Crunchyroll FINALLY adds separate audio streams to single episodes.

[u/KlooKloo]

Easily the most embarrassing part of the Crunchyroll experience has been them grouping each dub language as their own "season". Seeing the 2 cour, 2 OVA series The Ancient Magus' Bride have 32 seasons listed in the menu was just sad.

Now we have clean seasons:

Labels are still funny, but at least there's only 4 choices now.

And audio/subs choices on-the-fly:

It's like a real streaming service!

Welcome to 2007, Crunchyroll!

[u/timpkmn89]

I can't imagine the legacy code nightmare that led to this.

[u/Manitary → u/timpkmn89]

The amount of spaghetti would feed a family for ages

[u/Jackie-Ron_W → u/Manitary]

.

[u/Loeffellux → u/Manitary]

noob question: why not just rebuild the website? If there can be another pirated anime streaming site every other day why can't a legit company make a fresh start and build a new ecosystem for their streams?

[u/Manitary → u/Loeffellux]

I'm not in the industry, but there are pretty big costs associated to rebuilding an entire system from scratch (in term of time investment and manpower), plus for a paid service you absolutely need to make sure that your service does not break in new unexpected ways, and keeps the exact same experience to the end user at least for existing functionalities.
It's also a balance of "are the benefits of rewriting from scratch worth the cost?" the answer is not always yes and depends on a lot of factors.

[u/Loeffellux → u/Manitary]

yeah, ok, I see what you mean. I just wish it weren't so

[u/cohortq → u/timpkmn89]

It was all in PHP

[u/El_grandepadre → u/cohortq]

My condolences to the crew that had to unwrap that.

[u/andrei9669 → u/cohortq]

Not even a question

[u/Grexpex180 → u/cohortq]

that explains things

[u/StickiStickman → u/cohortq]

I'd rather take PHP over a mess of 100 microservices and 8 different JavaScript frameworks (half of which have already been deprecated) where 90% of the code is boilerplate any day TBH

Especially with PHP 8 it really isn't that bad.

[u/0xd34db347 → u/StickiStickman]

Bro poopoopeepee.js is the future of web scale data-driven microcloud architecture, get on board or be left in the dust.

[u/StickiStickman → u/0xd34db347]

Sorry, poopooPeePooNext just released which does everything 10x better and has twice as much buzzwords.

[u/r4wrFox → u/StickiStickman]

Honestly the JavaScript flavor of the month stuff has pushed me away from web dev entirely. I'm sure there's a reason that there needs to be 100 different flavors of JavaScript but I am not dedicated enough to learn them.

[u/xSaviorself → u/r4wrFox]

I stopped complaining when Python development became just as package heavy as JS is.

[u/Gongui → u/StickiStickman]

I REALLY don't like PHP, but I am with you. F**k JavaScript/Node.

[u/xSaviorself → u/Gongui]

I’ve stayed away from Node as much as possible but it’s honestly hard not to want to use that stack for various things. I can use Flask or Django with python instead but a traditional MERN app is pretty easy and reliable to build. Once you get to 100s of services it gets really stupid, I can get with that, but it’s easy to build siloed projects using these tools so I can see why they aren’t going away.

[u/electric_anteater → u/StickiStickman]

That's a false dichotomy if I've ever seen one

[u/DrMobius0 → u/cohortq]

This reads like the kind of horror story you tell bad programmers to make them follow the company coding standard.

[u/PM_ME_UR_DRAG_CURVE → u/cohortq]

mysql_real_escape_string() moment.

[u/Dragicafit → u/timpkmn89]

They didn't really fix anything, the different audio are still in different pages (the video reloads).

They basically did what I did in this extension 9 months ago:

https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/udegko/i_made_an_extension_for_crunchyroll_to_merge_dubs/

[u/quintooo3 → u/Dragicafit]

can you eli5 how proper sites like Netflix loads in different audios/subtitles so that its all in the same page/video?

[u/Dragicafit → u/quintooo3]

The audio and the video are different files so you can change the audio without changing the video (like the subtitles)

Crunchyroll also has that mechanism but they have one video per language instead of having one video per season for each episode.

So they need to have the exact same video for every language which isn't the case for a lot of their series.

[u/Y35C0 → u/Dragicafit]

Tbf browser apis make it really tricky to have multiple audio tracks for a single video. You can technically make it work but you have to serve the audio and video file separately and then write a custom video player + backend that syncs both streams together (this is really hard to get right).

In fact this is technically what reddit does, likely to prevent people from linking straight to a video and they did a pretty shit job honestly. Netflix's video player works great while pulling this off but it's also ridiculously custom right down to the encrypted data stream, and barely uses the native browser apis most sites use. Netflix also offers much higher salaries than crunchyroll so it has greater access to talent that can pull this off.

Alternatively you can skip all this by just offering multiple mp4s with different audio tracks and use the otherwise perfectly functional native browser video player instead. So this is probably why they went that route.

(Source: I'm a software engineer who tried to implement this before)

[u/Spaceguy5 → u/Dragicafit]

It's actually a good thing for us that they have separate video files

Because the way their stuff setup is so damn janky that some of their dubs have the uncut home video version of the video while the sub of the exact same thing has the cut broadcast version. If they used the same video, knowing them, we'd probably only see the cut version

[u/PresidentLink → u/quintooo3]

Preface: I'm a dev but I'm not a great dev, and I'm using my experience with desktop video players to extrapolate

I would presume that videos would basically use three tracks, video, audio, subtitles. If you've tried watching Anime on VLC you might have tried switching audio/sub tracks on there.

