Show HN: Add video subtitles on the fly from plain text (opens in new tab)

(011.video)

53 points011-video5y ago16 comments

16 comments

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.

ladberg5y ago

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.

TuringNYC5y ago

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.

happytoexplain5y ago

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.

mercora5y ago

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.

smnrchrds5y ago

> 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?

rasz5y ago

what part of "2. UPLOAD A VIDEO FROM YOUR DEVICE" is on the fly?

011-videoOP5y ago

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.

screamingninja5y ago

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

mercora5y ago

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.

011-videoOP5y ago

How-to add permanent subtitles guide : https://011.video/2020/08/03/burn-video-subtitles-on-the-fly... 011.video web app : https://011.video/desktop.html

rasz5y ago

>UPLOAD A VIDEO

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

johnnysnow5y ago

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.

thih95y ago

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

kanobo5y ago

I like it, text is not hard to read and the background and interesting design choices have more personality than most cookie cutter designs. You gotta appreciate the variety and spice of life.

Kuinox5y ago

Also, it looks like it got the width of a smartphone, line are wrapped when i got a 24" monitor, i hate it.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

16 comments

TuringNYC5y ago

ladberg5y ago

TuringNYC5y ago

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.

happytoexplain5y ago

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.

mercora5y ago

smnrchrds5y ago

> 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?

rasz5y ago

what part of "2. UPLOAD A VIDEO FROM YOUR DEVICE" is on the fly?

011-videoOP5y ago

Thanks for the comments !

I try to answer to all together :

I’m eager to receive more feedback.

screamingninja5y ago

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

mercora5y ago

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.

011-videoOP5y ago

How-to add permanent subtitles guide : https://011.video/2020/08/03/burn-video-subtitles-on-the-fly... 011.video web app : https://011.video/desktop.html

rasz5y ago

>UPLOAD A VIDEO

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

johnnysnow5y ago

thih95y ago

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

kanobo5y ago

I like it, text is not hard to read and the background and interesting design choices have more personality than most cookie cutter designs. You gotta appreciate the variety and spice of life.

Kuinox5y ago

Also, it looks like it got the width of a smartphone, line are wrapped when i got a 24" monitor, i hate it.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse