One of the most interesting uses we've found for artificial intelligence is generating subtitles and transcriptions. Previously we've explored options like Riverside AI, Freesubtitles.ai and Writeout.ai, all with free modes and acceptable results, but today we want to add Video 2 SRT, derived from the CCExtractor project. Video 2 SRT works directly in the browser and requires no additional software.
Finding subtitles online isn't difficult, especially when it comes to popular content. However, there's always that video without captions that drives us crazy. Fortunately, artificial intelligence has given rise to automatic services for generating subtitles and transcriptions, eliminating much of the work that translation, writing, and subtitle resynchronization demand. One of those services is Video 2 SRT, created by the people at the CCExtractor project.
How to generate subtitles with Video 2 SRT
As its name suggests, Video 2 SRT takes any video's audio track and combines it with a language model to generate .srt files. The first step is to select one of the six available models (they download and are stored locally), choose the final subtitle language, look for the video to process (always offline, no need to send it to a remote server), specify the audio track (there may be more than one in certain videos), and click Convert. Video 2 SRT will show its progress, and at the bottom it will enable two download options: WebVTT and SRT. We can also play the video and observe the final result.
The main limitations of Video 2 SRT are three: First, it doesn't get along well with Google Chrome and other Chromium flavors. For some reason, it never detected Matroska videos, and users also reported a 2 GB limit on their video files (if we use Firefox, both problems disappear). Second, the application needs some processing power, and its conversion speed isn't the best, to say the least (even with 16 available threads). Finally, its translation from English to Spanish is... horrible. In the most extreme cases, the model mixes Portuguese with Spanish and invents entire sentences.
Anyway, I think Video 2 SRT has its place. Subtitle generation preserving the original language is quite good, and it can definitely help when there's no direct alternative.
Official site: Click here
Code on GitHub: Click here