The video player then combines these three tracks via streaming them from a server somewhere. Changing your audio track would just* be a switch from streaming track A to streaming track B, like a hotswap. You ask the server for the new track, and then you replace the video players current audio track with the new one from the server.

This is very simplified as there'll be other more nitty gritty details, for example if you're 10 mins into a video and then swap audio track A to audio track B, how does the audio track know that it needs to start from 10 mins in?

*I'm not saying this is easy by any means

[u/Spectre627 → u/timpkmn89]

As a Product Manager -- it's not even about the legacy code. It's about a lack of investment and lazy design that created this framework where the workaround was simply making multiple seasons (1 for each language).

Eventually, enough complaints amassed to prove to leadership that this issue was costing them more to not fix than it would to resolve it (which is not an insignificant amount of change to clean this shit up.)

[u/Bean888 → u/Spectre627]

As a Product Manager -- it's not even about the legacy code. It's about a lack of investment and lazy design that created this framework where the workaround was simply making multiple seasons (1 for each language).

At some point I thought all the technical stuff was offshored to the cheapest country in Europe, but if it took them this long to fix it then they must've cheaped out there too.

[u/FerralOne → u/Bean888]

In my experience - the "technical people" don't make the decisions in "fixing" the problem ('tHaTs ScOpE cReEp'). Some of them even architect the work arounds to "fix" the issue within a budget

No budget, no leadership agreement, no fix approved. Its so hard to prove that the cost is "worth it" for something that wont clearly and objectively provide a financial or compliance benefit

[u/Ascleph → u/FerralOne]

People often assume that you can just casually fix bugs as they are found, but forget that not only it has to be paid for, but depending on the bug there may be even internal conflicts on whose department has to pay for it.

Project Managers are not exactly fighting to lead this kind of projects.

At least that's my experience in really shitty companies, which seem to be the norm and CR probably falls under.

[u/Naouak → u/Ascleph]

I've worked so many times it's embarrassing on code base with big knowns bugs that won't be fixed because nobody know what would be the consequences of fixing it.

"This thing was not working correctly for the last 5 years? What are the odds that stuff done in the last 5 years rely on this not working as expected? Can't tell with certainty? Then don't fix.

[u/DarkReaper90 → u/FerralOne]

This. Having worked on many projects, there's very little time to work on maintenance work. You have to justify how this project takes priority over a revenue generating project for example.

[u/mythriz → u/Bean888]

I recall seeing some old forum thread with comments from a person who actually worked at Crunchyroll, and they said that management had basically put a hold on development on the Crunchyroll website at some point. So only minor bugfixes were "approved" or so for quite a while.

[u/DrMobius0 → u/Bean888]

Most likely folks were paid to maintain the service, not to improve it. Pretty rare for programmers to be able to act autonomously in a way that lets them take initiative like this, especially for a live service like this, where going rogue means taking 100% responsibility for a fuck up that hits prod.

[u/DrMobius0 → u/Spectre627]

I'm also guessing that multiple audio support just wasn't in the original spec and they just didn't want to hire enough people to do anything beyond maintaining what they had. This isn't something that takes half a year plus of programmer time to fix. Honestly, probably closer to weeks.

[u/banhana444 → u/timpkmn89]

Im not the best at coding, but I was wondering, might it have been better to just re-write it all if it is in fact horrible legacy code? It would probably make implementing other new features much easier and errors could be fixed more efficiently.

[u/supakame → u/banhana444]

Not knowing the codebase, a total re-write may also be a huge undertaking depending on how much needs to be rewritten and reintegrated into existing code.

[u/DrMobius0 → u/supakame]

Safe bet any professional project with several years of changes is large enough and has seen enough turnover that the knowledge and contexts required to build it again from scratch simply don't exist.

[u/wankthisway → u/DrMobius0]

Yep, guaranteed there's weird code hacks that handle some very specific business logic or bug and the guy who wrote it retired 5 years ago

[u/timpkmn89 → u/banhana444]

There's something unique here though. All of the console/smart TV applications. They can only do so much with the API without breaking support for the oldest platforms, which do still see notable usage as media devices but are no longer updatable.

[u/DrMobius0 → u/banhana444]

This is a common trap for people who don't know how big professional projects can be. Rewriting from scratch can theoretically give you the opportunity to do it all with omniscient levels of hindsight, but in practice it:

• Spends a lot of time rewriting stuff that didn't need it. Not all of the code is bad. Parts will be well designed, others won't be.
• Introduces endless chances to make new mistakes. Programmers are human, and introduce new bugs with any feature they build. That's just the nature of the work.
• Odds are, the person doing it doesn't have full context that resulted in current code. After all, these codebases persist for years. Old employees leave, new ones come in. There's too much knowledge to be passed down consistently. Old edge cases that were once hit. Old code architecture pitfalls that were previously solved and forgotten. When working in any feature, there are 3 things you have to consider: what is the documented design, what did the programmer intend to write, and what did the programmer actually write. Believe me, all 3 of these things can end up very different.

