substudy: Make Anki cards and other resources from video & bilingual subtitles (command-line)

[MorkTheFiddle]

I've just made the first official binary releases for substudy. You can find everything you need here:

• What is substudy anyway, and what problems does it solve?
• Installation instructions.
• The actual binary releases.

You'll need to install ffmpeg first (as described in the instructions), and put all the binaries somewhere on your path. If you can get this to work, I'd love to hear about it. And if it fails terribly, I'd love to hear about that, too.!

Windows 10 did not want to run the exe. When I said run it anyway, my virus protector, AVAST, intervened, called it 'very rare' and sent it to their "labs" for analysis. When I can say more either here or at GitHub, I will.

[emk]

Windows 10 did not want to run the exe. When I said run it anyway, my virus protector, AVAST, intervened, called it 'very rare' and sent it to their "labs" for analysis. When I can say more either here or at GitHub, I will.

Thank you very much for letting me know!

The first problem you encounted was that "Windows 10 did not want to run the exe". This happened because I haven't yet purchased an "Authenticode" certificate to "sign" the *.exe file. Sadly, these cost $199 to $499 per year. I really ought to buy an Apple code signing certificate as well, but that would require me to become an official registered Macintosh developer (for $99/year), and possibly then buy a second certificate from them as well. (It's theoretically possible to use the Windows certificates to sign Mac apps, but I hear that most people spend a weekend trying to get it to work and then give up.)

So basically, I'd probably be looking at $400/year to get rid of those warnings.

As for your anti-virus software, various security experts have told me that most anti-virus software actually makes your security worse. This is because most anti-virus software is full of embarrassing security holes and it actively subverts browser security features. However, Windows Defender may be a happy exception to this. Even better, Windows Defender is free. I don't know if you have the option of switching or not, and it's been a long time since I've payed much attention to the Windows anti-virus market, but maybe it's worth a look.

Sorry, I wish I had better answers to give you. But purchasing signing certificates for all the major platforms and renewing them every year would be a noticeable drain on my budget. So in the meantime, people can either click through the "Unknown application author" warnings, or they can follow the instructions to compile substudy from source themselves if they're feeling paranoid.

But thank you very much for the bug report—I'd forgotten the current state of Windows code signing as it applies to command-line tools.

[MorkTheFiddle]

Windows 10 did not want to run the exe. When I said run it anyway, my virus protector, AVAST, intervened, called it 'very rare' and sent it to their "labs" for analysis. When I can say more either here or at GitHub, I will.

Thank you very much for letting me know!

Sorry, I wish I had better answers to give you. But purchasing signing certificates for all the major platforms and renewing them every year would be a noticeable drain on my budget. So in the meantime, people can either click through the "Unknown application author" warnings, or they can follow the instructions to compile substudy from source themselves if they're feeling paranoid.

But thank you very much for the bug report—I'd forgotten the current state of Windows code signing as it applies to command-line tools.

You're welcome for the bug report.
All things considered, I'll take my linux box out of mothballs. Although rdearman wrote a guide for using substudy with Windows, linux is simpler and more straightforward, and I have used it before with substudy. My Anki decks for Volver and Allies still work just fine.
For the record, Avast, my antivirus app, "approved" your Windows executable, and there does not seem to be any ffmpeg in the repository for Windows, unless I'm looking in the wrong place.

[emk]

All things considered, I'll take my linux box out of mothballs. Although rdearman wrote a guide for using substudy with Windows, linux is simpler and more straightforward, and I have used it before with substudy.

Aside from the scary warnings and the anti-virus, substudy should in theory work just fine on Windows. But you'll also need to install ffmpeg separately using the installers on the ffmpeg site.

My Anki decks for Volver and Allies still work just fine.

Glad to hear it! I'm especially interested in hearing about everybody's card formats, what's working, and what doesn't. I've built substudy based on my own Anki experiences, but that's just a sample size of 1.

And I really need to figure out a way to produce cloze cards easily. They seem to be a very important part of the process, but I haven't seen any tool since Surusu that made it really easy. So many things that I'd love to try!

