
Show HN: Add video subtitles on the fly from plain text - 011-video
https://011.video/2020/08/03/burn-video-subtitles-on-the-fly-from-a-plain-text-file/
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TuringNYC
About two years UC Berkeley was forced to take down most of their university
lecture videos which were available freely and publicly due to some regulation
around closed captioning availability. Presumably the cost to providing the
closed captioning was considered too high. I wonder if some software and/or
service provider could help get those videos back up.

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ladberg
I just went back to some of my Berkeley course captures and the few that I
checked out had captions that looked human-generated (unless YouTube's auto-
generation can handle math terminology and abbreviations fine). It's a shame
that they can't release those ones publicly due to some weird legal reasons.

~~~
TuringNYC
IIRC the regulation was meant in good spirit (to ensure the hard-of-hearing
had equal access to university produced artifacts), but effectively it caused
a lot of loss.

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happytoexplain
The article's actual title uses the word "burn", not "add", which makes more
sense. "Add video subtitles on the fly from plain text" is basically just a
description of subtitles as they work today.

~~~
mercora
well, minus the on the fly part, i guess. I thought it might be semi automatic
by trying to skip actually understanding spoken words but counting syllables
or similar to detect accurate timing. I don't know what the workflow usually
looks like for this kind of task but this one presented here doesn't look too
dumb to me. even without burning them into the video.

~~~
smnrchrds
> _I thought it might be semi automatic by trying to skip actually
> understanding spoken words but counting syllables or similar to detect
> accurate timing._

Is there a software that can do that? I have been searching for one, but
haven't found any so far?

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011-video
Thanks for the comments !

I try to answer to all together :

\- "I thought it might be semi-automatic..." : 011.video is made modestly with
HI (Human Intelligence) not AI. We have all used Youtube automatic translation
to know how ineffective is it. By the way 011.video support a "Speech to
sticker" feature on chromium browser (except on Edge). It's fun to add
video/GIF/images on the fly, but it's not 100% effective as it depends on
Google speech recognition system, your internet connection, your mic, your
device...

\- "...option to generate a separate WebVTT subtitle file..." : Each SRT files
or WebVTT files is linked to a video. As i said today AI automatic speech to
text translation is far from effective. So if you want a clean webTTT file you
have to make it manually phrase by phrase.

\- "got the width of a smartphone, line are wrapped..." : 011.video smartphone
/ android app is not up to date. i will update it later this month after
getting some feedback from the Desktop version online.

I’m eager to receive more feedback.

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screamingninja
Is there an option to generate a separate subtitle file in a standardized
format (e.g. WebVTT) without modifying the base video?

Ref:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebVTT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebVTT)

~~~
mercora
i think the Matroska container format (mkv) can do things like that. I
remember reading that you could store video/audio content in separate files
without player configuration. No idea how well that's supported though.

Update: Sorry, but i just realized you were more likely to ask about what this
software can do and not how to link external subtitle files to your video.

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011-video
How-to add permanent subtitles guide : [https://011.video/2020/08/03/burn-
video-subtitles-on-the-fly...](https://011.video/2020/08/03/burn-video-
subtitles-on-the-fly-from-a-plain-text-file/) 011.video web app :
[https://011.video/desktop.html](https://011.video/desktop.html)

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rasz
>UPLOAD A VIDEO

lol no, why would I upload my movies to someone elses computer when ffmpeg and
mencoder exist?

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johnnysnow
Painful site design, at least change the background. You're not doing yourself
any favors with that repeating geometric background. Having your bold text as
the same color as the non geometric portion of the background doesn't help
either. I hope your burned in subtitles don't make use of the same design
principles of anti-contrast and signal hidden in noise.

~~~
thih9
This critique seems needlessly harsh and a bit offtopic to me.

