Hey now, I'm sure they'll still gladly accept free labor for subtitle submissions!
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.
"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.
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.
There is no need to have an account for that. This is a purely artificial measure.
How many subs do you download at a time??
Juat spread it out or cough up some cash ... >_>
I've already explained the use-case. Spare me of your "witty" remarks with no value added.
"They don't even produce them"
Hosting ain't free, son.
Also, I’ve read through the post several times, and it doesn’t mention anonymous quotas or anything like that. It’s just one long promo for what VIP accounts get over regular accounts.
Further, your quoted quotas are wrong, as the screenshot I provided shows 10 per day for anonymous accounts.
If you’re going to shame people for reading comprehension, you should probably read the details yourself a bit closer.
I can only conclude that everyone upvoting you didn’t bother to read the post either.
I have some learning disabilities, thanks for asking. Prick.
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.
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.
You realize the developer key is still authentication, hmmm?
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.
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.
I was very careful to not say it needs payment
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
Thank you
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.
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.
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.
My favorite are the ones advertising shit for illuminati. Like yeah we all know
If you need to advertise your secret society, it's not a good secret society.
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.
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.
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...
Their website is still free and every legal way to watch movies already includes subtitles.
Oh, no harm done then, lets keep allowing every online resource to implement shitty money grabbing tactics
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.
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.
Do they have a transparent budget on how the donations are used? Anyone can claim the donations weren't enough to survive.
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
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.
News has never historically been free, only recently through the web and founded by ads.
nothing should ever be better than it was in the past. everything should continue to suck forever.
You've never heard of broadcast radio or TV?
Lots of ads
Edit: also tv news is also a new concept.
Right, so ads aren't a recent development.
Ads have existed for an extremely long time.
And most news has cost money since forever.
Tv news is a relatively new development and TV news is entirely founded by ads and as a way to drive viewers to a channel to keep them for other programmes.
True. I amended my comment to better convey my anger
How much money do you think they would have made if they gave away all their content for free.
News is pretty expensive.
You mean the world renowned, universally known news agency in America owned by billionaires?
I am not familiar with who owns who in the USA. I do know that news wouldn't get made if no one wanted to pay for it.
I don't know what is so controversial about this statement. Investigative reporting is fucking expensive. The people who do it need to eat. If you're not paying for it, who is?
People in this community can be a bit extreme when it comes to never paying for stuff and the need to justify it.
I also like piracy but the constant justifications attempts are pretty annoying.
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.
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.
You talk like they are owned by some huge corporation and this was their plan from the beginning.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I'm actually faulting them for trying to make money off a crowdsourced service. They didn't write the damn subtitles.
Also, wrong fucking audience. The people using this are pirating.... what do they think is going to happen when they put a paywall in front 😂
Textbook shooting yourself in the foot, I really don't know what they were hoping to gain. You already had a long-lasting reputation in the online community, now you're a fucking scab
They weren't gaining anything with the free service, now they might get a bit of money from it.
The uploaders often get VIP for free and what will happen is probably just good for them. Leechers aren't the greatest for torrents nor services.
I pay for it, because it's cheap and I might as well.
IDK, if I was contributing subtitles for an open provider free of charge who shared them free of charge, I'd be glad my subtitles were helping people who needed them. Now that labor has been turned into capital and that rug has been pulled with no back-dated compensation or provisions for free subtitles for hard of hearing or something. It's a shitty move across the board for everyone but the owner.
The subs are still free for casual users the ones that need to pay are power users that download through the API.
The API users won't upload subs or anything, website users are more likely to do that.
I doubt I will switch provider because they seem to be the best by far and I download 1-2 files per movie/series automatically via Bazarr.
If anyone knows any non shit options please tell me.
I would hardly consider 'power users' the ones who download via the API. I used to download them via BSPlayer, where it will prompt you in a nice user friendly interface if you needed subtitles for whatever you were watching. Well, that used the old OpenSubtitles API, and now that it's gone it's not gonna work anymore
.....make money off a crowdsourced service. They didn't write the damn subtitles.
Ah the reddit formula
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.
Always assume that's the ultimate goal with for-profit services.
I always assume that. My mom was getting up there in age, and just having a fun time entering in her work. She had no clue that would happen, until it did.
If it's not fully for profit now, it will be later
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!