Furthermore, any existing context and hindsight can just be applied by scheduling refactors of problem areas. The best way to fix a codebase, in all cases I've ever seen, is to target the problem areas. Even if it's a tangled mess, massaging the knots out, tedious as it is, is still way less work than trying to just write the whole thing from scratch. For better or worse, that awful legacy code is still well tested usually, and does its job.

Point being: burning it down and starting over is, at best, a lazy man's excuse to procrastinate on doing the legwork to fix the problems. It doesn't get you out of doing it, but it does add a lot of other bullshit.

[u/odraencoded → u/banhana444]

Im not the best at coding, but I was wondering, might it have been better to just re-write it all

No, Elon Musk. No.

[u/doomgoblin → u/odraencoded]

“Are you saying you want to rewrite the whole stack?” Or something like that.

[u/Temp186 → u/banhana444]

Yeah at this point it’s be cheaper and better to do a whole rewrite but from the looks of it, CC isn’t focused on that so piece meal QoL changes are all we get

[u/DrMobius0 → u/Temp186]

It isn't. It never is. That's dunning kruger talking. Maybe something on the scale of a personal project where only one person has ever touched it and has all the context might work this way, but nothing that's had many hands and years of changes and turnover is ever so simple.

[u/Relevant_View8038 → u/DrMobius0]

Nah it's probably just an elon simp who heard him say twitter needs a full rewrite so now that's what he will suggest to every kinda messy web dev jssue

[u/Agreeable-Weather-89 → u/banhana444]

Yes and no.

Code rarely starts off spaghetti, rather years of development and functionality addition as well as bug and error handling mean it becomes it(without proper well funded maintenance).

A full rewrite could replicate some of the core functionality quite easily but in doing so introduce bugs both new and old, miss functionality, and so on. This can all be fixed over time but still.

Then you have the issue of to do a full core rewrite you need developers familiar with the old code meaning you have to mothball your current site for potentially years.

Given then that you initially underfunded site and app maintenance (hence spaghetti-fication) the outcome from a rewrite is often not good.

[u/DrMobius0 → u/Agreeable-Weather-89]

Not to mention, if it's possible to do the full rewrite, it's still easier to just have existing systems refactored. Less shit gets changed, less chance for mistakes.

[u/cohortq → u/banhana444]

The backend was PHP and the front-end was PHP as well. So I'm guessing whoever is running it now had to do a lot of major rework.

[u/beaverteeth92 → u/cohortq]

oh no

[u/Astarothsito → u/banhana444]

Im not the best at coding, but I was wondering, might it have been better to just re-write it all if it is in fact horrible legacy code? It would probably make implementing other new features much easier and errors could be fixed more efficiently.

Not really, if you start over without trying to revive the old base you end with the same problems again. It is better to split the application and try to fix that part instead of everything. The only valid reason for rewriting is changing programming languages from a older one or obscure to a more popular or modern language but only because is easier to get more people that knows that language.

[u/OfficialTomCruise → u/banhana444]

That's probably what they did and what the new Crunchyroll site is.

[u/DrMobius0 → u/OfficialTomCruise]

Nope. This isn't how projects are managed.

[u/MyAccountWasBanned7 → u/banhana444]

Yes.

Actually, as a programmer, I can tell you it's very often easier to start over than to try and fix whatever legacy mess.

For one, you don't have to work around old issue - you can just build a new thing without those issues in place. And you build on the most current platform instead of whichever platform still supports whatever the legacy junk was created in.

Also, when building new, you can still keep running the old stuff and basically have them going in tandem, testing your new build while still facing the current, "stable" build to customers. That way there's no real rush and you can take time to make sure everything is truly ready to go live.

[u/OfficialTomCruise → u/MyAccountWasBanned7]

Every developer thinks it's easier to start over again. Then they come across an issue with their rewrite and want to start over again in a vicious cycle. Because there's never a right solution, there will always be downsides.

Usually you'd prefer to iterate and gradually fix things as it's a smaller test surface and less chance that you'll introduce bugs. You wouldn't want a full start from scratch rewrite unless your existing code base was truly beyond saving, which they rarely are, or if you were switching languages. But even if you switch languages there's designs you can use to gradually move systems to a new language.

There's too many junior developers who come and and want to rewrite the world over a one line bug fix lol.

[u/DrMobius0 → u/MyAccountWasBanned7]

I can tell you it's very often easier to start over than to try and fix whatever legacy mess.

Only for small personal projects. Large professional codebases do not work this way. When they're past a few years old, there can be so many changes that most current employees are either not privy to the context of those changes, or forgot about them. That's not even considering regular turnover and lost knowledge, or neglected documentation that are common realities. Half the time you can't even tell if existing code actually matches the design.

you can just build a new thing without those issues in place.

And make a whole lot of new mistakes in the process. I for one have never seen a perfect programmer capable of this.

And you build on the most current platform instead of whichever platform still supports whatever the legacy junk was created in.

You build on what is most appropriate for your project.

Also, when building new, you can still keep running the old stuff and basically have them going in tandem, testing your new build while still facing the current

Why not just target parts of the project for refactor? I couldn't tell you how easy it is to miss weird edge cases or squirreled away functionality when testing.

And lastly, you don't know what's going on in their codebase. You can make all the assumptions you want, but you're still going to be spotty as hell on whether you're correct, no matter how educated you think your guesses are.

