How to create text captions from the video's spoken words?

[Hirnsausen]

I downloaded and installed the SubtitleEdit, and am ready now to start using it.

My video has spoken words in German language, and I need now to learn how this software can create text captions from those spoken words. Later on, i can easily translate the resulting German captions into English caption, that will be an easy task. But now i need advise howto create text captions from the spoken words. Thanks

[xylographe]

Perhaps, you are looking for Audio zu Text (Whisper)... in the Video menu?

[Hirnsausen]

Thanks a lot, that helped! I am just very new to it. :-)

I have yet another question, and will start a new thread for that question.

[Safiralilas]

Hello, I'm female Brazilian, so please forgive any mistakes in English. I don't know what country you are from and what language you will need, probably English, but I managed to make perfect subtitles and also created a new audio file with Text to Speech within SE itself. The explanation is a bit long but my intention is to help you, because I suffered a lot until I figured out how to do it. Basically, there is no way, it is really hard to do. If your video is like mine that talk about the 1st and 2nd World Wars, even the best audio to text converters cannot exchange between languages, they make a lot of mistakes. I will even mention the programs that I use, all free or open source, to get perfect results and it is a lot of work, there are about 10 different programs, each one has its role at the right time. Step 1; Download Format Factory, don't use any other because it is perfect for the job, install it and put it in the language selection of your country, it is much easier. Now we're going to extract the audio from your video with it. In the "audio" tab, you'll see many possibilities, but we'll go to "mp3." At the top right, in "output settings," select the "low quality" option. Choose a folder to work with all the files we'll create from your video. Click accept and add the video file to this tab. Click accept. In the window that displays the video waiting for you, click start. When finished, your file will be in the chosen folder. Step 2: Let's extract a nearly decent subtitle from this audio with Clipchamp. It's built into Windows, but you can go to the app's online link and work there. Just log in with your Windows login and voila. Click on "Create a video - start from scratch", on the left side "Import Media" and let's look for that low quality mp3 that we created (the audio player is very sensitive...lol it listens well, the smaller the file the better and the faster the process will be), when it finishes loading which is very fast, drag it to the timeline and on the right side click on "subtitle", a popup opens for you to choose which language your video is in, in this first step we will put the base language of the video, do not filter obscene language because sometimes it skips words because there are things that only Jesus can do, he thinks are obscene. Click ok and wait, when the subtitle is ready, turn on the button on the right "Download Subtitle", click and it will go to your usual Downloads folder in the browser you are using, go there and rename the file as base subtitle, note that when creating this subtitle, Clipchamp already places it in the audio timing, things like overlapping 1s that it does you correct later in Clipchamp, but not now. Step 3: In the same ClipChamp, click on Back to the beginning and we will bring back our mp3 file. We will do the same process, but now we will select the subtitle as being in German (note that there are 3 options: "Germany", "Austria" and "Switzerland"). We will go with "Germany", which usually works, but you can try the others later. Don't worry, when you see the subtitle it will seem messy, because we are giving the audio player a hard time, but it will bring the German words that we want so much. When ready, rename the subtitle file to German base. With the 2 files in hand, you will have the German words that were pronounced. The other lines will be in English, which is the base of the audio (it may happen that it reads the English words in the first extraction, but it ends up with a lot of errors). Now just replace it with the translation in English or your native language that you will work with the file and "BINGO". We have a complete subtitle. You can use several methods, copy and paste the words or also put the English subtitle in Subtitle Edit. and click on compare in the Menu, (this is the option I use because it is more efficient) it is good for when you have a lot of sentences in another language because it finds for you where these words are and in which lines they are. Then I will paste what is in German into the translator and replace it in my English file. When your subtitle is completely in the desired language, then make the corrections of common errors and SE will correct time overlaps and other things that you can select. If you need more help, post it and as far as possible and I know, I will promptly help.

[Hirnsausen]

Thanks, that as indeed a long but also full-detailed answer and instruction. Thanks a lot.

Yes, I got all spoken words as text, and I also had to make a number of corrections, and even change the time of the begin or end of some captions. But all is done now, and i got a nice German video clip with English subtitles out of it. :-)

As an advise, it would be good to add paragraphs to your long instruction, that makes it much easier to read, rather than a big long block of text. But anyhow, I am okay now. Thanks again!

[Safiralilas]

You're welcome, please feel free. It was written in one block because I write in the translator, although I read English very well, I'm terrible at writing, I forget words, so I use Google Translate, I write and paste. It's difficult to separate paragraphs. I think what matters is the explanation, since I'm a reader, I don't particularly care.