Dimming/hiding the subs

Ok. I’ll add an option to blur source subs too. In this mode, probably the ‘e’ key will first expose subtitles, then expose translations (on second press). And jack up blur a bit, yeah, that needs doing. ETA… two weeks or so. :slight_smile:

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That’s my first post here, so let me just say that I’m super grateful for your work. It replaces a lot of tooling that’s otherwise required for language immersion approaches like https://massimmersionapproach.com/. Thanks a million!

As for this thread, I’m seconding the wish for this feature. I actually came here to see if it had maybe already been implemented without documenting the hotkeys in the LLN settings.

In my case I’d only like to show/hide the smaller human/machine translations underneath the large ones. The small ones are usually English which I use to clarify the meaning of the primary ones, which are usually in Japanese.

Currently it’s a bit cumbersome as I have to go to settings, show small ones, check the meaning, then hide them again via the settings. I do this for almost every subtitle.

I don’t recommend cycling through as you’ve suggested because it adds an unnecessary key press when one only wants to show/hide one of the two subtitles. Consider that there’s many different ways people might be using the add-on. A dedicated key for each subtitle type would be great, for example:

e - toggle primary
r - toggle machine translation
t - toggle human translation

Blurring maybe also not necessary if all subtitles can simply be toggled.

@Jayjay

If I have understood you correctly, I made the ‘hide translation’ option (in the settings) for your use case. It hides (by bluring) the translations for every subtitle until you press ‘e’, to ‘expose’ them. Did you try it?

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This is a great application I ever used, And just hoping if we can hid the subs completely then it will be better. Because I always can make out the translation subs that makes me focus on my native language and ignore what I wanted to learn language. By the way, the press “e” hotkeys is works for me so just only hope if you can add the function for hiding the subs completely.
Appreciate your time and effort!

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Thank you for the nice extension. However, I’d second that blurring subtitles is not useful because they are still readable. Could you please implement simply hiding them instead? Thank you!

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Hello. The blur is fixed in the newest version of the extension (v3.2.5). It’s coming online in about 24hrs. :slight_smile:

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This feature would be amazing. I find myself trying to block the subtitles with my hand but that’s kind of a hassle and tiring after awhile. One of my favorite things about this extension is that it lets me focus on my listening and “cheat” by looking at the subtitles. Without the ability to ease blur them I find myself cheating accidentally and relying on my reading skills.

I and many others practicing listening skills would really love this option. Thank you for the work so far !

It would be great if the translation could be hidden completely instead of just blurred (since it takes up room and is distracting), but keeping the ability to press e to show it.

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Hey, this feature is now live.

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:+1: ^^this, but not “toggling” just the current line, but toggling the status, so its remembered across different lines/times/sentences of subtitles throughout the show.

:+1:

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I second this. I find the blurred subtitles really distracting, and they take my focus away from listening and paying attention to the show. An option to completely, 100% hide the subtitles instead of blurring them would be really appreciated!

Edit: to clarify, I’d like this option for all subtitles, native included. Not just the translation.

Also, I’m super grateful for this addon! Even with the blurred subtitles, it’s still really useful. But as it is, I switch between this and Subadub depending on what I’m doing. With the option to completely hide subtitles I won’t need Subadub at all, so I’m looking forward to that. :slight_smile:

Hmm, ok. How about this:

Show primary subtitles (on/off)
Show machine translation (on/off)
Show human translation (on/off)

And ‘e’ as ‘peek’ button… it temporarily first shows primary subtitles for the current subtitle index, if not already shown, or else shows translation(s), if not already shown.

Problem 1: there is no visual indication of when you are ‘in’ a subtitle, when it’s possible to reveal the subtitle/translation. The blurred text currently serves this purpose.

Possible solution, rely on this subititle time view (but that’s only available in ‘bottom panel’ mode… could add it to ‘subs over video’ mode, but, not sure it would visible enough):

Another solution, add a kind of ‘indication light’, that a subtitle is active… sounds like it might be distracting also though.

Problem 2: It’s not clear how revealing the text would work with the mouse… it’s likely that some users would enable the mode unintentionally, then think the extension is broken because they aren’t seeing any subtitles.

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Proposal two… there’s three settings (primary subs on/off, MT on/off, HT on/off). Eight possible combinations. I could map these to keys ‘3’ -> ‘0’.

(‘1’ and ‘2’ are used for playback speed)
‘3’ - All off
‘4’ - Primary only
‘5’ - MT only
‘6’ - Primary + MT
‘7’ - HT only
‘8’ - HT + Primary
‘9’ - HT + MT
‘0’ - HT + Primary + MT

Quick access between your preffered setups, better with a numpad.