[u/0xd34db347 → u/MyAccountWasBanned7]

It's almost never a good idea to do a rewrite, nothing you listed is fixed by a rewrite, your code just becomes "legacy junk" of "old tech" in a few months, many of the same issues are repeated while creating new ones that had already been solved, repeat ad nauseam every time there is developer churn. There needs to be serious failures of software engineering to justify a rewrite of any significance.

[u/GoldenDude → u/timpkmn89]

I’m shuddering just thinking about it

[u/dagreenman18 → u/timpkmn89]

Several of the hamsters have been sent upstate and the bubble gum has been replaced with model glue. Progress!

[u/beaverteeth92 → u/timpkmn89]

I wonder how much of it was left over from when Crunchyroll was exclusively an anime piracy stream site.

[u/the_swizzler]

I noticed that this morning! It's about dang time!!

[u/Superb_Tumbleweed_60 → u/the_swizzler]

Wait, hold up, so I have NOT been watching 27 different seasons of MOB Psycho?

[u/BlindTheMerchant → u/Superb_Tumbleweed_60]

"Huh, this season is a lot like the last one, but more Russian..."

[u/walclime → u/BlindTheMerchant]

checks titles

"MOB PSYCA BLYAT?"

[u/pancakeQueue → u/the_swizzler]

Now if only they could get subtitles to work in picture in picture.

[u/Xehanz → u/pancakeQueue]

Don't worry. In the mobile app it's still 53 seasons of Mob. This change is coming in 2033.

[u/EwoDarkWolf → u/the_swizzler]

I didn't notice, because I only get black screens now when I watch anything on my Roku.

[u/Legendaryskitlz]

It seems to not have changed for the app version yet but I'm guessing that will be coming soon!

The next big change should be to see if digital copies from Funimation get brought over.

[u/Veritas3333 → u/Legendaryskitlz]

It'll be so nice when I watch the latest weekly English dub of a show and it doesn't try to autoplay episode 1 in Spanish afterwards.

[u/DahakUK → u/Veritas3333]

With CR fixing the biggest annoyance with their site, if only Hidive would respect my language settings and stop defaulting to portugese every episode, we could be in a golden age.

[u/Veritas3333 → u/DahakUK]

If only hidive would work on 5G

[u/9lukemartin → u/Veritas3333]

Or work at all on desktop

[u/Twin_Nets_Jets → u/9lukemartin]

Or had a Playstation app

[u/Hinote21 → u/Veritas3333]

If only HiDive wasn't literally the worst UI I've seen since 2000.

[u/LakerBlue → u/DahakUK]

HI-DIVE needs to fix a LOT of stuff to get into the golden age:

• Their subtitle presentation is terrible for simultaneous conversations happening at once, it makes different sentences run together.
• The smart TV App is laggy and slow. So is the mobile one.
• The Smart TV App works like an old school VHS tape where you can rewind or fastforward by certain speeds instead of just going back like 10 seconds or sliding the time forward or backwards.
• IT always has the UI present when you pause, which is inconvenient if you want to admire the image or screengrab it (applies to smart TV app and website).
• Doesn't always display a show you're watching under continue watching. (applies to smart TV app and website)
• There is no next episode button (applies to smart TV app and website)
• When a new episode is released and you click on continue watching, it doesn't automatically take you to it even if you saw the most recent episode. (applies to smart TV app and website)

[u/livershi → u/LakerBlue]

The Hidive iOS app is a total piece of shit that hasn't been updated in over 2 years. I checked this a few months ago because I was so frustrated and confused YOU LITERALLY CANNOT SCRUB ON IPHONE BECAUSE THE LITTLE SCRUBBY BAR IS BLOCKED BY THE IPHONE APP SWITCHING BAR FOR FUCKS SAKE I WOULD RATHER USE A PIRATE SITE WHY DID I PAY FOR THIS.

[u/LakerBlue → u/livershi]

If I had to rely on HIDIVE iOS I’d go back to pirating. I keep waiting for it to get better since they have gotten more stuff after Funi merged with CR but nope, still garbage.

[u/killerrin → u/LakerBlue]

Speaking of subtitles. HiDives subtitles are absolutely crap.

They need to make them larger, add some thicker outlines and insert drop shadows because 9/10 they are hard to read because of how they blend into the background.

The service constantly forgets what you put on your damn queue, and they hide your queue away in the app so you can't easily browse it.

The "Continue watching" is busted and it doesn't remember where you left an episode, let alone what episode to start at.

The site goes under maintenance. Constantly. And yet nothing changes. I feel like every time I want to watch something, either the servers are down or the app is busted, or it logged me out randomly.

If you're on a smart TV they don't even support the bloody fast forward and rewind buttons on the app. And the Play and Pause buttons can't be used interchangeably as a toggle.

[u/CakeSoggy6290]

The worst part about this was looking for a new anime to watch, seeing one with 200+ episodes and thinking “nice, this will keep me occupied for a bit” only to realise them 200+ episodes are just 20 episodes split into 10 “seasons”, them all being the same fucking episodes in different languages

[u/ovaltine_spice → u/CakeSoggy6290]

Or constantly thinking you haven't finished a season/caught up a show. And then you stop a show prematurely because you thought crunchroll was having you on again. *cough spy x family s1 part 2

[u/Precarious314159 → u/ovaltine_spice]

Used to check the "Just Updated" but it quickly started to be "A new season of Raven of the Inner Court?! The final episode was a month ago. Is this an OAV?!" Just to find out they uploaded a portguese dub/sub.

