A few major issues with the current YouTube functionality in LingQ are:
the bad video player interface in which doesn’t enable viewing the video and interacting with LingQs at the same time on mobile
the small video player in the web browser
the lack of smart AI powerd speech to text capability to accurately create captions for YouTube videos in the app
One of your competitors Lingua Verbum has come out with a superior YouTube functionality which addresses all these pain points. Are there any plans for LingQ to improve the YouTube functionality?
As I mostly use Lingq on a PC, the video player is not a problem, Even if the video player is quite small.
But the lack of sub title text in videos is a problem. Currently I import lessons from a YT course, and some of lessons have no subtitle text, meaning I can’t import them in a easy way. It would be great if Lingq could do an automatic translation of the speach and be able to import these lessons.
Thanks thats a really good example that illustrates the point. I didn’t mean to come across as negative. Just think its a key area of an otherwise really good app that needs improvement.
I agree. On mobile the YouTube integration is quite bad, frankly. The video interface is essentially just subtitles, which I can already view on YouTube itself. In my mind the entire point of the app is the ability to interact with Linqs and easily translate words you don’t know.
The app video player interface takes away the main reasons to use the app and trying to use the website version on mobile forces a gigantic video player that covers way too much of the reader. The desktop version works well, but this functionality makes YouTube imports pretty much a no-go for me on mobile.
I just really can’t comprehend why the devs thought having the video player make you unable to use the primary app features was a good idea. If you want translations or to make linqs you literally have to back out of the video player, I just don’t see how this was considered a good design.
this is my most requested feature as well. Having to look away from the video to use the features is very tedious and annoying and hopefully one day they make it better.
Actually, it would be quite good if we improved it using a sentence mode: the upper half plays the video, and the lower half displays normal text with synchronized underlines, and you can click to look up words. That would be perfect.
The issue of not being able to look up words when watching YouTube videos on a mobile device has been raised and reported a long time ago, but it has not been improved.
On the PC when you make the video bigger (than the tiny, tiny window), it places it right over the scrolling text of the transcript, so you cannot read while you listen.
I have long wondered how they failed to notice this or why they would want to deliberately hide the actual text being read?
I don’t understand. Just drag out the window to be wider. And then drag the video to a place were it’s not hiding any text or the dictionary/translations. Do I misunderstand you?
I’m not sure if we speak of same thing, when you say the video player can be moved. At least in my browser (Firefox) it can moved almost anywhere in the browser window.
Ok, that’s nice, but, it doesn’t seem to solve either of the current problems, unfortunately.
The problem with the small window was that it is too small to read the words in it–moving it does not help. I can “make it bigger now” but that doesn’t make the video any bigger–it just makes whitespace around the video. So that doesn’t help any.
The problem with the big video is that although I can read the words, it is stuck directly on top of the current lingq transcription, so it always hides the transcription.
I’m little confused about the need of the video player. I never look at it when I playi the text. The only thing I use it for, is open the page from where I imported the text. In my case often Youtube.
For me, sometimes I watch videos where the person is talking about stuff that they are showing–they may have a chart up on a board showing conjugations and aspects and stuff–and so I want to see that. Or a map or image that they are referencing as they talk.
It would nice if it was possible to move the player outside the browser widow. But even if this is possible, the solution would only apply to PC’s.
An other option is to have setting where the video player could switch off permanently. But that doesn’t solve the problem if you really want to see the video.
On the PC, which I use, the browser window can be wide enough for all text and the player.