account, please contact us and tell us about your project... For an easier development process, you can set your consumer as "Under Development", this will allow you to perform up to 100 downloads per day without user authentication temporarly. [1] Downloading tiers are listed at [2]. It's a question I've never considered before -- should "open" mean "you can API-download everything all the time anonymously no limits", or "you're free to API-download a reasonable amount for consumer purposes with an account, and the more you upload the more you can download"? Do they offer any kind of bulk download or mirror? [1] https://opensubtitles.stoplight.io/docs/opensubtitles-api/e3750fd63a100-getting-started https://opensubtitles.stoplight.io/docs/opensubtitles-api/e3... [2] https://www.opensubtitles.com/en/support_us/ https://www.opensubtitles.com/en/support_us/
- toomuchtodo 3y agoLike some open source projects moving to a "source available" or "fair code" licenses, it is going to be bumpy finding equilibrium as to what is reasonable. Tragedy of the commons for sure. There are costs to cover, and usage profiles can vary wildly.
- clarionbell 3y agoAnd when they do that people just fork and go along with their own. Tofu being a great example, opensearch somewhat less.
- dartos 3y agoBy “people” you mean organizations with budgets and stakeholders. Very few people, even few programmers, would be able to take on maintaining complicated software like tofu alone, for example.
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- mig39 3y agoThe Enshittification of the internet continues.
- hiatus 3y agoHonestly, with things like whisper out in the world it's not as much of a loss. The integration with media players was nice, though.
- bitcharmer 3y agoWhat whisper?
- mdrzn 3y agohttps://openai.com/research/whisper https://openai.com/research/whisper
- devrand 3y agoIf you only care about English.
- hiatus 3y agoThat's a fair point and in hindsight my comment was shortsighted.
- oriettaxx 3y agoso, with whisper you can generate "live" subtitles from audio? so you can just play a movie in VLC and have your own generated subtitles? that would be cool only from English? and what about a translation from English to another language?
- hiatus 3y agoYou can do it live or you can do it from a video file. There are more than just English models as well, though the performance varies by language. https://github.com/openai/whisper https://github.com/openai/whisper
- Xerox9213 3y agoAs far as I can tell they are just changing their API? Can someone tell me what makes that less open?
- gtirloni 3y agoSomeone seems to be confusing "free" and "open".
- MrStonedOne 3y ago[dead]
- mdrzn 3y agoThe OpenSubtitles.org API service is coming to an end, marking the end of an era after 17 years. Non-VIP users will be primarily affected, while VIP members will still have access to the API. The transition is paving the way for a more advanced and streamlined experience with the introduction of the new REST API on OpenSubtitles.com. To celebrate this change, OpenSubtitles.org is offering a 20% discount on a one-year subscription to VIP membership. VIP members enjoy benefits such as an ad-free experience, direct download links, higher download limits, ad-free subtitles, user profile visibility, and contribute to the platform's development. Users are encouraged to upgrade to VIP membership to take advantage of the limited-time offer and immerse themselves in a premium subtitle experience across OpenSubtitles platforms. TLDR: Nothing changes except API prices.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Aardwolf 3y ago> To celebrate this change Is this a change worth celebrating, then? (original link gives 503 error to me so I'm happy with the summary here)
- godshatter 3y agoIt's a celebration for them, I guess.
- newsclues 3y agoCan P2P/torrents replace this?
- Thaxll 3y agoDidn't they provide subtitles made by users?
- michaelcampbell 3y agoSocialize the cost, privatize the profit.
- donatj 3y agoAm I wrong that a script is copyrighted and thus charging for it, something they have no right to distribute, opens them to all sorts of potential legal action? It’s a lot easier to look the other way when it’s free. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/04/fan-made-subtitles-for-tv-shows-and-movies-are-illegal/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/04/fan-made-subtitl... (2017)
- drexlspivey 3y agoYes you are wrong because a movie script and movie subs are not the same thing at all
- donatj 3y agoIn what way? The subs are the script (often translated) + timestamps. It’s the definition of a derivative work. The subs wouldn’t exist without the original work. Edit: Yes, it’s a subset of the script and not thee script itself, and being a pedant about that isn’t a useful point. It’s just pedantic.
- jedrek 3y agoSubs are not the script, they are a transcription of the finished work.
- donatj 3y agoThat’s just nitpicking. Even by your definition it’s a derivative work, and regardless then it’s just a translation of a subset of the script.