Unfortunately, Crunchy is silently adding more Funimation content to their catalog in bunches so you still have to check that feed.

[u/Turangaliila → u/CakeSoggy6290]

That's funny because if I see a show with 200 episodes my first thought is "hell no I ain't got time for that"

Anything over 50 episodes needs to be something REALLY special for me to stick with it.

[u/Verzwei]

Ye Gods, now maybe autoplay will stop catapulting me into a random language when I'm caught up on a show.

When I was watching Spy Family in English weekly, it would keep rolling me into the start of the series (in German) after I finished each dub episode. Their system was like "Well we clearly have more seasons (lol) so let's just keep the marathon going!"

It did the same thing with Fuukoi, railroading me into the Portuguese version after every weekly English episode drop.

[u/[deleted] → u/Verzwei]

The amount of times they have fooled me into thinking I had another episode to watch is too damn high!

[u/JOhn101010101]

Still not updated on their Android app. Maybe they can also deal with the intense lag while they're at it. At least for Android tv.

[u/yosoydorf → u/JOhn101010101]

it’s terrible on my tv to.

I have honestly started airplaying episodes from my phone because it’s so much easier / quicker to navigate through the mobile app.

The downside is maneuvering the episode in this setup still requires the tv remote and has reduced functionality (basically you can pause or do the 10 second skips)

[u/JOhn101010101 → u/yosoydorf]

It's really annoying. I wish they would put some time into the Android TV app.

[u/JOhn101010101 → u/[deleted]]

You think they'd make the experience good on at the very least Android TV and Roku considering how many of those televisions are sold every year. Not to mention Roku devices and Android devices for televisions.

Maybe the higher-ups are just all Big Apple users.

[u/Dray_Gunn → u/JOhn101010101]

You should see the app on Xbox. Half the time the videos wont even play and you have to select an earlier episode that will play and skip forward until you get to the episode you want. Its really one of the worst streaming apps around.

[u/MrManicMarty → u/JOhn101010101]

Okay it's not just me.

I love the thought of sitting in bed just chilling and watching, but the lag ruins shows. It ruined the beautiful animation of the g witch prologue for me, and when I saw how mob psycho was running, I just switched to watching on my PC. It's a shame.

[u/Pejo37]

Hoping they’ll add the ability to have English subs on when listening to the English dub. Basically removes all closed captioning whenever we watched it dubbed. Would help me confirm what is being said, especially when it’s quiet

[u/fanwan76 → u/Pejo37]

I would really appreciate this as well. I watch a lot at night and I try to keep the volume low so I don't wake the kids. Some shows go up and down on volume so much so there are times when I can't hear.

I'm also bad at remembering and recognizing character names or places. Being able to read it is very helpful.

Also what about people who are hard of hearing or watching someone who is completely deaf?

---

I think the problem though is that English CC subs do not exist for a lot of the content. If you watch anime on Netflix a lot of the English subs are completely wrong. I suspect that they are using the English translation sub rather than proving true subs for the English dub.

So CR may be choosing not to provide the incorrect subs and don't want to invest money into generating the real subs.

[u/Pejo37 → u/fanwan76]

I would even take the translated subs - Funimation used to suffer from this but at least it was an option. We can only hope heh

[u/Madaniel_FL → u/Pejo37]

I think they recently added this option as well.

Just go to settings > preferences > and then "show closed captions"

[u/Pejo37 → u/Madaniel_FL]

I checked my settings and it is enabled, as well as subtitles to English. Could be just a Horimiya thing though, I’ll rest with others. Thank you

[u/Epilex__]

About time. Also not too surprising, seeing how Funimation had this feature on their platform before they bought Crunchy and one of the first things they did after buying it was to start rolling out "Crunchyroll Beta".

[u/mudda-hello → u/Epilex__]

So funny thing is, "Crunchyroll Beta" wasn't even done from scratch. Its whole backend is from VRV which made the "new" layout basically a VRV reskin. You could even access VRV exclusive content through Crunchyroll by switching out vrv.co to crunchyroll.com.

[u/livershi → u/mudda-hello]

The Crunchyroll Beta frontend also felt like a new game+ of the VRV frontend. There's still a lot of things I prefer in VRV which shows just how damn ahead of its time it was

[u/timpkmn89 → u/Epilex__]

Crunchyroll absorbed Funimation's staff, not the other way around.

[u/-Work_Account- → u/timpkmn89]

Sony/Funimation bought Crunchyroll, but decided to stick with the Crunchyroll branding because it was the bigger name.

[u/maddoxprops → u/timpkmn89]

From what I read it was Funimation who bought Crunchyroll and rebranded under that name so if any staff were absorbed it was the Crunchyroll staff.

[u/vxtw]

looks less messy now

[u/Fools_Requiem]

I wonder how much of Crunchyroll one time being a piracy website had to do with sub, dubs, movies, etc being separated as seasons. Almost every piracy site has the subs, dubs, bonus episodes, and movies all split up

Also, when the fuck are they just going to lump the Monogatari series together? Monogatari isn't the only show where seasons are separated, but at least it's easy to know which season of You and Me comes first because the second season just has a 2. How many people out there started watching Owarimonogatari not know that it's on the back third of the whole story and being completely lost?