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
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.
i didnt know that! fuuuuuck those peoples
See, I get when YouTube or some such are asking for some kind of payment, since transcoding and delivering all those large video files is expensive as fuck. Yet, Open subtitles delivers text. Fucking. Text. The rest is done for them for free by the users. No, folks. You ain't getting any money.
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.
I also choose this guy's deaf wife
I'm not deaf but I fucking love subtitles.
There's a lot of mumbly actors out there.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
He can put that subscription right up there with his Youtube Premium
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
They all seem to have pretty much the same subs one may have more niche stuff than others but that's about it
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.
Finally, even OpenSubtitles gets enshittified.
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?
Opensubtitles does not create the subtitles, that's done by the community, which is being monetised and sub authors get nothing out of it.
I agree, that that's a bad part of it.
But we come a bit full circle here:
OpenSubs pays for the server and availability and service speed.
I assume the speed they provide ain't the cheapest server they could get their hands on.
If the cost of a free/unauthenticated users and the server bill breaks even with the VIP payment (cant call it a donation imo) then they should have all the rights to limit free users.
Now if they actively lock features, then I have no feelings for them.
Every service that disabled or limited the API has seen an increase in running costs, because people turn to scraping, which costs them more resources overall, and cannot be controlled by the site owners as easily.
Let's be honest, though, hosting text files with a search bar isn't that much expensive to justify a response like this.
It's fine if they want to earn money, but then they should be upfront about it, and not making up stories about fluke running costs. I'd rather see a donation button.
Totally valid and agree with your stance.
But I feel like business decision in these times are rarely backed by good reasoning beyond quick cash and seldom long term thinking. So good job OpenSubs? Yay?
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.
Well yes.
I go with the 2nd view because IMO the first option barely applies anymore with the current business course and decision.
Subscene still exists, fortunately
Subtitles are the easiest material to pirate :) I'm sure they don't have a copyright either.
Ye, but the problem is the ease of discovery
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.
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.
Technically subs are copyrighted as they're usually ripped from official sources. They're selling copyrighted content
@Moonrise2473 even worse: they're selling copyrighted content that they have no license for
THE BALLS TO EVEN OFFER A "BLACK FRIDAY" DEAL, HOLY FUCK
What? Speak up! I didn't hear you.
^sorry^
*its previous API
Excellent so now they'll be paying volunteers for their work!
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
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.
5 downloads a day is pretty generous as I used them four times in my life for my pirated movies.
Also, they give you 20 downloads a day if you sign up for free
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?
You still can, even after these changes get applied. (beginning of 2024)
Really? Every time I visit, it asks me to sign in. Maybe it's by region or something?
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.
Sure. When I go to "opensubtitles.org" I get redirected to the login page. Here's the screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/bhGTeC1
Edit: After I login, it works as you described, by the way. It's not really a big deal; I was just surprised that it started happening since I hadn't seen any mention of that change anywhere. I'm even more surprised that it isn't happening to everyone.
Omg literally capitalism
...okay? I was just making an observation.
Why would you pirate a movie and then pay for subtitles? Makes no sense.
And decent pirated movies/TV shows will already come with the subtitles embedded in the video container nowadays, which is great.
True, but quite often the subtitles are in vobsub which sucks.
Agreed, image-based subs are terrible..
even better, pirate a movie, then pay to play the subtitles roulette where you download 30 identical files that differ only on the timing
Many pirates will pay for newsgroup access. People also pay for hard drive space, power for servers, hardware, etc. Pirating doesn't mean people are never paying for anything. That said, I won't pay for subtitles. I'll just wait til the community figures something else out.
As far as I understand they are shutting down open subtitles.org API, but the jellyfin plugin uses the .com version. The free account there is limited to 20 downloads per day via API
People are getting the their pitchforks out but I think they are misunderstanding. Opensubtitles.ORG is being replaced by opensubtitles.COM. They just are stopping access to the ORG website. I have already migrated to the COM website for a while. And a 20 downloads/a day limit for free users is very reasonable.
Is it? It's a simple text file, the download costs them close to nothing. 20 subtitles per day is laughable, especially because other people make the subtitles.
Bandwidth and hosting still cost money, period. And why would 20 be laughable? What would be okay by your book? 50? 100? 1000? 20 per day is fine for most users, how much content are you downloading every single day that it wouldn't be?
