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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-tim

by Daiz 11mo ago

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!

ashirviskas 11mo ago
Never used Crunchyroll, but this is a pretty interesting read! Did not finish it yet though. I see you doing a ton of styling, which makes it a very pleasant reading experience, may I ask what techniques do you use? Is cyan just to replace bold or something else?
- Daiz 11mo ago
  The cyan is basically just bold, but also a highlighter. I was using just plain bold initially but started experimenting with it and landed on this. Pairs quite nicely with the pink links, IMO.
gblargg 11mo ago
I didn't find an answer skimming: are they actively deleting old good subtitles and replacing with low-quality ones (as the title seems to suggest), have they simply changed their process for new subtitles, not spending as much to make nice ones? If they're actively deleting old good ones, that seems malicious.
- Daiz 11mo ago
  I did find instances of them actively deleting old subtitles and replacing them with lower quality ones in the back catalog, yes. Which seems indicative of Crunchyroll wanting to eventually get rid of good subtitles altogether.
  - jonhohle 11mo ago
    What reason would there be for removing old, loved subtitles? Licensing fees?
    - underlipton 11mo ago
      Without knowing for sure, a conceivable strategy would be making it so that users who don't know that "good subs" can exist more readily accept "bad subs" as the standard. Same playbook as Google lobotomizing search and the index that search can access because that traditional search product is more efficacious than Gemini, which Google is trying to push on users.
    - Crespyl 11mo ago
      IIUC, it comes down to simplifying playback/subtitle rendering to the lowest common denominator among the various western streaming platforms. The good/old subtitles in the ASS format required a more complex playback system than what Netflix/Hulu (and maybe blueray players) currently offer. This could be worked around by burning the subs into the video stream, but then you need to keep separate copies of your (large) video files for each subtitled language. That doesn't seem like it'd be such a huge problem to me, but what do I know? The post does a good job explaining the effective monopoly system at play that prevents real competition to provide any pressure to improve or maintain the prior quality.
      - ramses0 11mo ago
        It's an X*N*N problem: n_videos, bitrates, formats. Assuming each video in its largest bitrate is... 2gb for example, and assuming S3 is $0.025/gb, that's a nickle per month or let's say $0.50/yr for that video. Next up is reduced bitrates, assume you go from 2gb to 1gb and finally 500mb. Round up and you're at $1/video. Now duplicate it to AV1 and MP4, and multiply that by English, French, and Spanish (oh, and let's say Japanese and Chinese too for good measure). So a single 2gb video goes from $1/yr to $10/yr, and you're not doing "the dumb simple thing" for subtitles which would basically 4x your cost over "commodity subtitling services". Or "simplify, simplify simplify", you reduce costs (cha-ching!), and become compatible for syndication or redistribution (cha-ching!) ... and they would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for those meddling kids!
  - transcriptase 11mo ago
    What possible incentive could they have for doing this?
    - virtue3 11mo ago
      I worked at crunchyroll. Keeping the "hard subs" content is a lot of videos as the subtitles were encoded into the video stream. This makes CDNs and other systems more difficult to utilize because we have a ton of video streams with just caption changes as opposed to just the Japanese audio source + caption files. It's one of those things that doesn't seem that problematic till you include all the video_qualities to support streaming bandwith. So you also get a #hardSubLanguages * #videoQualities
      - khamidou 11mo ago
        Obviously you probably thought about it but what about rendering the subtitles on top of the video stream? Was there a reason it was not possible (e.g DRMs?)
        Daiz 11mo ago
        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.
        notpushkin 11mo ago
        They could borrow a trick from Netflix mentioned elsewhere in this thread: https://netflixsubs.app/docs/netflix/features/imgsub 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 the players that support it, and serve “fallback” subs for low-end devices?
tmtvl 11mo ago
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.
- Daiz 11mo ago
  See for yourself: https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com/hc/en-us/articles/215758617-Timed-Text-Style-Guide-General-Requirements https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com/hc/en-us/articles/215... > 4. Line Treatment > 2 lines maximum
- makeitdouble 11mo ago
  > Ruri Rocks This could be the toughest show to sub with all the geological explaination and jargon the adapter must be familiar with. Adding to that the line limit, The bar to cross sounds quite hard.
  - itpcc 11mo ago
    Not to mention the whole informative slideshow between the scene.Can't imagine how can they achieve that with only 2 lines.
  - voidUpdate 11mo ago
    Do you know if there are plans to dub it at some point? I was looking forward to watching it, but I prefer dubs to subs (yes I know I'm weird)
- askl 11mo ago
  > 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.
JumpCrisscross 11mo ago
> that have tanked the service's first-party presentation quality to an all-time low Would you pirate for better subtitles? Assuming Crunchroll has the legal rights to the content pinned down, that may be the only way to apply legitimate pressure.
- Citizen_Lame 11mo ago
  Irony is Crunchyroll, started as a pirate service.
  - jack_tripper 11mo ago
    So did Spotify.
Suppafly 11mo ago
One thing I've noticed is that they outright refuse to let you pick english audio and english subs, despite the audio and the subs being two different settings that theoretically should be independent of each other.

by Daiz 11mo ago

ashirviskas 11mo ago

Never used Crunchyroll, but this is a pretty interesting read! Did not finish it yet though. I see you doing a ton of styling, which makes it a very pleasant reading experience, may I ask what techniques do you use? Is cyan just to replace bold or something else?

Daiz 11mo ago
The cyan is basically just bold, but also a highlighter. I was using just plain bold initially but started experimenting with it and landed on this. Pairs quite nicely with the pink links, IMO.

gblargg 11mo ago

I didn't find an answer skimming: are they actively deleting old good subtitles and replacing with low-quality ones (as the title seems to suggest), have they simply changed their process for new subtitles, not spending as much to make nice ones? If they're actively deleting old good ones, that seems malicious.

Daiz 11mo ago
I did find instances of them actively deleting old subtitles and replacing them with lower quality ones in the back catalog, yes. Which seems indicative of Crunchyroll wanting to eventually get rid of good subtitles altogether.
- jonhohle 11mo ago
  What reason would there be for removing old, loved subtitles? Licensing fees?
  - underlipton 11mo ago
    Without knowing for sure, a conceivable strategy would be making it so that users who don't know that "good subs" can exist more readily accept "bad subs" as the standard. Same playbook as Google lobotomizing search and the index that search can access because that traditional search product is more efficacious than Gemini, which Google is trying to push on users.
  - Crespyl 11mo ago
    IIUC, it comes down to simplifying playback/subtitle rendering to the lowest common denominator among the various western streaming platforms. The good/old subtitles in the ASS format required a more complex playback system than what Netflix/Hulu (and maybe blueray players) currently offer. This could be worked around by burning the subs into the video stream, but then you need to keep separate copies of your (large) video files for each subtitled language. That doesn't seem like it'd be such a huge problem to me, but what do I know? The post does a good job explaining the effective monopoly system at play that prevents real competition to provide any pressure to improve or maintain the prior quality.
    - ramses0 11mo ago
      It's an X*N*N problem: n_videos, bitrates, formats. Assuming each video in its largest bitrate is... 2gb for example, and assuming S3 is $0.025/gb, that's a nickle per month or let's say $0.50/yr for that video. Next up is reduced bitrates, assume you go from 2gb to 1gb and finally 500mb. Round up and you're at $1/video. Now duplicate it to AV1 and MP4, and multiply that by English, French, and Spanish (oh, and let's say Japanese and Chinese too for good measure). So a single 2gb video goes from $1/yr to $10/yr, and you're not doing "the dumb simple thing" for subtitles which would basically 4x your cost over "commodity subtitling services". Or "simplify, simplify simplify", you reduce costs (cha-ching!), and become compatible for syndication or redistribution (cha-ching!) ... and they would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for those meddling kids!
- transcriptase 11mo ago
  What possible incentive could they have for doing this?
  - virtue3 11mo ago
    I worked at crunchyroll. Keeping the "hard subs" content is a lot of videos as the subtitles were encoded into the video stream. This makes CDNs and other systems more difficult to utilize because we have a ton of video streams with just caption changes as opposed to just the Japanese audio source + caption files. It's one of those things that doesn't seem that problematic till you include all the video_qualities to support streaming bandwith. So you also get a #hardSubLanguages * #videoQualities
    - khamidou 11mo ago
      Obviously you probably thought about it but what about rendering the subtitles on top of the video stream? Was there a reason it was not possible (e.g DRMs?)
      - Daiz 11mo ago
        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.
        notpushkin 11mo ago
        They could borrow a trick from Netflix mentioned elsewhere in this thread: https://netflixsubs.app/docs/netflix/features/imgsub 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 the players that support it, and serve “fallback” subs for low-end devices?

tmtvl 11mo ago

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.

Daiz 11mo ago
See for yourself: https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com/hc/en-us/articles/215758617-Timed-Text-Style-Guide-General-Requirements https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com/hc/en-us/articles/215... > 4. Line Treatment > 2 lines maximum
makeitdouble 11mo ago
> Ruri Rocks This could be the toughest show to sub with all the geological explaination and jargon the adapter must be familiar with. Adding to that the line limit, The bar to cross sounds quite hard.
- itpcc 11mo ago
  Not to mention the whole informative slideshow between the scene.Can't imagine how can they achieve that with only 2 lines.
- voidUpdate 11mo ago
  Do you know if there are plans to dub it at some point? I was looking forward to watching it, but I prefer dubs to subs (yes I know I'm weird)
askl 11mo ago
> 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.

JumpCrisscross 11mo ago

> that have tanked the service's first-party presentation quality to an all-time low Would you pirate for better subtitles? Assuming Crunchroll has the legal rights to the content pinned down, that may be the only way to apply legitimate pressure.

Citizen_Lame 11mo ago
Irony is Crunchyroll, started as a pirate service.
- jack_tripper 11mo ago
  So did Spotify.

Suppafly 11mo ago

One thing I've noticed is that they outright refuse to let you pick english audio and english subs, despite the audio and the subs being two different settings that theoretically should be independent of each other.