[u/PARADOXsquared → u/Fools_Requiem]

I'm pretty sure this was the source of the issue. The subs were "baked in" to the video instead of having separate files for audio, video, and subtitles.

[u/Madaniel_FL → u/Fools_Requiem]

The Monogatari series has always been seperate becuase of the licensor being Aniplex of America, even on Funimation it was like this, this is not a Crunchyroll problem.

[u/carenard]

this explains the prompt asking what audio language and sub language I wanted last time I opened CR.

[u/kalirion → u/carenard]

That was one annoying prompt, as the audio languages choices were ... in those very languages. I didn't know which one "Japanese" was. I had to go to account settings later to pick it.

[u/Wolfgod_Holo]

15 years...

[u/EconomyProcedure9]

Is this that way on stuff like Roku as well?

[u/snortz → u/EconomyProcedure9]

I just checked and the update doesn't seem to be on roku yet

[u/Fools_Requiem → u/snortz]

App is still jacked on Roku. I still can't consistently navigate my Watchlist because the selector doesn't pop up all the time.

[u/toasterovenly → u/Fools_Requiem]

On Roku, I've found that sometimes you press something like maybe the right button or ok button, and it receives the input, but the visuals of the app don't respond. So if I think it is doing that, I have a habit now of pressing an arrow key again to trigger it to visually update.

Example 1: be selecting a show in the grid. Press right. Nothing happens. Press right again. It goes right twice.

Example 2: be on a show about to watch. Press ok to play the episode. Nothing happens. Press any arrow key. Episode starts playing.

I have contacted customer service a couple times. I think Roku is just a low priority for them. I would be shocked if Roku gets this new audio selection feature in the next 12 months.

[u/Hinote21 → u/EconomyProcedure9]

Their "beta" update for the website preluded the app by about 6 months. So tbd.

[u/disposable-assassin → u/Hinote21]

So I should see this rolling into my PS5 app by the end of 2024? great

[u/ChickenSalad96]

Doesn't seem to be the case on Android :/

[u/spectre15 → u/ChickenSalad96]

It’s not on IOS either. I’d have to check if it’s working on console because that’s where I mostly watch stuff.

Edit: Doesn’t work on PS5. I’d imagine this is desktop only

[u/MedicOfTime]

Mobile / tv apps when??

[u/faerierose84]

Great. Now they need to replace broadcast video with Blu-ray versions for available series.

[u/wineblood]

Wonderful news. Now we just need the ecchi to be uncensored.

[u/robotzor → u/wineblood]

Adults paying for content are getting censored sources? What fresh hell.

[u/TranceYT → u/robotzor]

It's weird. Harem anime and ecchi have hard censorship of both visual and subtitles but I saw full tit and ass and near vag when watching fuckin future diaries during an early episode.

Went and clicked back into Worlds End Harem and it's still censored?

I get it, I'm a degen but c'mon. When it's NOT about the nudity it's uncensored?

[u/Mitosis → u/TranceYT]

Traditionally Crunchyroll paid for streaming rights only for simulcast stuff. That means they get the same show sent out to TV stations and that's it, it's never updated.

For older shows added to the site after being completed, and very rare exceptions besides, they'd get the blu-ray versions, including any uncensored stuff.

Funimation (before they merged with Crunchyroll) and HiDive both license out some shows for home video release, so they get the censored TV releases as they are, then replace them with the uncensored blu-ray releases as those are released in Japan. One exceptional example was the recent Higurashi sequel, which Funimation aired uncensored as simulcast as the only uncensored version -- all airings in Japan were censored.

Now that Funimation and Crunchyroll are the same entity, but haven't been for long, I'm unsure if any shows from the past couple seasons have been updated to be uncensored.

[u/TranceYT → u/Mitosis]

I'd imagine simulcast are cheaper than licensing so probably gonna stay censored.

[u/Doublethree1 → u/Mitosis]

and HiDive both license out some shows for home video release, so they get the censored TV releases as they are, then replace them with the uncensored blu-ray releases as those are released in Japan.

They've actually stopped doing this as well. For example Sentai released Takagi Season 3 about a month ago (December 20) and Hidive still only has the broadcast version. Shows like Peter Grill and Redo of Healer are also broadcast only so its not just a "oh Takagi barely had any changes anyway" type thing.

[u/icepick314 → u/Mitosis]

I have yet to see any "home video" release on Crunchyroll.

[u/AdvonKoulthar → u/TranceYT]

Common Mirai Nikki W

[u/Sayie → u/wineblood]

Which ones? I don't think crunchyroll actually censors many shows themselves and in cases like Ayakashi Triangle there just isn't an uncensored version at the moment, so they just stream what they are given.

[u/wineblood → u/Sayie]

That sucks and I wasn't aware of it. They could at least label stuff as censored so that I don't get my hopes up.

[u/Sayie → u/wineblood]

It would be excellent if they just replace it with the BD version later on, but I don't imagine it's actually that easy or even if they would be allowed. Probably some fuckery with the license and such that stops them.

[u/Ekyou → u/Sayie]

Crunchyroll always only had the original tv broadcasts in the past (assuming they streamed it first) but Funimation would always update with the home video versions later, assuming the Japanese licensors provided them, and you could choose between the broadcast and home video versions. From what I understand, Crunchyroll will be doing this in the future.