At 20 per day it would take me 3 years to fetch subtitles for my entire TV library
so you can buy a one time vip access? would 20 000 subtitles be worth $10? How many should you get for $10 to be worth it?
For me it would and I'll happily pay the people doing the subtitles.
Do you get ads in the subtitles though?
"Subtitles downloaded by VIP members are free from any embedded ads, offering a cleaner viewing experience."
I haven't used opensubtitles much but have been considering setting up bazarr, using a source that embeds ads in subtitles would be a non starter for me.
I would even be totally willing to pay for increased download limits but not if it means supporting putting ads in the free subtitles.
I use bazarr in combination with a vip membership of opensubtitles. I've been doing this for years since they have been adding ads in them for multiple years. Messages like "This subtitle was downloaded from" are also removed.
I guess this would also affect stremio's opensubtitles addons
Good thing Stremio has other options... And most media have their own embedded subtitles, which ends up being the best case scenario.
What I don't recall is if we can login in Open Subtitles 🤔
We can't and the addon doesn't seem to be open source, I could modify it to let us login
Let's hope this gets sorted out in the future, I remember some addon let you out your login credentials maybe not the official one 🤔
But they offer a new API. Any disadvantages with the new one?
I didn't see anything about it being free. I also didn't pick up on whether or not it was moving behind a paywall, just that you could buy a vip subscription for 20% off
I think in the email they sent out they mentioned that each IP would be able to download 5 per 24 hours and "registered users" 10 per 24 hours. Paid members would be restricted to 1,000 per 24 hours.
It's 15 bucks a year for VIP, if I understood it correctly, then I am of the opinion there is nothing here to get mad about for "regular users".
I can download ten subtitles just trying to find one good one for a single TV show episode
Imo if they want to be so strict with downloading subtitles, they should raise the quality standards for the subtitles that are submitted.
Honestly that's a fair point too.
I believe the captions submitters are doing so for free, no?
Yes that doesn't mean that opensubtitles can't take their new found savings and use it to weed out poor quality submissions.
Wikipedia editors do it for free and yet they still maintain a high standard of quality.
Free trash is still trash.
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.
oh fuck no, this kills qnapi and vlsub, doesn't it?
I'm afraid yes. I use their API to automatically download subs in jellyfin and I guess I'm gonna lose that too :(
Shit I just started using Jellyfin. How do I do this?
You have to set your username/password in the opensubtitle plugin, then you can download the subtitles for an episode directly through the UI (right click on episode and "edit subtitles").
You can also change the setting so that it automatically download subtitles for your language for every media that does not come with ones.
BUT I don't know for how long will this work, since the new policy
And Plex's on-demand subtitle download.
Plex uses .com for sure. .org has been deprecated for a while.
Ah, didn't notice the two. There was a short period the subtitles on Plex had the warning the API was going to change backed into them.
Wait so….. Access is now closed for kodi access on non paying members?
Unless they use the website and manually download them?
No.
A) old API doesn't shutdown till end of year.
B) new API is 5 free downloads/day. 10 if you create a free account. More if you buy VIP.
Wow…at least it’s……something??
I wonder if this will cause an uptick with subscene API users
Bless the data hoarders
That only solves half the issue. The other half is everything released after the change.
They just need a paid account and they can keep appending to it.
"Open"subtitles has like a 1k dowload/day limit, which should cover most media.
Hope you're right, but there's a lot of stuff released in a day, and you have to consider all the other languages. They'll need a couple at least.
you da mvp!
Thanks! But I just found the former redditor/data hoarder who did all the real work.
Still, very much appreciated by us deafies!
The link is not loading
Finally: ClosedSubtitles
EDIT: Also, MAN, a lot of straight up bootlicking in this thread. What the fuck kind of pirates are you? lmao
How long have you been waiting?
He had a mission and he accomplished it... Kudos
ClosedSubtitles, ClosedAI...
So much for “open”
OpenWalletsSubtitles
Hey now, I'm sure they'll still gladly accept free labor for subtitle submissions!
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.
"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.
Then create a free account and it's no longer limited by ip and you get double the anonymous limit.
There is no need to have an account for that. This is a purely artificial measure.
How many subs do you download at a time??
Juat spread it out or cough up some cash ... >_>
I've already explained the use-case. Spare me of your "witty" remarks with no value added.
"They don't even produce them"
Hosting ain't free, son.
