Reviewing Language Reactor, Migaku, jidoujisho, etc. as an alternative to Subs2SRS

[emk]

Ooh, found another one!

jidoujisho for Android, an open source video player/ebook reader/card creator/comic reader/dictionary app. Apparently it exports cards straight to AnkiDroid, which would immediately move it to the head of the pack. And it even claims to have some way to hook video games?

This looks Japanese-specific, but it also looks really interesting. I also think you need to download and side load it; it's not in the Play Store.

Anyone have experience with this?

[elAmericanoTranquilo]

I mentioned Knowclip in another thread, but it's probably worth mentioning here too, alongside the discussion of these other tools:

Knowclip "makes it ridiculously easy to 1) grab sentences straight out of your video and audio files, 2) make media-rich flashcards tailored right to your level, 3) instantly bundle them into a ready-to-use deck of Anki flashcards."

[emk]

I mentioned Knowclip in another thread, but it's probably worth mentioning here too, alongside the discussion of these other tools:

Knowclip "makes it ridiculously easy to 1) grab sentences straight out of your video and audio files, 2) make media-rich flashcards tailored right to your level, 3) instantly bundle them into a ready-to-use deck of Anki flashcards."

Thank you for a great discovery!

Knowclip is a free, open source desktop application for watching videos and making Anki cards. It's Electron-based, but quite snappy on my laptop. It has a straightforward and pleasant-looking graphical UI. Contributions may be offered to the author via Patreon.

(Full disclosure: I am also working on a different free, open source subtitle tool.)

To use Knowclip, you will need to supply:

1. A video file.
2. A subtitle file.
3. Optional: A second subtitle file with a translation.

For each video, you need to create a project, and add the video (plus any subtitles). As you go through the process, there's a screen that tells you what to do next:



From here, you can watch the video normally:



You can make a card by clicking on a subtitle. It's easy to combine two adjacent subtitles and adjust the audio start and end.



When you're done watching, you have several export options, including CSV + media, or an importable Anki deck:



However, I can say from first-hand experience that AnkiConnect offers programmers and users a fairly clean way to export media cards into Anki, and it would be an obvious addition here.

Overall, this is a really nice tool! There are a number of limitations, some of which the author hopes to fix:

• in-app popup dictionaries
• speech-to-text integration
• sentence difficulty ratings based on word frequency

I definitely think tools like this are more useful when you have a ready source of subtitles. And for some of the most popular languages, automatic Whisper transcription will get you a long way for under US$0.01/minute. Similarly, various LLMs can do a surprisingly good job of translation and explanation. (Migaku already has some nice features along these lines.)

Major pluses for using native audio and for including images. And I'm sure everyone is sick of me mentioning this, but I do miss a way to easily include the surrounding lines of dialog.

Who will like this most: People with laptops or desktops, a selection of local media files, and access to accurate subtitles. It supports a mix of extensive watching and making Anki flash cards.

[elAmericanoTranquilo]

There's a service called Migaku that, I believe, is similar to Language Reactor, but does have the ability to create Anki cards with the original audio. I've never used it, so I don't know how well it works.

An older version of Migaku supported Anki export. The current version does not seem to? You can only review cards in a phone app.

Thanks for the heads up about Migaku and for the detailed review! I took it for a test drive and I agree it's in some ways clunkier than Language Reactor and that it also has some complementary capabilities. In particular, I was pleasantly surprised by the usability of "Migaku Memory," their custom flash card app. Things I liked about it:

* Simple, clear user interface. (I just can't abide Anki, so this is huge for me)
* Works on the web as well as on iOS and Android.
* Can import decks which have been saved in the Anki format.

I'm planning to sign up for Migaku primarily to get access to Migaku Memory, and make it my preferred flash card reader. Then I can create cards for it by using any of the different tools mentioned in this tread.

Note: they do now say that they also support exporting to Anki format, but I didn't test that because I'm trying to avoid using Anki

[emk]

Ooh, another one! garyb, in his log, metioned asbplayer, which sounds interesting:

I've been using Migaku for German and Spanish, and so far so good. It's rough around the edges but mostly does what it's supposed to and mismatching subs have rarely been an issue so far. I have read that people are doing the same thing (for Japanese at least) with free and open-source tools (asbplayer, which seems to do quite the same thing as Language Reactor, and captures cards like Mikagu) plus Yomitan and Anki. That seems worth looking into, since using a subscription service always has risks (Memrise anyone?) and the cost adds up, although I can't imagine the user experience would be any less clunky.

