Importing Youtube video with embedded subtitles

Support & Feedback Forum
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Hi, all!
I am learning Chinese, and I’m a fan of this channel on YouTube that has episodes covering true crime. I’d love to improve my vocabulary by importing these videos into Lingq. But I am unable to import them. I get a bad request error message when I try. I think it might be because the subtitles are embedded in the video, and not that kind of subtitle that can be toggled on and off in YouTube.

It should be possible to import a video without the YouTube subtitles that can be toggled, right? And then add the script manually later? Is there away to auto generate the subtitles, or do I have to find a script that someone has made for it, or manually make it myself?

Here is an example of an episode:

Thanks for your advice in advance!

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Yeah, unfortunately, videos with embedded subtitles can’t be imported. Our importer can’t recognize and grab them.
You will need to find a script and manually import it.

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This is not possible through LingQ. The subtitles are embedded in the video (hardcoded subtitles) and thus inaccessible by the import tool. You could use an OCR tool to extract these values, which would be more accurate, but getting the timestamps correct would be annoying. You could also use an audio to text tool like AWS Transcribe (Creating video subtitles - Amazon Transcribe).

How to:

  • Download the video using a browser addon
  • Use AWS Transcribe to create the subtitles (This costs money - Amazon Transcribe Pricing – Amazon Web Services (AWS)).
  • Upload the video to a Youtube account as private.
  • Add the subtitles to the video.
  • Watch the video with the subtitles turned on, note where they are incorrect and fix as necessary.
  • After all of the mistakes have been resolved.
  • Temporarily change the video to unlisted (Hopefully this won’t get a copywrite strike)
  • Import the video to LingQ
  • Once it has been fully processed, switch the video back to private.
  • And boom, your subtitles should be good to go.
  • Note: You can also edit the subtitles once they’ve been fully uploaded to LingQ.
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Or just upload the subtitle file directly, If you don’t want to risk a copywrite strike. I believe you can link the video source in the lesson, but it obviously won’t link up. You will have to keep track yourself.

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You need to find videos with cc available or download the video and generate subtitles yourself.

I posted yesterday about freesubtitles.ai which is free files up to one hour in length. You have to download the file from youtube using a downloader.

As Floppy said you can also download and upload to youtube as private and generating subtitles.

I am getting perfect timestamps with freesubtitles.ai by downloading the SRT file type. Then upload the audio/video file and SRT file to lingq when importing new lesson. Save and the subtitles are synced.

Good luck!

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I was surprised but when I upload an mp3 and SRT subtitle file, they are perfectly synced by lingq without and messing around needed.

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Thank you all! Great suggestions! I’ll try following the instructions and share my experience