Also, I’ve read through the post several times, and it doesn’t mention anonymous quotas or anything like that. It’s just one long promo for what VIP accounts get over regular accounts.
Further, your quoted quotas are wrong, as the screenshot I provided shows 10 per day for anonymous accounts.
If you’re going to shame people for reading comprehension, you should probably read the details yourself a bit closer.
I can only conclude that everyone upvoting you didn’t bother to read the post either.
Anyway, back to sucking my ass with you.
I have some learning disabilities, thanks for asking. Prick.
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.
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.
You realize the developer key is still authentication, hmmm?
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.
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.
I was very careful to not say it needs payment
The OP doesn't, but the REST API Docs say:
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.
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.
That doesn’t sound very open to me
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).
Additionally, it’s just a limit on how much you can download. You can still get 10 subtitles a day for free.
Thank you
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.
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.
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.
My favorite are the ones advertising shit for illuminati. Like yeah we all know
If you need to advertise your secret society, it's not a good secret society.
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.
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.
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...
Their website is still free and every legal way to watch movies already includes subtitles.
Oh, no harm done then, lets keep allowing every online resource to implement shitty money grabbing tactics
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.
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.
They did do donations but maybe it wasn't enough 🤷 https://blog.opensubtitles.com/opensubtitles/thank-you-for-donations
It wouldn't surprise me if "VIP" was originally a tier given for donations which had some benefits.
Edit: that's indeed the case https://blog.opensubtitles.com/opensubtitles/free-vip-membership-for-first-20-users
Do they have a transparent budget on how the donations are used? Anyone can claim the donations weren't enough to survive.
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
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.
News has never historically been free, only recently through the web and founded by ads.
nothing should ever be better than it was in the past. everything should continue to suck forever.
You've never heard of broadcast radio or TV?
Lots of ads
Edit: also tv news is also a new concept.
Right, so ads aren't a recent development.
Ads have existed for an extremely long time.
And most news has cost money since forever.
Tv news is a relatively new development and TV news is entirely founded by ads and as a way to drive viewers to a channel to keep them for other programmes.
TV news is 80 years old. It's far from new.
Again, that was not my point.
How is something 80 years old "new?"
Relatively new compared to news. Either way it doesn't matter, my point was that it's funded by ads.
Tv news also drives viewers to a channel which is probably the main purpose of it.
True. I amended my comment to better convey my anger
How much money do you think they would have made if they gave away all their content for free.
News is pretty expensive.
You mean the world renowned, universally known news agency in America owned by billionaires?
I am not familiar with who owns who in the USA. I do know that news wouldn't get made if no one wanted to pay for it.
I don't know what is so controversial about this statement. Investigative reporting is fucking expensive. The people who do it need to eat. If you're not paying for it, who is?
People in this community can be a bit extreme when it comes to never paying for stuff and the need to justify it.
I also like piracy but the constant justifications attempts are pretty annoying.
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.
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.
You talk like they are owned by some huge corporation and this was their plan from the beginning.
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.
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
nark
Do they include subtitles for every language?
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.
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.
I'm actually faulting them for trying to make money off a crowdsourced service. They didn't write the damn subtitles.
Also, wrong fucking audience. The people using this are pirating.... what do they think is going to happen when they put a paywall in front 😂
Textbook shooting yourself in the foot, I really don't know what they were hoping to gain. You already had a long-lasting reputation in the online community, now you're a fucking scab
They weren't gaining anything with the free service, now they might get a bit of money from it.
The uploaders often get VIP for free and what will happen is probably just good for them. Leechers aren't the greatest for torrents nor services.
I pay for it, because it's cheap and I might as well.
IDK, if I was contributing subtitles for an open provider free of charge who shared them free of charge, I'd be glad my subtitles were helping people who needed them. Now that labor has been turned into capital and that rug has been pulled with no back-dated compensation or provisions for free subtitles for hard of hearing or something. It's a shitty move across the board for everyone but the owner.
The subs are still free for casual users the ones that need to pay are power users that download through the API.
The API users won't upload subs or anything, website users are more likely to do that.
I doubt I will switch provider because they seem to be the best by far and I download 1-2 files per movie/series automatically via Bazarr.
If anyone knows any non shit options please tell me.
