'Learning Languages with Netflix' Chrome Extension

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davidzweig
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'Learning Languages with Netflix' Chrome Extension

Postby davidzweig » Tue Oct 16, 2018 8:34 pm

Hi. Me and Ognjen (the author of Lingo player) have been working hard recently to make a chrome extension that works with Netflix. It gives you bilingual subtitles on Netflix, and some other nice features. We are both quite happy with how it turned out. You can get it on the Chrome Web Store. It's free for a week, then paid.

You can also read the instructions if you want more information before installing. It's possible you find a bug still, this is our first release.

Currently, the following number of titles can be watched on the player, although, not all in all regions (see the catalogue for more information):

English: 7290 titles
Spanish: 383 titles
German: 220 titles
French: 204 titles
Italian: 131 titles
Dutch: 112 titles
Swedish: 75 titles
Turkish: 66 titles
Portuguese: 58 titles
Danish: 54 titles
Norwegian: 31 titles
Russian: 7 titles
Polish: 4 titles
Finnish: 4 titles
Filipino: 2 titles
Catalan: 2 titles
Croatian: 1 titles
Icelandic: 1 titles

If there is a good response to the extension, the above titles can be made to work in more regions, we can also add support for titles with non-latin scripts (there are many titles in Chinese, Japanese, Korean), and we could add support for a good number of further titles.

We'd appreciate any feedback.

Regards,

David and Ognjen
Last edited by davidzweig on Wed Oct 17, 2018 12:27 am, edited 1 time in total.
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tommus
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Re: 'Learning Languages with Netflix' Chrome Extension

Postby tommus » Tue Oct 16, 2018 9:07 pm

You only get one chance to make a first impression. So I recommend you fix the first paragraph of your app information.

"Language Learning with Netflix makes learning languages more effective and enjoyable. It allows you to improve your skills on your…

Language Learning with Netflix makes learning languages more effective and enjoyable. It allows you to improve your skills on your own by watching films and series in the language you study."

"Free for a week" is not a very good incentive. Most incentives like this are for a month.

Somehow I think CAN$6.99/month is more than most of us are probably willing to pay for this sort of subtitles, especially with just a week free.

I think you need to elaborate on your statement about "not all in all regions". That is usually a serious and show-stopping issue.

I wish you the best with this initiative. I think it could be effective. But I think you need get things correct at the beginning, and explain things well.
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davidzweig
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Re: 'Learning Languages with Netflix' Chrome Extension

Postby davidzweig » Wed Oct 17, 2018 12:19 am

Thanks, I'm aware of the typo, it appears to be an issue with the Chrome Web Store.

A week is also only trial period allowed by the Chrome Web Store.

The limitation with regions is to do with Netflix. We can do some more work and implement a work-around with code from our end, this is will improve things somewhat. In order for people to be able to see what is currently available in their region, we created a catalogue. Here in Serbia, which is relatively poorly served by Netflix, I see:

English - 115
French - 22
Spanish - 85
German - 19

Many of these titles are series with many episodes.

Next week we plan to make some videos showing the extension in use.

If you are a Netflix user, we would appreciate your impressions of using the extension.
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tommus
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Re: 'Learning Languages with Netflix' Chrome Extension

Postby tommus » Wed Oct 17, 2018 12:34 am

The catalogue works very well to see what is available in a region. My main interest is Dutch. There are 112 movies in Dutch. If you live in the Netherlands, there are 110 available. If you live in Canada, US, UK, France, Germany, etc, there are only 4 or 5 available. This is a common issue for Dutch and for Netflix.
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davidzweig
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Re: 'Learning Languages with Netflix' Chrome Extension

Postby davidzweig » Thu Oct 18, 2018 12:31 am

I checked the catalogue data again, it looks like even with further work, we can't improve the situation much for Dutch in Canada. A VPN could help though, check your PM.

I also made a post on Reddit. It looks like people have tried using Netflix in the past to study languages, and ran into the problem of poor subtitles. We made a catalogue of programs that have good original subtitles, and we use machine translation to create the translation, so that they follow the original subtitles in meaning closely (although they may sometimes be imperfect, depending on the language.). It seems to solve the issue quite well.

