XML-RPC URL changed

Hey folks,

I’ve been traveling for couple of weeks, it seems website is working OK. We got some XML-RPC issues, because of DDOS attack we still got from thousands servers connected to bot-net. Also for this reason we are changing main URL for XML-RPC server to http://api.opensubtitles.org/xml-rpc, but don’t worry, old URL will work until end of 2009. But

In one night I’ve been watching very interesting documentary movie, and I was thinking how I can help spreading this good stuff over the net, so I got idea to make Featured subtitles section, so now you can see it also on main page. If you are logged in, and you got set some preferred languages, it will show featured subtitles from these languages (as it is standard on this page).

Mark subtitles as featured subtitles is possible only by administrators and platinum members, so if you amongst them, consider following:

  • you must saw the video with subtitles you are setting as featured
  • video must be really good, I mean it hasn’t to be blockbuster movie (but can be, Disctrict 9 is great movie…), but I prefer foreign/alternative/documentary movies with good ideas behind it
  • don’t make promotion of your subtitles

Also there is for now little bit hidden real-time stats of clients online, so we can see which clients are most used.

Recently Amet released OpenSubtitles OSD script for XBMC, which is accessible directly from OSD menu when playing movie (same like in Boxee), it is really worth of try. I wish there will be in future implemented downloading subtitles in every player using hashes.

That’s all for now, in near future we will move cache servers and also set slave servers for MySQL, so I hope opensubtitles will work better during peak times.

Start the discussion at forum.opensubtitles.com

Show archived comments
  1. Great news about OSD. I will confirm if it works with Plex in mac as well (it should, but the themes are not the same so I need to make sure).

    Something I do in SolEol is trying to come up with the best subtitle for any video depending on downloads and ratings. Having a “Featured” flag would mean this is the first think I check for. It’s a good idea. Hard to implement, though, since the disconnect between subtitle download, subtitle view and subtitle rating is so big.

    Would there be an XMLRPC method for flagging as “featured”? That could also be implemented in XBMC and players for ease of use (same as subtitle ratings now).

  2. As for the stats. That blank line is for what program? I’m surprised SolEol doesn’t appear there, but I wonder if I identify it as SubDownloader and never remembered to change it (from back when there were problems with getting access).

    Funny Apple-PubSub is there. That’s an RSS subscription agent, it has nothing to do in a listing of clients for the API. Weird.

  3. eduo: idea of featured subtitles is something different – administroators and platinum users have this ability to make some subtitles featured. Sure it can be the best subtitles for some movie, but idea is to bring to people some interesting movies with featured subtitles. So I dont want to be featured subtitles for some movie which suxx.
    Also I dont think it is good idea to put it in XMLRPC for now, how many clients will support this ? Better is rating, if user like the subtitles, there should be rating at the end of movie, for example in XBMC, if user like that subtitles.
    For realtime stats – I have to check whats going on, because it is really weird. Anyway, I added on site high_definition and automatic_translation flag, and also I put it in XMLRPC with hearing_impaired to UploadSubtitles() method.

  4. Rating is broken. Ratings should just be upvote and downvote. Any further measurement is subjective and misleading.

    As for puttings things in XMLRPC you ask: “How may clients will support this?”

    The answer is simple: None, if it’s never there.

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