YouTube Soft Subtitles - a short guide

Ask specific questions about your target languages. Beginner questions welcome!
User avatar
zKing
Orange Belt
Posts: 142
Joined: Mon May 15, 2017 11:59 pm
Location: Seattle Area
Languages: English(N), Learning: Cantonese, Italian
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7973
x 729

YouTube Soft Subtitles - a short guide

Postby zKing » Mon Nov 12, 2018 9:17 pm

I thought would post something useful I found about YouTube soft subtitles, in case it might be helpful to others.

What I mean by "soft" subtitles: Subtitles that can be toggled on/off with the CC button in YouTube. This is opposite "hard" or "burned in" subtitles where the subtitles are literally part of the video image (i.e. like most Chinese TV/Movies you find on YouTube)

The good news: You can actually easily copy/paste soft subtitles from YouTube videos (see below), to do dictionary look ups or to use in Reader apps (like LingQ, LWT, LanguageTools.io).

When you see a list of videos in YouTube, any video with the little "CC" marker at the bottom will have one or more subtitle tracks.
Also, the advanced search/filter in YouTube allows you to search only for videos that have soft subtitles. Filter for 'Subtitles/CC'.

To display soft subtitles:
Play the video (wait for any ad to finish and get to the real video) and click on the "CC" at the bottom right of the video frame to toggle subtitles. This button will turn soft subtitles on/off, but videos may have more than one subtitle track, to select a different subtitle track click the little gear icon (settings) at the bottom right of the video frame and choose "Subtitles/CC" in the list to see the list of subtitle tracks for that video.

To view/copy the FULL subtitle text:
Below the video frame, just to the right of the 'thumbs up/down' buttons will be a ". . ." button. Click that.
Then select "Open Transcript", this will open a window to the right of the video with ALL of the subtitles from that track in it.
You can drag select any/all of the subtitle/transcript text you desire and copy it (with a normal Control-C copy).
At the top of the transcript window you will find an option to remove the timestamps if you don't want them.
As you play the video, the transcript window will move and highlight the current subtitle line.

Bonus feature: If you click on a single subtitle in the transcript window, the video will jump to that point for playback. This makes it very easy to re-play a phrase over and over by just clicking on the same subtitle repeatedly (provided the subtitle timing is accurate).

Edit: I also highly recommend using a popup dictionary in your browser, this allows you to just float your cursor over the words in the subtitles and get definitions on-the-fly. And see the post below about Lilsubs if you want to locally download the video and its subtitles in one shot.

Hope this helps someone out there!
Last edited by zKing on Mon Nov 19, 2018 8:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
14 x

Kraut
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2599
Joined: Mon Aug 07, 2017 10:37 pm
Languages: German (N)
French (C)
English (C)
Spanish (A2)
Lithuanian
x 3204

Re: YouTube Soft Subtitles - a short guide

Postby Kraut » Mon Nov 12, 2018 11:01 pm

You can also download video and subtitles separately and export them to Lingo Player, where you have an excellent learning tool..

https://downsub.com/

http://oaprograms.github.io/lingo-player/
Last edited by Kraut on Mon Sep 28, 2020 10:17 am, edited 1 time in total.
8 x

User avatar
Jaleel10
Blue Belt
Posts: 534
Joined: Thu Sep 14, 2017 6:44 am
Location: Springbok, South Africa
Languages: Afrikaans (N), English (N)
Spanish (Advanced-B2)
x 963
Contact:

Re: YouTube Soft Subtitles - a short guide

Postby Jaleel10 » Tue Nov 13, 2018 7:17 am

With the Reverso Context extension you can even click on words to get translations and to add them to your personal dictionary

Image
Image
7 x

User avatar
Adrianslont
Blue Belt
Posts: 827
Joined: Sun Aug 16, 2015 10:39 am
Location: Australia
Languages: English (N), Learning Indonesian and French
x 1936

Re: YouTube Soft Subtitles - a short guide

Postby Adrianslont » Tue Nov 13, 2018 7:38 am

Thanks zKing. I sometimes download subs for use with the downloaded YouTube video - to make subs2srs Anki decks. This click on the three buttons trick will speed up the process. And encourage me to just do more reading of subs, I think.
0 x

Sayonaroo
Green Belt
Posts: 256
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2017 12:13 am
Languages: English(N), Japanese -fluent?, Korean - advanced?, Spanish (b1?)
Language Log: http://choronghi.wordpress.com
x 319
Contact:

Re: YouTube Soft Subtitles - a short guide

Postby Sayonaroo » Tue Nov 13, 2018 10:51 pm

I use youtube for Spanish. I tend to download the youtube audio and subtitles because I like using workaudioplugin for its auto-repeat function. I need that as a beginner/intermediate. I use lingoes off-line pop-up dictionary and various chrome pop-up dictionaries ( Dictionarist, transover, and more) to translate stuff effortlessly. I also have autohotkeys set up for reverso and deepl for additional help.

I like using readlang.com's chrome plugin to collect words since it has so many options when you export it. the readlang plugin functions as a pop-up dictionary but it uses google translate so it's not that good. For Spanish after I collect the words using readlang.com I run the sentences through deepl and reverso translator so I can make anki cards in a jiffy. In anki I run the wordquery plugin just in case it's helpful.
1 x

joaoram
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Sep 25, 2020 5:41 pm
Languages: English (C2), German (B2), Portuguese (N)
x 1

Re: YouTube Soft Subtitles - a short guide

Postby joaoram » Fri Sep 25, 2020 5:44 pm

You can also try creating your own subtitles from any Youtube video using https://captionfy.io

There is a community of subtitlers who create their own captions for some Youtube videos (even if they are not the video owner) and many people get benefited from it, especially hard of hearing communities for example, or people who don't know the video's language.
1 x


Return to “Practical Questions and Advice”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: tastyonions and 2 guests