How do you deal with videos that have no subtitles?
This has been bothering me for years. My media library contains a lot of content without subtitles: Somewhat obscure foreign-language films that can't be found on major subtitle sites (either they aren't listed on OpenSubtitles, or the available .srt files…
This has been bothering me for years. My media library contains a lot of content without subtitles: Somewhat obscure foreign-language films that can't be found on major subtitle sites (either they aren't listed on OpenSubtitles, or the available .srt files have mismatched timing, making manual adjustment a huge hassle). University lectures and conference presentations—content that generally no one bothers to subtitle. Various "long-tail" files: old documentaries, short videos with visuals, and so on. Things have gotten a bit easier with the advent of AI; I can run OpenAI Whisper to extract the dialogue, generate a source-language .srt file with timestamps, translate it into the target language, and then copy it to my NAS. While this workflow works, I have to spend 30 minutes tinkering with it before I can even watch a 40-minute lecture. Perhaps due to my limited computing power, Whisper often makes recognition errors. I got fed up with this tedious process and started trying to write my own tool to solve the problem. But before I dive too deep into this "rabbit hole," I’d love to hear how others handle it: What is your current workflow for dealing with subtitle-less videos? Is there a better solution than my "Whisper conversion" method? Which part gives you the biggest headache? Is there an existing tool that solves this perfectly—one that I’ve somehow missed? Happy to share your experiences in the comments.
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Bazarr
I use subgen to caption them. It's got a bunch of integrations but I just use it standalone. I make sure to use CUDA with an appropriately sized whisper model. https://github.com/McCloudS/subgen
I made a tool that can generate subtitles if you’re interested to check it out: https://github.com/tylerbcrawford/subgeneratorr
There are many while-streaming option. I was toying with it a while ago so I'm not sure how well it runs now. I used sherpa-onnx with a vibecoded HTML page, and run a small CPU model and stream the audio output through VB cable to act as input, then use OBS studio for overlay. It's a bit wonky and not production-ready, but it worked in real time, so you can look into it if nothing nicer come along. Everything is free, and only VB-Cable is not open-source but donationware (unavoidable if you are on Windows due to driver signing, but Linux has much better option). This gives you much more modern, more accurate models, although Whisper is still pretty good especially for unpopular languages.
if the srt is just mistimed, ffsubsync. resyncs it against the audio, saved me redoing a pile of old documentaries
For lectures and conference videos, I'd batch-generate source-language subtitles and treat them as good enough unless the file is worth keeping. Copying the outputs back to the NAS by hand would annoy me more than a few transcription errors, so I'd automate that part first.
I am happy about those. Because I then can enjoy the movie/show and don’t need to read it and lose context of the whole plot.
Consider using a combination of tools like HandBrake for video processing and VLC for playback with auto-generated subtitles. You might also explore community forums for niche subtitles, as some users share their own creations for obscure content.