- nickthegreek 3y agoIt is not nitpicking, it is an important distinction.
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- NKosmatos 3y agoIt’s still open for us casual users, anonymous free users can download 10 subtitles per day, above that you need a subscription (mainly affects API users).
- dartos 3y ago“Open” != “free”
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- TuringNYC 3y agoIs there anywhere to get a giant stash of subtitles for data science / academic purposes?
- yorwba 3y agoOPUS has a bunch of preprocessed dumps: https://opus.nlpl.eu/OpenSubtitles.php https://opus.nlpl.eu/OpenSubtitles.php
- timetraveller26 3y agoWe should do our own OpenSubtitles with IPFS/Torrents or some other distributed architecture.
- HumblyTossed 3y agoOkay. You first.
- jokoon 3y agoA lot of pirates already provide subtitles already, and sometimes there are many different languages, and MKV allows to put everything in a single file
- Lolaccount 3y agoOpenSubtitles OpenAI Open = Closed Up = Down War = Peace Freedom = Slavery Ignorance = Strength
- infecto 3y agoHoly batman the takes in this thread are pretty terrible. You can still get full data dumps, you can still use the free API but they are limited the number per period. As a heavy user of OpenSubtitles this change looks completely reasonable for such a wonderful service.
- RainaRelanah 3y agoThe site is down so I can't read the full post, but going off of what's been said in this thread, I generally agree w you. This doesn't stop your casual Plex user from using OpenSubtitles. Viewers all download their subtitles from their own IP, and can authenticate/pay if they want more. It does punish pirate streaming websites from taking thousands of subtitles per day while illegally publishing content.
- petemir 3y agoThe Archive link was posted in the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38289869 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38289869
- bugfix 3y agoThe "full data dump" contains only some metadata and the download link for the file. You can't get all the subtitles from the dump.
- infecto 3y agoWell you can, it just takes the extra step of grabbing the download from the page. I have done it before but I dismissively misspoke and should have said full index of subtitles available.
- CRConrad 3y agoBut can you -- without paying? AFAICS, only if there are fewer items in that full metadata list than the number of pages you can download for free. And the impression I got from this discussion was that this is definitely not the case.
- zhan_eg 3y agoI have been using Addic7ed [0] in cases where I need subtitles. Any new shows/series get their subtitles uploaded extremely fast, and as I understand translations also happen there (when already not available from a streaming service). On the other hand I was using VLSub, a VLC addon, which downloads subtitles automagically. But now I see it used opensubtitles :( [0] https://www.addic7ed.com/ https://www.addic7ed.com/ [1] https://addons.videolan.org/p/1154045/ https://addons.videolan.org/p/1154045/
- squigz 3y agoIt was pretty obvious where this was going when they started putting ads in the subtitles a few years ago.
- secret-noun 3y agoWhen I've encountered this, I always assumed it was the subtitle author because it was only on occasion. Less compelling, the sites advertised didn't feel like traditional products/service -- more like linking back to something related to the author.
- netfortius 3y agoIsn't what chatgpt and whisper diverse solutions are supposed to replace?
- turmeric_root 3y agowhisper doesn't seem to support diarization (identifying when the speaker changes), which is needed for subtitle formatting.
- PaywallBuster 3y agoBefore I used to have a subtitles website and mentioned I would downloads subs from his website (keeping any credits in filename or contents) he wasn't very happy (because my website would compete with him and take ad revenue from him) at the same time any "extension"/media player that downloads the subs can do it freely so was it ever open or not? just because my website had an easier to way to monetize unlike VLC extensions or wtv
- karaterobot 3y agoI noticed this when the subtitling plugin for VLC stopped working last month. OpenSubtitles was a nice to resource have, but they've been a bad actor for a long time, adding paid advertisements to other people's freely contributed work. The full heel-turn was probably inevitable. On the other hand, who is going to tell people about putting a stop to Clearway Law now?
- secret-noun 3y agoNotably, Plex sources its subtitles from OpenSubtitles when the media does not contain them. I wonder what Plex will do in this situation. I don't know the exact mechanism: does Plex download on our behalf, or does the client make the download themselves? Either way, there are downsides for someone now.
- RodgerTheGreat 3y agoPerhaps they should consider a rebrand to "ClosedCaptions"?
- Moldoteck 3y agoI don't get why they just do not provide a torrent for these? This way big chunk of downloads will be offloaded to other users