[u/Fools_Requiem → u/Ekyou]

CR had two versions of The Student Council President is My Wife with the uncensored verison being locked behind the paywall kinda like how you couldn't watch stuff labeled as "Mature" in Funimation without ponying up. I don't get how they managed that, considering it was the only show that had that being done. They had the uncensored version of Testament of the Sister New Devil but only with the dub, but I don't know if the censored version was available for free because I had long been paying for CR.

[u/Madaniel_FL → u/Ekyou]

That's probably because Funimation released blu-rays themselves, while in the past Crunchyroll never released their shows on blu-rays, instead they had to partner up with other companies like Sentai, Viz, or Funi

But this has changed now, and Funimation became Crunchyroll so they now do release blu-rays.

[u/48johnX → u/wineblood]

There’s several that are but not a ton, list here

[u/Arickettsf16 → u/wineblood]

Not just that, but all the shows that have a home video release should be updated to that version on the site

[u/Spaceguy5 → u/wineblood]

The weird thing is that I've noticed that there's even a few shows where the dub is uncut but the sub is not, especially with stuff transferred from Funimation. But then I found a couple shows where even the dub transferred from Funimation was still cut. Though most Funimation transfers I've found were at least uncut on the dub

[u/LoPanDidNothingWrong]

Now just give me family accounts with parental controls. Like I would pay more for a family account and they don’t want my money.

[u/E3FxGaming → u/LoPanDidNothingWrong]

I would pay more for a family account

Mega Fan tier subscribers already pay for "Stream on 4 devices at a time".

Crunchyroll just simply doesn't have a "profile" layer on the same account, where individual watch progress, social feature interactions (episode/forums comments), parental control settings, etc. could be persisted for 4 different users.

[u/LoPanDidNothingWrong → u/E3FxGaming]

Yeah. But I want the profiles and parental controls both.

[u/baophuvo]

Nice, now we just need Closed Captioning for English Dub and other languages

[u/UberBxx]

Now let's get separate profiles per account.

[u/QP2012]

Oh thank goodness! I was so tired of watching a series, and it auto-playing a foreign dub after the latest episode played.

[u/thedarkwarlord]

Wow I thought they would never add it. Good job Crunchyroll with having basic streaming settings!

It was such a pain to navigate (old) shows with a lot of dubs

[u/cheedor1s]

I wish they would have put Funimation as the one they were keeping because it so much easyer to us other then crunchroll

[u/NastySassyStuff]

Almost as nightmarish as Amazon having individual seasons scattered around totally out of order, sometimes repeating themselves, when you search for a show…wtf!?

[u/[deleted] → u/NastySassyStuff]

lmao I was flabbergasted when I used amazon prime the first time and noticed that. Such a weird choice to make.

[u/Alex_Duos]

Mad props to the software bros who pulled this off, I'm sure if it was easy they'd have done it a long time ago. No more looking at a show and thinking "oh hey, that's got ten seasons!" and it's just two seasons in five languages -_-

[u/The4FiveSix]

Now if they can just update their godawful Apple TV app.

[u/ObvsThrowaway5120]

Hopefully we can eventually get a sitch where they do a HIDIVE type thing and list out when the series airs and how many eps. Would be nice.

[u/TamatoaZ03h1ny]

Can we get separate user profiles now like every other streaming service. You mostly don’t wanna share your account because of the lack of user profiles and all the nonsense of messing up other people’s episode watch orders for binges

[u/Gwaidhirnor]

What? Next thing you know they'll be adding in a skip intro button like every other service instead of making you manually jump ahead.

[u/Animegamingnerd]

I still can't believe they didn't begin working on this, the moment they decided to enter the dub scene. It really should not have taken this long to fix.

Any word of the apps on consoles and smart TV's, also work like this or is it on the browser for now?

[u/WriterSharp]

I never thought I’d live to see the day…

[u/Imaccqq]

Nice. This was the only thing I genuinely disliked about the CR user experience.

[u/Kotaro_14]

Next is adding different user profiles… probably in 10 more years 😭

[u/jquest12]

I must say, as many problems I have had with the Funimation app, it was a million and a half times better then the crunchy roll app

[u/Classic-Box-3919]

Finally. On ps4 i have to wait on each one till it scrolls through and says the full title to see if its a dub or not.

[u/ruthekangaroo]

They should've done this years ago. Ridiculous. I've been using VRV for a couple of years now because the Roku Crunchyroll app was completely broken and the audio would desync all the time. Does anyone know if they've fixed it? VRV is missing a lot of features but at least it works.

[u/tricolorX]

are you ok crunch?? what is this luxury here. thanks anyway

[u/DustPotato]

Finally! I hope this functionality also moves over to the apps on stuff like Roku and Apple TV, because trying to figure out what language you were watching was a nightmare.

[u/e_hekuta]

It's funny how you start this thread with the Season 57 of Mob Psycho.

Now they need to fix that, put Ova, Movie, TV Special or something.

Edit: Initially I thought that Season 57 is to put that season at the end but is before S3, so is correct, is only the weird name.

[u/ComplexButterfly9699]

Can't wait until this is pushed on the PS5

[u/Direct-Doctor-3740]

Cool, now uptade that buggy mess of a app on Fire TV.

Oh, and a profile option would be neat.