I would hardly consider 'power users' the ones who download via the API. I used to download them via BSPlayer, where it will prompt you in a nice user friendly interface if you needed subtitles for whatever you were watching. Well, that used the old OpenSubtitles API, and now that it's gone it's not gonna work anymore
Ah the reddit formula
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.
Always assume that's the ultimate goal with for-profit services.
I always assume that. My mom was getting up there in age, and just having a fun time entering in her work. She had no clue that would happen, until it did.
If it's not fully for profit now, it will be later
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!
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
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.
i didnt know that! fuuuuuck those peoples
See, I get when YouTube or some such are asking for some kind of payment, since transcoding and delivering all those large video files is expensive as fuck. Yet, Open subtitles delivers text. Fucking. Text. The rest is done for them for free by the users. No, folks. You ain't getting any money.
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.
I also choose this guy's deaf wife
I'm not deaf but I fucking love subtitles.
There's a lot of mumbly actors out there.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
He can put that subscription right up there with his Youtube Premium
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
They all seem to have pretty much the same subs one may have more niche stuff than others but that's about it
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.
Finally, even OpenSubtitles gets enshittified.
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?
Opensubtitles does not create the subtitles, that's done by the community, which is being monetised and sub authors get nothing out of it.
I agree, that that's a bad part of it.
But we come a bit full circle here:
OpenSubs pays for the server and availability and service speed.
I assume the speed they provide ain't the cheapest server they could get their hands on.
If the cost of a free/unauthenticated users and the server bill breaks even with the VIP payment (cant call it a donation imo) then they should have all the rights to limit free users.
Now if they actively lock features, then I have no feelings for them.
Every service that disabled or limited the API has seen an increase in running costs, because people turn to scraping, which costs them more resources overall, and cannot be controlled by the site owners as easily.
Let's be honest, though, hosting text files with a search bar isn't that much expensive to justify a response like this.
It's fine if they want to earn money, but then they should be upfront about it, and not making up stories about fluke running costs. I'd rather see a donation button.
Totally valid and agree with your stance.
But I feel like business decision in these times are rarely backed by good reasoning beyond quick cash and seldom long term thinking. So good job OpenSubs? Yay?
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.
Well yes.
I go with the 2nd view because IMO the first option barely applies anymore with the current business course and decision.
Subscene still exists, fortunately
Subtitles are the easiest material to pirate :) I'm sure they don't have a copyright either.
Ye, but the problem is the ease of discovery
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.
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.
Technically subs are copyrighted as they're usually ripped from official sources. They're selling copyrighted content
@Moonrise2473 even worse: they're selling copyrighted content that they have no license for
@iso
THE BALLS TO EVEN OFFER A "BLACK FRIDAY" DEAL, HOLY FUCK
What? Speak up! I didn't hear you.
^sorry^
*its previous API
Excellent so now they'll be paying volunteers for their work!
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
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.
5 downloads a day is pretty generous as I used them four times in my life for my pirated movies.
Also, they give you 20 downloads a day if you sign up for free
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?
You still can, even after these changes get applied. (beginning of 2024)
Really? Every time I visit, it asks me to sign in. Maybe it's by region or something?
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.
Sure. When I go to "opensubtitles.org" I get redirected to the login page. Here's the screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/bhGTeC1
Edit: After I login, it works as you described, by the way. It's not really a big deal; I was just surprised that it started happening since I hadn't seen any mention of that change anywhere. I'm even more surprised that it isn't happening to everyone.
Omg literally capitalism
...okay? I was just making an observation.
Why would you pirate a movie and then pay for subtitles? Makes no sense.
And decent pirated movies/TV shows will already come with the subtitles embedded in the video container nowadays, which is great.
True, but quite often the subtitles are in vobsub which sucks.
Agreed, image-based subs are terrible..
even better, pirate a movie, then pay to play the subtitles roulette where you download 30 identical files that differ only on the timing
Many pirates will pay for newsgroup access. People also pay for hard drive space, power for servers, hardware, etc. Pirating doesn't mean people are never paying for anything. That said, I won't pay for subtitles. I'll just wait til the community figures something else out.
Huh... weird. I can't visit ClosedSubtitles.org.
As far as I understand they are shutting down open subtitles.org API, but the jellyfin plugin uses the .com version. The free account there is limited to 20 downloads per day via API
People are getting the their pitchforks out but I think they are misunderstanding. Opensubtitles.ORG is being replaced by opensubtitles.COM. They just are stopping access to the ORG website. I have already migrated to the COM website for a while. And a 20 downloads/a day limit for free users is very reasonable.