This looks really promising. They seem to extract real audio, like asbplayer? And they use AnkiConnect, which is absolutely the Right Way™ to create Anki cards from a tool like this. I'll need to install this at some appropriate point.

One of my goals of this thread is to track down all the viable commercial and open source tools for "audio card mining" in 2024, and to ideally, eventually boil them down into a short guide advising people on which tools they might enjoy trying.

[Kraut]

I have never used flashcards. It seems to me that the Languatalk app has a new feature for consolidating words: creating new coherent stories with the vocabulary collected via flashcards.

How does Langua work? (explainer video)

https://languatalk.com/langua?oc=true
https://languatalk.com/langua/vocab_ai_stories

VocabAI Stories
Learn saved words

When you've added at least 12 words to your account, come back here & you'll be able to generate a story that uses your recently saved words. This will help you learn through context.

https://support.languatalk.com/article/ ... +on+Langua

[Carl]

Has anyone tried the new LinguaCafe? It's an open-source, self-hosted platform that "allows users to import texts from different sources, and provides a set of tools that helps them easily acquire vocabulary." The GUI is quite attractive, and it has both a built-in SRS system and a way to export to Anki.

I've just installed Lute and am getting used to it, so I'm not eager to try this even newer one right now--but I am tempted by LinguaCafe's connection to Anki, which Lute lacks.

[garyb]

I meant to mention here that I wrote a bit about my experience with trying asbplayer, and comparing it to Migaku, in my log. The short version is that asbplayer works pretty well if you're using target-language-only subtitles, and I like how it's more flexible and doesn't force you into using it a certain way like Migaku does, but it really doesn't handle dual subtitles well. If working with dual subtitles is important to you then I'd either stick with Language Reactor or Migaku, or accept a bit more manual work with moving text around when creating cards. If that aspect improves in future, it could become a great alternative.

I'm using a combination approach: Language Reactor to display the subtitles (since its display, alignment, and hover capabilities are light-years ahead of asbplayer's) and asbplayer to make audio cards. It works and it's free, but it's not exactly pretty and it does take a bit more manual work compared to Migaku which is mostly point-and-click once it's been set up.

Japanese learners might want to look into combining asbplayer with Yomitan, which apparently provides a good experience for word translations and card creation, though I've not tried it. The "equivalent" for European languages with VocabSieve was too janky even for me.

Anyway IMO we should keep this thread on the topic of tools for working with video, not just text.

[Carl]

Anyway IMO we should keep this thread on the topic of tools for working with video, not just text.

Maybe my post was off topic; I'm not sure. I find it a bit confusing, since there's such overlap in the tools' functions. Language Reactor allows the user to import a web page, for example, for LWT-like reading. Lute will associate a sound file with a text, for listening while reading, but it won't make audio flashcards. The headline feature for Subs2srs is making flashcards from video, but it also can make flashcards from audio. Etc.

I'd be interested in seeing a table showing the various software tools across the top and the various features on the y axis, with check marks showing which features are in which tools.

[garyb]

Maybe my post was off topic; I'm not sure. I find it a bit confusing, since there's such overlap in the tools' functions. Language Reactor allows the user to import a web page, for example, for LWT-like reading. Lute will associate a sound file with a text, for listening while reading, but it won't make audio flashcards. The headline feature for Subs2srs is making flashcards from video, but it also can make flashcards from audio. Etc.

I'd be interested in seeing a table showing the various software tools across the top and the various features on the y axis, with check marks showing which features are in which tools.

That's fair actually: I had it in mind that LR and Subs2srs were just tools for working with video and Lute was just for text etc. but there is some overlap. I think I saw that Migaku also works with text.


I also tried out asbplayer's in-browser video player yesterday. I liked the idea of it, but found the usability poor because it just didn't seem to support any of the usual keyboard shortcuts that we're used to with video players to skip back and forward etc. Still, it could be a good option to have if you want to play local files but benefit from asbplayer's flashcard creation and having subtitles rendered as in-browser text that can be handled with extensions like Yomitan.