[crush]

• Pre-built binaries for Mac, Windows and Linux.
• A basic GUI so that you don't need to use the command-line.
• A GUI for watching videos and capturing only specific cards.
• Tools for making cloze cards easily.
• An Anki plugin that makes it much easier to import the cards generated by substudy.

If any of this interests you, please let me know.

The last two in particular would be great, though an Anki plugin wouldn't be that necessary since you can get so many cards from one set of subtitles. A GUI for Windows users might be nice since using command-line stuff on Windows is generally much more painful, though i imagine it'd be easier just to write in something like Qt or some other cross platform library, in which case Linux/Mac versions shouldn't be too much more work.

[emk]

The last two in particular would be great, though an Anki plugin wouldn't be that necessary since you can get so many cards from one set of subtitles. A GUI for Windows users might be nice since using command-line stuff on Windows is generally much more painful, though i imagine it'd be easier just to write in something like Qt or some other cross platform library, in which case Linux/Mac versions shouldn't be too much more work.

An Anki plugin would make it much easier to import the created cards. You wouldn't need to create templates, or mess around with columns, or anything like that—you'd just select "Import cards from Substudy...", select a file, select a destination deck, and hit "OK". Basically, I can't fix the problem of finding video and subtitles, and it would take a lot of work to replace Anki entirely, but I can make all the parts in the middle much easier.

As for a cross-platform GUI, I'd just use Electron. It means the app will be about 30MB, and it will use more RAM than if I built everything the hard way, but it also allows me to make cross-platform binaries with only a couple of weekends of work.

Also, I think I've figured out how to get code signing costs down to $200/year or so, so I might eventually be able to avoid those annoying "Unknown publisher!" dialogs. But I might want to set up a Patreon first, so that people have the choice of chipping in (only if they want to). I don't mind working for free in my spare time, but I draw the line at actually spending money to give something away.

[emk]

Ah, there we go. I've gotten a "Hello, world" GUI working:

reasonml-electron-hello.png

This still looks like a web page, obviously, but that can be changed. The next step is to port over the original Elm UI code from my earlier test versions, to see whether I actually like this setup or not. The goal would be to get this UI working again:

[crush]

Also, I think I've figured out how to get code signing costs down to $200/year or so, so I might eventually be able to avoid those annoying "Unknown publisher!" dialogs. But I might want to set up a Patreon first, so that people have the choice of chipping in (only if they want to). I don't mind working for free in my spare time, but I draw the line at actually spending money to give something away.

Yeah, i'd happily support the project, and especially if it helps you find an excuse to improve these tools! If you get in touch with Gabriel Wyner perhaps he can help you get $600,000 worth of funding, too! I'd never heard of Electron before but sounds interesting. Seems a lot of things are moving towards JS these days.

I actually didn't know you needed a signing certificate, there are several community command-line projects that i am involved with (eg. https://github.com/alberthdev/spasm-ng/releases) which while aimed generally at Linux users often have Windows binaries as well.

[MorkTheFiddle]

I actually didn't know you needed a signing certificate, there are several community command-line projects that i am involved with (eg. https://github.com/alberthdev/spasm-ng/releases) which while aimed generally at Linux users often have Windows binaries as well.

I want to reiterate what I said earlier about substudy dot exe and Windows. The nag about the Emk's executable came from Windows 10 itself. After I bypassed Windows' objection, Avast, my antivirus software, then chipped in with its whining.

I'm surprised Windows has not objected to your community projects, but that's good news.

[MorkTheFiddle]

My Anki decks for Volver and Allies still work just fine.

Glad to hear it! I'm especially interested in hearing about everybody's card formats, what's working, and what doesn't. I've built substudy based on my own Anki experiences, but that's just a sample size of 1.

The card format that I use is yours. I find it quite satisfactory.
However, I make the deck a filtered deck and set the 'good' time for 1 month. I want to keep the continuity of the movie, so I want to be able to run through as many or as few cards as I want and not have them come back to haunt me until I'm ready for them. I suspend ruthlessly, but only cards with blurred audio.
Thanks very much for your efforts.