Is it? It's a simple text file, the download costs them close to nothing. 20 subtitles per day is laughable, especially because other people make the subtitles.
Bandwidth and hosting still cost money, period. And why would 20 be laughable? What would be okay by your book? 50? 100? 1000? 20 per day is fine for most users, how much content are you downloading every single day that it wouldn't be?
At 20 per day it would take me 3 years to fetch subtitles for my entire TV library
so you can buy a one time vip access? would 20 000 subtitles be worth $10? How many should you get for $10 to be worth it?
For me it would and I'll happily pay the people doing the subtitles.
Do you get ads in the subtitles though?
"Subtitles downloaded by VIP members are free from any embedded ads, offering a cleaner viewing experience."
I haven't used opensubtitles much but have been considering setting up bazarr, using a source that embeds ads in subtitles would be a non starter for me.
I would even be totally willing to pay for increased download limits but not if it means supporting putting ads in the free subtitles.
I use bazarr in combination with a vip membership of opensubtitles. I've been doing this for years since they have been adding ads in them for multiple years. Messages like "This subtitle was downloaded from" are also removed.
I guess this would also affect stremio's opensubtitles addons
Good thing Stremio has other options... And most media have their own embedded subtitles, which ends up being the best case scenario.
What I don't recall is if we can login in Open Subtitles 🤔
We can't and the addon doesn't seem to be open source, I could modify it to let us login
Let's hope this gets sorted out in the future, I remember some addon let you out your login credentials maybe not the official one 🤔
But they offer a new API. Any disadvantages with the new one?
I didn't see anything about it being free. I also didn't pick up on whether or not it was moving behind a paywall, just that you could buy a vip subscription for 20% off
I think in the email they sent out they mentioned that each IP would be able to download 5 per 24 hours and "registered users" 10 per 24 hours. Paid members would be restricted to 1,000 per 24 hours.
It's 15 bucks a year for VIP, if I understood it correctly, then I am of the opinion there is nothing here to get mad about for "regular users".
I can download ten subtitles just trying to find one good one for a single TV show episode
Imo if they want to be so strict with downloading subtitles, they should raise the quality standards for the subtitles that are submitted.
Honestly that's a fair point too.
I believe the captions submitters are doing so for free, no?
Yes that doesn't mean that opensubtitles can't take their new found savings and use it to weed out poor quality submissions.
Wikipedia editors do it for free and yet they still maintain a high standard of quality.
Free trash is still trash.
https://opensubtitles.stoplight.io/docs/opensubtitles-api/e3750fd63a100-getting-started
ClosedCaptions.com
oh fuck no, this kills qnapi and vlsub, doesn't it?
I'm afraid yes. I use their API to automatically download subs in jellyfin and I guess I'm gonna lose that too :(
Shit I just started using Jellyfin. How do I do this?
You have to set your username/password in the opensubtitle plugin, then you can download the subtitles for an episode directly through the UI (right click on episode and "edit subtitles"). You can also change the setting so that it automatically download subtitles for your language for every media that does not come with ones.
BUT I don't know for how long will this work, since the new policy
And Plex's on-demand subtitle download.
Plex uses .com for sure. .org has been deprecated for a while.
Ah, didn't notice the two. There was a short period the subtitles on Plex had the warning the API was going to change backed into them.
Wait so….. Access is now closed for kodi access on non paying members?
Unless they use the website and manually download them?
No.
A) old API doesn't shutdown till end of year.
B) new API is 5 free downloads/day. 10 if you create a free account. More if you buy VIP.
Wow…at least it’s……something??
I wonder if this will cause an uptick with subscene API users
Any alternatives? I myself havent seen one so I dunno if there is something to migrate to.
https://subscene.com/
much appreciated
Wht happens when you have a nated IP?
University dorms certainly never needed subtitles!
My isp does this
For whatever reason, the opensubtitles.com plugin for Kodi still doesn’t require login and still appears to download whatever I need.
For now.
edit: after checking their “support us” page, it appears it’s because of the “anonymous” tier, limited to 10 dls per day.
Good enough for me.
Try actually reading the article.
I did, it includes none of the information you posted regarding non-VIP accounts.
Try sucking my ass.