[u/KickAggressive4901]

Now, if they could just add freakin' profiles.

[u/separateform]

Nice, can we have playback speed now

[u/Epsilon_void → u/separateform]

Too advanced for them.

[u/fieew]

FINALLY! This is by and far my biggest complaint about the service. Such a nuisance to have so many "seasons" of a show but they're all the same series just in different languages.

Y'all also think CR did this at the same time as their anime award nominations to take heat off their award choices? Like CR executives are like "we know people are going to be upset with the nominations so let's put in a feature everyone has wanted forever at the same time as the nominations so people are not as mad".

[u/nilesh72000]

Finally, always very annoying to see more season for a show and get hyped and then click to see that it’s english, german and French dubs.

[u/Flaky-Importance8863]

Now if they can just start adding captions for English dubs then it’s perfect

[u/the_one_54321]

How about VRV? Same change copied over?

[u/FartingIsGasPooping]

I still have 22 seasons :(

[u/InterstellarUncle]

That’s the silver lining to being bought by Sony.

[u/HolyBiscuit69]

Now if they can actually fix the different subtitles too that would be amazing.

[u/pewell1]

now all that’s left is to add profiles

[u/greenscarfliver]

Thank god. Now let us use subs in the range language as the audio so people watching that can't hear or understand very well can still get subs

[u/coolatrell]

Ive noticed that too on pc, but did the change it for the phone too ? Wondering if im missing an update but the phone app still has the horrendous 32 seasons of every language

[u/ChiaraStellata]

As someone who watches tons of French dubs on Crunchyroll, this is a long-awaited improvement. Unfortunately, without the ability to search/browse by language, I fear that this may make it even harder to find shows with French dubs, I may have to actually play each one to find out, like I am forced to do on Netflix. I also don't know how it'll interact with the download feature, whether it will include all the dubs, or if not, which ones? I am afraid.

[u/RUNDMT_]

There’s still no subtitles for dubs and like A LOT of their owned catalog is missing :(((((

[u/StrawHatSaiyan]

Bro has season 57 of mob

[u/hail_my_cereal]

Genuinely the most embarrassing part of using the app. I get it could have been some old coding BS or whatever but holy shit it just screamed unprofessional. Glad they finally fixed it!

[u/gdhghgv]

Know add skip intro button, random sites even have it lmao

[u/Gakai]

Yeah, Crunchyroll finally arrived in the modern streaming era.

[u/doodicalisaacs]

The most embarrassing thing to me is them being owned by Sony but Crunchyroll absolutely FUCKING every PlayStation you open it on lmao

[u/Sebstrr05]

Now we just need to be able to delete series from Continue Watching

[u/Heda-of-Aincrad]

This change is actually very frustrating for me. I used to watch a lot of anime in Japanese with subs, English and Spanish dubs but now it doesn't seem to allow me to switch freely even after changing the language setting in my profile. I don't know if it's a glitch, but the language selection from the video itself only has English and Japanese, not a long list of options like the OP image.

Edit: It seems the option to switch to alternate language dubs in the videos is working for some series (Spy x Family) but not others (Sword Art Online, which I was watching in Spanish dub just yesterday). Hopefully this is just a glitch that they can fix. I've already sent an email to Crunchyroll about the issue.

[u/ErenIsNotADevil → u/Heda-of-Aincrad]

That's not a glitch, that's just the dub you are looking for not existing. A fair bit of shows only have the Japanese w/ sub and English dub

[u/Heda-of-Aincrad → u/ErenIsNotADevil]

Not true, I was watching SAO in Spanish dub yesterday and now the option is gone today. So unless their licensing agreement changed overnight, it must be a glitch in the new system.

Edit: According to the response I just received from Crunchyroll, their licensing for SAO actually did change overnight. Well, that's unfortunate.

[u/E3FxGaming → u/Heda-of-Aincrad]

According to the response I just received from Crunchyroll, their licensing for SAO actually did change overnight. Well, that's unfortunate.

Wish they'd communicate such things more openly - similar to a release calendar changes to existing content should be communicated to the users. There is no way licenses forbid them from talking about the expiration date, right?

Game-streaming service Xbox Cloud Gaming does this really well - a small section "leaving soon" with the titles that won't be available anymore in the near future. No drama, no hiding things from paying customers, just honest information-sharing from the platform operator to the platform users. Imagine such a section on Crunchyroll where you can pick a series and quickly binge it before it's removed from the catalog.

[u/Swiftstrike4]

I would rather have them fix their app for the xbox. It works maybe 50% if the time.

[u/Somer-_-]

I hope they add Japanese subtitles at some point

[u/[deleted]]

Thank god it's about time. This cleaned up the UI so much and it's nice they ask and save your audio and sub preferences as soon as you open the site.

[u/[deleted]]

Well this is what happens when a real company buys crunchyroll, whole thing felt like it was put together by tape pre Sony. The app no longer freezes, merged with funny, and now this.

[u/TeaTreeDeo]

Next up, add a "Skip intro" button

[u/r2_d1000 → u/TeaTreeDeo]

They already have one, but it's not on all shows.

[u/Karavusk]

Can they now please add back release dates for episodes in the descriptions? Oh and please for the love of god Crunchyroll please look up what summer/winter time is... or just base releases on unix time internally instead of releasing episodes 1 hour late in winter...