4 ms·

I would much rather we use AI to improve subtitling. Better auto speech recognition, per-word millisecond synchronization, positioning based on speaker/screen

I would much rather we use AI to improve subtitling. Better auto speech recognition, per-word millisecond synchronization, positioning based on speaker/screen content-- all these could improve the subtitled experience and would be way less creepy than deepfake voices.

xiii1408 5y ago
Yes! My perennial problem is that most Chinese TV content has excellent subtitles, but they're burned in to the videos. So if I want to watch a Chinese show with a friend who doesn't read Chinese, there's no option even for auto-translated subtitles. I've often thought of writing a script to generate subtitle files using text recognition, but haven't gotten around to it.
- xiii1408 5y ago
  There's also the problem of content which doesn't have subtitles to begin with---YouTube's automatic subtitle generation is great, but could be improved and expanded to languages other than English.
  - Jach 5y ago
    It is expanded, at least to Japanese. What's also fun is you can then have it auto translate the auto generated subs. The results are... not typically great, but the potential!
    - userbinator 5y ago
      A long time ago, I tried the "autosub" feature with anime and it replaced understanding with unintentional (dry) humour. The output had phrases that resembled a news transcript, which is probably what they were training the system on.
  - moffkalast 5y ago
    > YouTubes auto mathy subtitle gen ration is grate FTFY
    - danuker 5y ago
      Nah, it's better than that. But it doesn't recognize sentences, and a word appears at a time.
  - BlueTemplar 5y ago
    Sadly, they seem instead to have been recently removing this functionality (as well as auto-translation of those).
- throw_away 5y ago
  Ah, but one thing I miss about the burned-in subtitles was how, on VHS at least, one could fast forward like 2-3x and still be able to read the captions. I double-lazied my way out of more than one high school book review where a boring book was made into a boring movie.
  - crtasm 5y ago
    But now we can do the same thing with softsubs, e.g. using VLC.
Gigachad 5y ago
Both are happening. Google meet has live auto subtitles that are pretty accurate. Sometimes I find even as an English speaker I am able to understand through the compression better with the subtitles on.

xiii1408 5y ago

Yes! My perennial problem is that most Chinese TV content has excellent subtitles, but they're burned in to the videos. So if I want to watch a Chinese show with a friend who doesn't read Chinese, there's no option even for auto-translated subtitles. I've often thought of writing a script to generate subtitle files using text recognition, but haven't gotten around to it.

xiii1408 5y ago
There's also the problem of content which doesn't have subtitles to begin with---YouTube's automatic subtitle generation is great, but could be improved and expanded to languages other than English.
- Jach 5y ago
  It is expanded, at least to Japanese. What's also fun is you can then have it auto translate the auto generated subs. The results are... not typically great, but the potential!
  - userbinator 5y ago
    A long time ago, I tried the "autosub" feature with anime and it replaced understanding with unintentional (dry) humour. The output had phrases that resembled a news transcript, which is probably what they were training the system on.
- moffkalast 5y ago
  > YouTubes auto mathy subtitle gen ration is grate FTFY
  - danuker 5y ago
    Nah, it's better than that. But it doesn't recognize sentences, and a word appears at a time.
- BlueTemplar 5y ago
  Sadly, they seem instead to have been recently removing this functionality (as well as auto-translation of those).
throw_away 5y ago
Ah, but one thing I miss about the burned-in subtitles was how, on VHS at least, one could fast forward like 2-3x and still be able to read the captions. I double-lazied my way out of more than one high school book review where a boring book was made into a boring movie.
- crtasm 5y ago
  But now we can do the same thing with softsubs, e.g. using VLC.

Gigachad 5y ago

Both are happening. Google meet has live auto subtitles that are pretty accurate. Sometimes I find even as an English speaker I am able to understand through the compression better with the subtitles on.