OpenSubtitles is BLEEDING to death!

[eduo]

Something needs to be done. OS is bleeding to death. It's now almost continuously dead for a week. The API has been non-functional for so long that I've had to put routines in my software to automatically retry every few minutes as it was useless otherwise.

OpenSubtitles is the best option out there, and there's no real alternative for its API-based matched-ashes system but a condition for it to be useful is that it works.

For the first time in years it's become easier to go to my older websites and just pick up the subtitles I needed manually, testing them and keeping the best one myself.

If the problem in OS has been isolated then remove the methods that provoke it (probably some specific SQL queries tying up the engine). That's better than having the whole server down for days because someone did a search.

Also, consider static files (something TheTVDB and TheMovieDB do) for some of the queries. It may even make sense to use Google Base for some of the searches, I don't know.

I can't recommend OS any more. I have stopped recommending my software the uses OpenSubtitles.

It's depressing and upsetting to see a great site degrade so much over time while people are offering help left and right.

Hell, I think I have even recommended that spammy, morally-questionable piece of crap that is SubLight. It's got to be that bad.

[fana]

Hi,

some time I asked how to set up a mirror

viewtopic.php?t=1583

and I would like to help. My main interest is NOT mirroring the website. We need fallbacks for the API and subtitle database. I have 2 GNU/Linux servers which could do the mirroring and I think there are others who would like to help. But with the current situation nobody is able to do anything. We are stuck.

[scooby007]

Bleeding to death??? "he dead, man".

you can only access the forum using IE not with mozilla. I came to try to upload some subs, been having some probs with that lately, but this... I think it's safe to say OS has been decapitated.

Is there nothing that can be done, soon? As the main OS, Admin is away on holiday. I think, he's not due back for a few days.

This is painfull sh**!!!

[eduo]

No. It's not dead. It's just that it's in a state that needs constant maintenance. When I knew OS would be in holidays I was sure this would happen.

Not dead, but dying. Unless its fixed it'll lose all the users it has. We're now in a place where most of the queries are being done through the API. This means a lot of increase in traffic without any kind of way to pay for the expenses this generates (as there are no banners or profit from the API).

OS may be a victim of its own success. We want to help, but nothing we do will make people enter the web and click on banners. If it were up to me I wouldn't want to visit the web at all, so it's understandable this is the tendency.

Now there are three paths:

-Remove the API so the site exists only over the web. This would lower the traffic and would maximize banners and link exchange deals, but it would SUCK.

-Leave it as it is: This is plain death for the site, service and users. All this effort lost.

-Separate de API and the Web. Leave the web as it is or enhance it but make it be a sort of client for the database as the API itself. Move the API to a configuration that allows mirroring and bandwidth sharing and offloading to slave servers.

I would vote for the third. I didn't use OpenSubtitles before the API and I wouldn't use it afterwards. The main benefit of OS, with all due respect, is the huge amount of subtitles and the matched-hash OSDB. Without this it just becomes yet another subtitle site, since it doesn't have any advanced features like editing, format changing and versioning.

This benefit is HUGE, but it's the single faultiest point now, and the API is breaking up the website. And web users are picky and easily annoyable. And they lose their loyalty pretty quickly when a site is not even accessible (which is much, much worse than it just being slow or throwing the odd warning/error).

OS should be back from holidays this week or even this weekend. If I was him I'd at least disabled some XMLRPC methods the day he connected or even the whole API with a notice in the main site. That way the web would still work.

[scooby007]

yeah I know it's not dead, I was just being a Pessimist, cos my iPhone was ticking me off.

Anyhoo, but I was under the impression, OS did have banners and advertisements, well for the not registered users anyway?

I think your idea is pretty top notch (eduo) but wouldn't it be better to just get funding?

If funding is needed, you would't even have to contribute a huge amount.

If every user contributes taking into consideration you get thousands coming here, Literally every-day, I'm sure even $1 or £1 per year or 6 months per every user would be sufficient. Obviously you don't force it out of the user but by choice they could partake.

If OS put some kind of link on the main page where people could do the above, then atleast (hopefully) the problem could be rectified. I know i'd contribute.

This is a great site almost one of a kind, shame to see it sink into the abyss.

[macofaco]

Hello. I am author of Sublight application. I would like to comment on eduo's post.

