Speech to Text in Subtitle Edit 3.6.5 and forward

[loninappleton]

I've recently seen a tutorial from Youtube on the Subtitle Edit ability to translate speech to text.
It requires a number of steps and Youtube videos go too fast for any sort of comprehension for me.
Is there a printed how-to for this feature?

Like the guy says in the tutorial, it looks like a major advance and would avoid me going
to YouTube Create to get my subtitle out of a video mkv etc. for fine tuning.

[netmask56]

I have to agree with you - there always should be a text transcript of all Youtube "How to" video's and podcasts and news reports. There are many people with hearing defects and sometimes comprehension issues when a printed version is unavailable. IMO pretty basic like you learn in management school, if you are giving a technical lecture full of 3 letter acronyms, all the acronyms used should be spelled out in full and even written on a whiteboard behind or near the speaker.

[loninappleton]

@Netmask56

Thanks for the supportive comments on the issue. Seeing mouse "twiddling" while some point of explanation is going on makes me want to tear something. That's a polite way of putting it. The youtuber who does these, David M., seems to be the only one dedicated to Subtitle Edit You Tube tutorials. Simply put he should be told to have a care in how his presentation appears to others. I'll not do it or try to because he provides a valuable service.

I made some progress today by starting up David M.s Speech to Text tutorial with a piece of cereal box over the upper portion of the screen while I read the CC captions of instruction. I made it through a few steps and this is something valuable for me to learn so I'll keep at it. But still, screen shots in sequence with text description is about the only thing I can _tolerate_. And I mean this twiddling crap is that bad and insufferably annoying to the point of turning it off.

My request is that someone step in to fill this void.

I'll make a separate post on my questions that come up during the tutorial. I have used SE a bit so it's not totally new, just this speech to text element.

[Note I say David M. because I'm prone to mispell his name.]

link is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd19iOWpj_4&t=307s

[pcspeak]

This command will download Closed Captions Only (SEdit-CCs.vtt).

yt-dlp.exe "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd19iOWpj_4&t=307s" --sub-langs en --write-auto-subs -o SEdit-CCs

Which I already did.
SEdit-CCs.7z

Cheers

[loninappleton]

This is a very good tip I wasn't aware of. Thanks for making it.

[loninappleton]

This command will download Closed Captions Only (SEdit-CCs.vtt).

yt-dlp.exe "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd19iOWpj_4&t=307s" --sub-langs en --write-auto-subs -o SEdit-CCs

Which I already did.

[Attachment 66210 - Click to enlarge]

Cheers

Thanks I'll look it over with gratitude. It was an easy download. From our previous chat (I think) I did complete the screen shot sequence for getting into You Tube Create to make an SRT file. But I saw no further interest on that so it's just for my use. This Subtitle Edit feature could replace such a procedure.

[loninappleton]

I'll step away from David M. stuff for a while just to ask if anyone but he has ever worked with the speech to text setup in Subtitle Edit?

If so please respond.

There are questions that the David M. video can't answer. This is one: In going to try to download the English model needed for
VOSK (I think) for two days I have just gotten the screen message that it won't complete and to try again later. This happens
each time. So I'm wondering if anyone else has used this "game changer" feature with any success in even completing setup.
But I've just encountered barriers in the setup in SE I cannot get past.

[ChasVideo]

Just some ideas. Adobe Premiere pro has speech to text that works in multiple languages. There is a free one week trial and one month costs $32. I paid for one month and I think I can get all the videos I want translated within that time. I can always pay for another month in the future. Kdenlive also has speech to text and is free. But it requires Python for the speech to text. I have not been able to make the Python installation and kdenlive work together. I have another thread asking for help with that but no help yet. I tried the trial of Subtitle Edit and was not impressed. It does not let you try foreign languages with the trial.

[loninappleton]

Thanks for the reply.
I have no knowledge of advanced professional tools like Adobe nor the ability to pay for long term use. It would take me the free month to figure it out is my take on it.

Also I want to get the free tools working to show this can be done outside of Adobe, Sonix or the other pay for tools but within
Windows 7.

What is needed, if this SE is really the "game changer" it is touted to be for this process of audio to text, is a more simple and text oriented explanation of the steps.

[pcspeak]

Firstly, I created a WAV file from the video using this command.

2wav.cmd

ffmpeg -i "The Fifth Element.mp4" -c:v none -c:s none -threads 0 -y "The Fifth Element.wav"

I downloaded the portable version of SE366 and extracted the files to a folder.
https://github.com/SubtitleEdit/subtitleedit/releases/download/3.6.6/SE366.zip

Then I ran SubtitleEdit.exe and did this: (See attached video)

You have to wait.... and wait.... and wait... and.... for the process to complete.
The output .SRT needed some work. I copied 'The Fifth Element.srt' -> 'The Fifth Element.txt'
Then opened ''The Fifth Element.txt' with a word processor and spellchecked. That fixed a lot of the errors. Saved as a .TXT file (not .DOC)
Renamed to .SRT. Lots more work with the file needs to be done.

The diction on my test clip was quite clear, with no odd accents. The results were not great for me. ymmv.
Certainly better than nothing, but I'm wondering if going through Google would be the better way.


My screen cap is a bit ordinary.
Cheers.

[loninappleton]

Hello pcspeak and all.

I know you are trying to help but I have no knowledge of command line code and so cannot follow much of it. Second I want to
stay in the SE program proper in order to make a guide for anyone I know that wants to make subtitles for ( in my case )
classic plays in the public domain previously Proshot from major theatres. Some of these are on disc and some come
from elsewhere.

My question was why I cannot download the proper language template to SE. Could be 3.6.5 or 3.6.6 etc.

I don't see where this language template would be picked up by your code, but I can't use code. I'm just
trying to get a method for using SE in the way the program provides.

I have loaded a clip with wave form
I have gone to SE > Video > Video/audio to text
in that I've followed the prompts to download ffmpeg
and the prompt to download VOSK 'models' in English. (English becomes visible under the three dots)

That's where the error box pops up and says try again later.
If I can get a good looking screen shot where everything is visible.... ok got it.

From this point I have made no progress. Things like VOSK and the Kali Speech recognition engine are installed
as the setup goes on. They are just terms I do not know the meaning of yet.

[loninappleton]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39mP3JMjNao

I was wrong. There is more than one how-to for video/audio to text in SE. This one seems to be a bit more straighforward
but I still follow the text rather than the screen. I mention this for a reason. This guy shows a prompt to
download libvosk. I don't know how to proceed.

But this tutorial is short and I'm give a one time through.

[loninappleton]

The author of this tutorial is Yosef K and he lost me on this one after some initial steps. These Youtube tutes with the tiny screens and tinier mouse pointers need a different format for presentation. Some people can follow them. I have difficulty to the point of giving up. Anyway the download problem is still there. Yosef K mentioned the possibility of bugs in the version he had.