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Crunchyroll is destroying its subtitles

daiz.moe

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Re: Crunchyroll is destroying its subtitles

#111

Post by Mindwipe »

notpushkin wrote: post #65
Daiz wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of softsubbing is what Crunchyroll primarily does, but it has hardsubbed encodes for devices that cannot do softsubbed rendering of the ASS subtitles that Crunchyroll uses. I go over some ways in how they could do away with these hardsubbed variants in the article without any notable loss in primary experience quality.

They could borrow a trick from Netflix mentioned elsewhere in this thread: https://netflixsubs.app/docs/netflix/features/imgsub I’m pretty sure it’s not too hard to implement an ASS → PNG renderer (especially considering vibe coding is now a thing). Then, just need to split out subs that can be actual text somehow from the ones that have to be overlays. Apart from that... surely they could at least keep ASS subs for…

It is harder than you think and will break on many more devices than you think.

Re: Crunchyroll is destroying its subtitles

#112

Post by sjapkee »

kacesensitive wrote: post #12

It's so hard finding dubbed anime WITH subtitles. Like actually ridiculously hard. My wife is deaf and I like dubbed so I can use my laptop while we chill but she literally needs subtitles so it's super annoying when a show either 1. Has no subtitles for dubbed. 2. Their subtitles are just the subbed version's subtitles which are drastically different from what the dubbed VAs are actually saying. 3. Has subtitles for…

Hianime? They have both dubs and subs at the same time. For non-english subs/dubs there're probably pirate versions too. And yes, subs and dub will be slightly different anyway because dubbers change it sligthly for better flow or lip sync if needed.

Re: Crunchyroll is destroying its subtitles

#113

Post by Mindwipe »

jamesgeck0 wrote: post #50
dylan604 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you hardsub the video, then you need to have a full copy of the video for every language. That's the opposite of what people want. They want a single textless video source that can then accommodate any internationalization.

The article claims that you can slice up the video and only use language-specific hardsubs for parts that need it. I'd be interested if there are technical reasons that can't be done.

It's incredibly fragile at the CDN level if deployed at scale for a start.

You'd see playback issues go up by 1000%.

In the nicest possible way, it is pretty clear that this article was written by somebody who has only ever looked at video distribution as a hobbyist and not deploying it at scale to paying customers who quite reasonably get very upset at things not working reliably.

Re: Crunchyroll is destroying its subtitles

#114

Post by Mindwipe »

mook wrote: post #69
Daiz wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, as the link describes, Netflix only makes this available for a very limited set of languages, while everyone else is stuck with the extremely limited text-based standards. Frankly, those text-based subtitle standards are quite maddening on their own. Netflix's text-based subtitle rendering seems to support a much wider set of TTML features than what it actually allows subtitle providers to use - so if…

What Netflix supports on their main website might not be what they care about, though; you used to be able to watch Netflix on the Nintendo Wii, and they probably still have some users on stupidly old smart TVs.

Also fun fact - subtitles did not work on the Wii at all if you were running a video streaming service!

The BBC spent literally years trying to engineering something that did not result in it being unable to playback video smoothly and failed.

Re: Crunchyroll is destroying its subtitles

#115

Post by askl »

tmtvl wrote: post #18
Daiz wrote: post #2

This is the result of a ton of research into Crunchyroll's recent subtitle changes that have tanked the service's first-party presentation quality to an all-time low. The article ended up being quite long, so I highly appreciate anyone taking the time to read it in full!

Does Netflix really only allow 2 lines of subtitling on screen at a time? That's really stupid. Also I remember when CR killed the Kodi plugin, that irked me enough to stick to DVD imports + fan subs for a while. Finally, Ruri Rocks is such a good show, it got me to resubscribe to CR after not having subbed for years. If they screw with its subs I'm gonna root for this mess to bankrupt CR for good.

> Finally, Ruri Rocks is such a good show

I only had time to skim the article, so adding this show to my to-do list has been my main takeaway so far.

Re: Crunchyroll is destroying its subtitles

#116

Post by boredhedgehog »

m10i wrote: post #47

A similar issue has been plaguing the manga industry since "The Great Scanlator Purge" that took place a few years ago, leaving only the "official" Viz media-contracted translators in the wake of the ruins. For some reason, this change came with a general unwillingness on the translators part to correct, or translate, concepts that virtually all fan translators would've been happy to do. Here's some examples (there a…

Footnotes and endnotes always carry a hidden burden: They interrupt the reading flow and direct the mind of the reader away from the characters and the plot and towards linguistics. If the translator follows a philosophy that prioritizes the subjective experience of the reader over a deeper understanding of the material, this "mode switch" is something he will try to avoid.

Personally, I tend to agree that a need to explain a translation represents a failure to come up with a satisfying equivalent in the target language.

Re: Crunchyroll is destroying its subtitles

#117

Post by GolDDranks »

jahsome wrote: post #96
Daiz wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well... the very first paragraph of the article does say with highlighting how "the presentation quality for translations of on-screen text has taken a total nosedive". And then it shows visual examples of the new bad quality and gives comparison screenshots demonstrating good quality shortly after.

The article says there's a nosedive. But by what standard(s)? See the questions I already posted in my original response. Both the "good" and "bad" quality examples contain subtitles with no discernible difference. All examples contain legible subtitles. So where's the "nosedive"? There's clearly some anime-specific context and nuance that is NOT communicated with context-less screencaps. Perhaps the article wasn't w…

The difference is that when there is text on the original video material, in the good examples the translations are positioned in the proximity of the original texts, and styled similarly, which makes it easier to understand what is translation of what, and generally improves immersion.

In the bad examples, the translations for the texts are mixed with the lines the characters are speaking, which makes it harder to follow.

Re: Crunchyroll is destroying its subtitles

#118

Post by jahsome »

GolDDranks wrote: post #117
jahsome wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article says there's a nosedive. But by what standard(s)? See the questions I already posted in my original response. Both the "good" and "bad" quality examples contain subtitles with no discernible difference. All examples contain legible subtitles. So where's the "nosedive"? There's clearly some anime-specific context and nuance that is NOT communicated with context-less screencaps. Perhaps the article wasn't w…

The difference is that when there is text on the original video material, in the good examples the translations are positioned in the proximity of the original texts, and styled similarly, which makes it easier to understand what is translation of what, and generally improves immersion. In the bad examples, the translations for the texts are mixed with the lines the characters are speaking, which makes it harder to f…

That makes sense. Thanks very much for the clarification.

Re: Crunchyroll is destroying its subtitles

#119

Post by rs186 »

kazinator wrote: post #31

There is a solution: learn Japanese!

I guess it's easy to type it out on the keyboard.

How long did it take you to learn a language to arrive at a level where you can watch a movie/TV program with tons of idioms and cultural references and easily understand > 95% of it?

Re: Crunchyroll is destroying its subtitles

#120

Post by rs186 »

charcircuit wrote: post #15

The mass market has already responded that they want dubbed anime. It doesn't make sense to invest into subtitles. Maybe it's time to accept that you are not the target audience anymore of western anime distributors.

Those who only want dubbed anime will be limited to a smaller catalog of shows. Their loss.
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