Hell, I think I have even recommended that spammy, morally-questionable...

How is Sublight spammy and how is it morally-questionable??? Once again you are lying and misleading users.

...piece of crap that is SubLight. It's got to be that bad.

This is of course your personal opinion and I won't argue with you about that. My server statistics are showing me completely different story

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Regards,
macofaco

[eduo]

Hello. I am author of Sublight application. I would like to comment on eduo's post.

Hell, I think I have even recommended that spammy, morally-questionable...

How is Sublight spammy and how is it morally-questionable??? Once again you are lying and misleading users.

...piece of crap that is SubLight. It's got to be that bad.

This is of course your personal opinion and I won't argue with you about that. My server statistics are showing me completely different story

I won't even get into detail here. You know what you've done. You know how you behaved. You know how you've abused other sites and places and how you started your project. You know how you chose to mislead and confuse users until you got your userbase, and how you use your "competitor's" sites to advertise yourself.

Your server statistics not only are irrelevant to the discussion at hand and how ethical you behave but, knowing your history and how you've chosen to act in the past they wouldn't be reliable and, to tell you the truth, I would suspect they're fake altogether, really.

And that's as much as you'll get from me, really. We've talked in the past and you insist on inserting sarcastic smileys all over what are supposed to be serious answers.

I, for one, have given up on you.

[macofaco]

I also don't have time to argue with you :)

In fact you are doing free Sublight advertisement. I will even consider to put your name on "About box" in "Special contributors" section :P

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Regards,
macofaco

[eduo]

I also don't have time to argue with you

In fact you are doing free Sublight advertisement. I will even consider to put your name on "About box" in "Special contributors" section

I'm sure you would. It's been your style so far anyway, so it wouldn't surprise me.

It's just a shame you're the only other option in town. A crying shame.

[fana]

-Separate de API and the Web. Leave the web as it is or enhance it but make it be a sort of client for the database as the API itself. Move the API to a configuration that allows mirroring and bandwidth sharing and offloading to slave servers.

I would vote for the third. I didn't use OpenSubtitles before the API and I wouldn't use it afterwards. The main benefit of OS, with all due respect, is the huge amount of subtitles and the matched-hash OSDB. Without this it just becomes yet another subtitle site, since it doesn't have any advanced features like editing, format changing and versioning.

I vote for the third, too.

[macofaco]

I also don't have time to argue with you :)

In fact you are doing free Sublight advertisement. I will even consider to put your name on "About box" in "Special contributors" section :P

I'm sure you would. It's been your style so far anyway, so it wouldn't surprise me.

It's just a shame you're the only other option in town. A crying shame.

I am not only option in town :) Did you hear about Podnapisi.NET? They are also having API access to their database (I don't have anything with them - except that they allowed me to create Sublight plugin which is using their database).

Of course, if you have good combination of knowledge/time/money you can create completely new option :)

(Maybe you could get source code from OS and improve it?)

[eduo]

I also don't have time to argue with you

In fact you are doing free Sublight advertisement. I will even consider to put your name on "About box" in "Special contributors" section

I'm sure you would. It's been your style so far anyway, so it wouldn't surprise me.

It's just a shame you're the only other option in town. A crying shame.

I am not only option in town Did you hear about Podnapisi.NET? They are also having API access to their database (I don't have anything with them - except that they allowed me to create Sublight plugin which is using their database).

Wrong. You're the only other Hash-based mechanism out there. Name-based mechanisms are shoot-and-miss. Hash-based matching is the way to go.

Of course, you decided to use your own protocol for this, too. Even being an open one that was perfectly useable.

[danger]

hey guys,

sorry for the outage. As has been mentioned, os is on vacation these days and should be back next week. However we had some strange problem with the boxes, which I have fixed for now. At least, it seems like.

Hope it's gonna work fine now.

[macofaco]

As far as I know, Podnapisi.NET database is also using hashing algorithm (I think it is same as OpenSubtitles algorithm).

---
When I was writing Sublight I didn't know about OS algorithm so I created my own (lets call it Sublight hash algorithm, version 1 ;)

It is possible that in future I will develop improved version of algorithm (lets call it Sublight hash algorithm, version 2). My goal would be of course to develop algorithm which would be codec independent (different compression methods, same hash). Anything else would not be good enough for me.

[danger]

mm, there must be some bigger problem as it's offline again