Or maybe this list should be in two dropdowns in settings, view mode 1 and view mode 2… or maybe all subtitle settings should be replicated on two tabs for the two modes.

‘r’ is used for saving a subtitle, ‘f’ is for fullscreen. Could do:

‘3’ - show/hide primary subs
‘4’ - show/hide MT
‘5’ - show/hide HT

But switching between ‘modes’ might need multiple keypresses.

That’s exactly what I want, yes! :slight_smile:

I think both problem 1 and problem 2 are basically “oops, I accidentally enabled this, and now I think the extension is broken” issues. At least, for me personally those are both behaviors I actually want: no visual indication (when someone is speaking that’s already an audio indication, I don’t need a visual one) and no mouse-over reveal (I don’t use that feature anyway, except on accident).

But yeah, I agree that could be a problem for users that don’t realize what the option actually does. I don’t know what the best solution to that would be. Possibly a warning when you first enable it? Or a scary icon next to the options with a hover-over description and a warning?

Also, to be totally honest, to some extent this is just me wanting to get Language Learning with Netflix tailored to my preferences. So it might not be worth actually implementing–I can always just keep using Subadub when I really want subtitles hidden. I’m used to open source software, where I can fork it and change it to suit my needs. I did that with Voracious, for example, where I also made this change (along with some other changes). Unfortunately, LLN isn’t open source, so all I can do is appeal to get changes put into the mainline extension.

Another thought: if you want to add specific behavior-customization options to LLN to satisfy users like me, maybe it would be worth adding an “advanced” section in the settings. And at the top of that section could be a warning that the options within can impact the user experience in unexpected ways, and to be careful. That way it would be clear to normal users to leave the options alone, and it would give you a clear place put these sorts of fiddly options for overly-picky users such as myself. :wink:

That’s exactly what I want, yes! :slight_smile:

Ok, we’ll do that then, or something very close.

Unfortunately, LLN isn’t open source, so all I can do is appeal to get changes put into the mainline extension.

Me and Ognjen talked about open source at the beginning of the project. The goal is high-quality software (well, we’re trying…) for a low/reasonable price for users, and some income for us. I’m aware of a few other similar extensions that were/are open source, looking in the commit history, it’s often just a single guy plugging away, with few contributions. :frowning: Open sourcing I think would make it harder to make an income from the project. Having said that, if someone is interested in doing some significant work, we can add you to the repo and throw some cash your way from time to time (that’s called a job, right?). After two years of hard work with little income, the project now makes on the low end of a US developer salary. It’s nice making a tool that is used by a lot of people though. Ideally Netflix would pop up and say, ‘hey, nice work guys, you are providing value for our users, here, we’ll sponsor your project, and, all features can be free for all users.’ We’ve tried contacting them through a few channels, no response unfortunately.

btw, I just sent an email to Russel Simmons, developer of Voracious, maybe he can give us some help creating an offline video player with LLN code. Ognjen made one in the past (https://github.com/oaprograms/lingo-player - I was working on one too at that time, that’s how we met) , but it’s bitrotted at this point, I think.

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I’m aware of a few other similar extensions that were/are open source, looking in the commit history, it’s often just a single guy plugging away, with few contributions.

Yeah, realistically I doubt open sourcing this would benefit the project in any practical way. And to be clear, I wasn’t advocating for you to do so (I think closed source software has a place in the world too), I was just musing out loud.

Having said that, if someone is interested in doing some significant work, we can add you to the repo and throw some cash your way from time to time.

I’ll definitely consider that for the future! Although right now I’m focused on other things. I’m also more of a low-level C/C++ guy than a web developer, so my skills may not be up to snuff. When I made my changes to Voracious, I basically just hacked around until I got things to behave how I wanted. It’s hardly clean code, ha ha.

btw, I just sent an email to Russel Simmons, developer of Voracious, maybe he can give us some help creating an offline video player with LLN code.

I would be super into this. Having a seamless UX between my Netflix and offline language study, and e.g. syncing my saved words etc. between them would be amazing.

I’m thinking to open-source the linguistic processing code sometime soon, it’s turning into something that could be useful for other projects. Also adding some other tools to make it a useful toolkit for creating language materials from movies/audiobooks etc. I was working on this (https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?t=8699) before LLN. I have since made a new bluetooth version, where the code runs on a smartphone. It was going to be an open-source project, hope to get time for it again soon. Do you do any embedded/NRF52 experience? :slight_smile:

Made this in my room.

I’ll try get around to fixing up shortcuts for subs/translations soon, sorry.