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

[emk]

Had a quick look at the documentation on the rust page. Don't suppose there is a good tutorial in French? That way I can learn a new programming language and a bit more French at the same time.

Of course I have Rust links in French. Everybody should have guessed that by now.

• A Rust tutorial in French. This appears to have been updated recently.
• A Rust presentation on YouTube, with French audio and English slides.

Rust is especially good when you want high performance without sacrificing safety or abstraction tools. It's most likely to appeal to people who have worked in both low-level languages (like C and C++) and who have worked in functional programming languages (or at least Ruby and JavaScript).

[emk]

OK, I've gotten ffmpeg to export sounds and images for each foreign-language subtitle:

lang-substudy-working-on-export.png

This was generated using:

Code: Select all

substudy export anki a.mkv avatar_01_01.es.srt avatar_01_01.en.srt

The "anki" part is currently ignored. It can't generate any kind of card list yet; just a bunch of raw media files. But we're getting closer.

While trying to refresh my memory of Avatar, I realized that I also wanted a "study" view, which would be a single HTML page with a list of subtitles, where each subtitle had the image, audio, text, and possibly even some links to dictionaries. We'll see.

[iguanamon]

...I'm more interested in building tools for well-informed, successful language learners—a tiny niche market—and I know that marketing a successful product requires a heartbreaking amount of work. Thus, I generally give my language learning tools away for free, because that way, I have fun sharing them, and my heart isn't broken by putting thousands of hours into a business and watching it fail. ...

I commend you for doing all that you do to help the community. One of the points I was trying to make is that those of us who lack programming skills, probably the majority of us, don't have a chance to use these subtitle tools, because it isn't plug and chug- download and run. I am convinced that a motivated beginner using this along with a good course and grammar book could go farther, faster. I believe that an experienced language-learner could go even farther and even faster. It does seem to me though, that non-programmers are left out.

If I could download a program that would take a DVD series and make all this idiot proof for me, I'd definitely use it. Of course, for half of my languages, there are no series to begin with... that's another story.

[emk]

I commend you for doing all that you do to help the community. One of the points I was trying to make is that those of us who lack programming skills, probably the majority of us, don't have a chance to use these subtitle tools, because it isn't plug and chug- download and run.

I would be delighted if somebody wanted to make a Mac installer or Linux packages, but I'm unlikely to make them myself, because it's a lot of work. Windows is even harder, because it's a bit of a special snowflake, and not all my support tools work there yet. To put it terms that people around here will appreciate: Doing the basic, geeky version of a tool like this takes as much time as finishing an Assimil course. Doing a user-friendly version with a simple GUI, plus installers for Mac and maybe Windows? It's more like getting another language to B2. Figuring out how to market something like this? Well, the author of readlang has spent years working on his very cool site, and his current goal is to be earning 1000€/month by the end of year.

If there were overwhelming demand, I suppose I could do a Kickstarter or something. But mostly, this sort of thing is a bit like stone soup: I can build a proof of concept, and if several other programmers like the idea, they can each work on another piece of the puzzle. What I'm really creating here is a building block for future projects. I wish I had a better answer for you.

If I could download a program that would take a DVD series and make all this idiot proof for me, I'd definitely use it. Of course, for half of my languages, there are no series to begin with... that's another story.

Yeah, the ultimate obstacle to such a tool is that you have to get clean, accurate subs from somewhere, and even for huge languages, that's a very manual and frustrating process.

[arthaey]

If I could download a program that would take a DVD series and make all this idiot proof for me, I'd definitely use it. Of course, for half of my languages, there are no series to begin with... that's another story.

I don't disagree that an "out of the box" solution would be ideal. However, that is a lot more work than what emk is currently doing. (Depending on how the software is designed, it's possible that emk's work could be the first step to a more user-friendly version.)

In the meantime, I want to reiterate my thanks to emk for working on a command-line version. For me, at least, it (and its future features) sound perfect.

[language2015]

All of this programmer stuff you talk about...

Where did you learn it? Self taught? College?

I would love to know. I want to learn all of this programming magic but have no idea how to begin learning.

I would donate to a kick starter project to help build a subs2srs like application for mac users.

[arthaey]

All of this programmer stuff you talk about...

Where did you learn it? Self taught? College?

I would love to know. I want to learn all of this programming magic but have no idea how to begin learning.

I myself learned in college. However, I've worked with many, many professionals who were self-taught. And outside of professionals, there are even more self-taught folks who put together useful software as a hobby.

If you're serious about wanting to learn programming, there are tons of resources out there. My advice would be to have some personal project, some software that you want to exist, and focus your learning energies on what's needed for that goal. Also, once you have a more specific idea than "programming", you can get more specific advice.

[emk]

I want to learn all of this programming magic but have no idea how to begin learning.

Choose a beginner-friendly programming language: JavaScript, Ruby or Python. Then find a good tutorial. I'm told that both Learn Python the Hard Way and Learn Ruby the Hard Way are quite good for total beginners who've never programmed anything at all. They seem to have an "FSI drill" flavor to them: They lead you through the basics step by step, with a lot of repetition and exercises. After that, just wing it and try to build something, and learn as you go.

Anyway, here's one more bit of progress, a "review mode". This will eventually look much different, and include some English subs, too:

lang-substudy-review-mode-first-draft.png

Obviously, I want to add the English subs, too. The idea is that I could use this page to skim through an episode, looking up anything I'm curious about, and replaying specific lines. Now that we have the ability to align subtitles and extract small media clips, there are a lot of interesting possibilities!

[arthaey]

SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY

...No seriously, if you give me a donation link or your PayPal email address, I'll totally buy you a beer or a coffee or whatever. (I'm not in Vermont, as your profile says you are, so I can't actually take you out for said drink.) As I well know, it's one thing to say "I could program that" and another thing entirely to actually sit down and do it.

[language2015]

I want to learn all of this programming magic but have no idea how to begin learning.

Choose a beginner-friendly programming language: JavaScript, Ruby or Python. Then find a good tutorial. I'm told that both Learn Python the Hard Way and Learn Ruby the Hard Way are quite good for total beginners who've never programmed anything at all. They seem to have an "FSI drill" flavor to them: They lead you through the basics step by step, with a lot of repetition and exercises. After that, just wing it and try to build something, and learn as you go.

Anyway, here's one more bit of progress, a "review mode". This will eventually look much different, and include some English subs, too:

lang-substudy-review-mode-first-draft.png

Obviously, I want to add the English subs, too. The idea is that I could use this page to skim through an episode, looking up anything I'm curious about, and replaying specific lines. Now that we have the ability to align subtitles and extract small media clips, there are a lot of interesting possibilities!

I appreciate the advice!

Thanks!