Comment on Crunchyroll Users Report Use of Controversial 'Hard Subs' on Platform + New Video Player
wjs018@ani.social 1 week agoI think what is going on here is an anti-piracy measure. When subs are delivered in a separate stream in the browser, pirates with the proper tools can save them separately, making it easier to redistribute as a video file with a range of subtitle options. By hardcoding them, CR is basically making a prospective pirate’s redistribution life harder because they need to do a separate video for every sub language (or go to a different source).
I think the main thing that soft subs offers is that you can customize size/color options in the player. When they are hardsubs burned into the video, then you no longer have that ability.
Rottcodd@ani.social 1 week ago
That was my first thought, but it doesn’t seem to hold up. The only pirates I would think would be significantly inconvenienced are ones that are doing fansubs of languages CR doesn’t support. If it’s a language CR supports, then the only difference is that the pirates would offer hard subs instead of soft, and while yes, that does mean having to host multiple copies of the same video, each with their own hard subs, that seems more the sort of thing that CR wouldn’t do, since corporations will institute policies solely to save fractions of cents. Pirates, ironically enough, generally aren’t that greedy, so it seems they’d be more likely to just go ahead and host multiple copies of hard subbed videos if that’s what it takes, and that’s the way it goes.
Now that said, I had noticed over recent years that hard subs are increasingly rare and most sites only offer soft subs, but I just assumed that was because they were ripping them straight from the originals, while hard subs are still done the old fashioned way, by fansubbing groups. But I guess it’s possible that the fact that most of the pirates have gone to soft subs exclusively means it would be more of a hassle for them to handle hardsubs than I’m thinking it would be.
I dunno - it just seems odd, still.