Just found a bug where the player won't work correctly with Brazilian Portuguese.. I'll patch it. Also found the reason for the duplicated description..
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davidzweig
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Re: 'Learning Languages with Netflix' Chrome Extension

Postby davidzweig » Tue Oct 23, 2018 1:51 pm

Hi Hashimi,

I was working full-time on it until about six weeks ago. I put it to one side while me and Ognjen worked on the Netflix extension. The Tapir was going well. I want to get back to it shortly. Actually, I'll try and do some work on it in the following days. Thanks for the interest.

The basic features of the extension are now complete at this point.. we should do some marketing now, to at least do the project justice. Yesterday I spent the day making a video:

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davidzweig
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Re: 'Learning Languages with Netflix' Chrome Extension

Postby davidzweig » Sat Nov 24, 2018 2:30 pm

We just released a major update. New features:

- Support for both human (Netflix) and machine translations. The two can be enabled separately.
- Slow down dialogue to x0.80.
- Dark UI that takes up less screen space.
- Bug fixes and improved performance.
- Additional audio and subtitle languages enabled in Netflix.

Hope you enjoy it, more features coming soon. I think next we will start making high-quality captions for dubbed audio tracks for well-known series (so you can use 'Breaking Bad' to study German, for example). I'll update this post with further details shortly.

The price is $4 USD/mo., about half of the Netflix basic subscription. If you'd rather not use a paid extension, you can take a look at NflxMultiSubs ( https://chrome.google.com/webstore/deta ... omamfehkli ).

If you already have the extension installed, you can go to chrome://extensions/ and click 'update' to get the new version.
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davidzweig
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Re: 'Learning Languages with Netflix' Chrome Extension

Postby davidzweig » Tue Feb 04, 2020 11:40 pm

Another update. We made a version for Youtube, it works on any video with captions (also auto-captions). Like LLN, it's mostly free to use, however, it's still a beta version, so please read the notes on this link carefully when installing: https://forum.languagelearningwithnetflix.com/t/youtube-extension-now-online/154 . I hope you like it. @tommus I think you will find an unlimited amount of material in Dutch on Youtube.

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Re: 'Learning Languages with Netflix' Chrome Extension

Postby joecleland » Wed Feb 05, 2020 2:53 pm

I have been using 'Learning Languages with Netflix' for a couple months now. I'm not sure where I saw the initial unveiling however I really love the product. I have a couple comments to be made:

  • The Chrome Extension was free. This is what really lured me in. If the product is introduced for monthly subscription, I'm not sure I will continue to use the application unless I'm using it everyday. If I did use it everyday I wouldn't mind purchasing the upgraded version that was offered.
  • You have the ability to upgrade for $5-7/month (I can't remember the exact figure). That upgrade is what I really like about the app and is worth the payment. In my opinion, that upgrade is what can really elevate your understanding of what you're hearing. You have the ability to highlight a word like "avoir" in the context of the sentence- with 5-6 color choices for your own reasoning behind the highlight. If you do highlight the word, every time the word is used/seen/heard even if it's conjugated from subjunctive, conditional, or passé composé you will see it. I noticed after a while I could un-highlight that word because I have learned it. I also like the fact that you can go to each color highlighted and select the tab. I can copy and paste the contents of this tab in a word doc so that I can create Anki cards.
  • A nice feature that is offered is hovering over a word to find out what it means. It was interesting to see how a word can change based off of the context of which it was said. This is good because it shows the importance of learning words in the correct context.
  • My last note may not have anything to do with you. However, after 1.5 month of using there was a Netflix sign-on attempt from Indonesia. I changed my password and everything is fine.

All-in-all if it's moved to a monthly plan I think you will lose some interest. However, I understand the reasoning for wanting to be rewarded for your work. You did a great job! Maybe a life-time purchase may be feasible? Nevertheless, best of luck.

EDIT: Admin fixed list code.
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davidzweig
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Re: 'Learning Languages with Netflix' Chrome Extension

Postby davidzweig » Thu Feb 06, 2020 11:20 pm

Hey, thanks for the detailed response, I'm glad you like it.

About the login attempt, check you Netflix password is different from other sites you use. There have been some mass leaks of passwords in recent years from some major websites, and people download these passwords and try them on Netflix to get free access.
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