VideoLAN’s open-source video player has reached 6 billion downloads. The developers celebrated this milestone by announcing a new feature, AI generated subtitles, at CES 2025.
Subtitles are useful if you want to watch a movie or TV show that is in a foreign language, or if you have trouble hearing. But subtitles may not always be available for the video you want to watch, and sometimes they may be hardcoded or use strange fonts or colors. Additionally, a large portion of Internet users may not know how to find, download, and integrate subtitles for local media.
live caption
Windows 10 and Windows 11 have a feature called Live Caption, you can access it with the following hotkey: Windows + Ctrl + L. This is a handy feature that you can use for any media, including video streaming on YouTube, Netflix, and more. Video streaming sites. Admittedly, it sometimes struggles to provide accurate subtitles, but it’s better to improve than to have nothing. Android, iOS, macOS also have similar live captioning features.
VLC automatic subtitle creation and translation
Perhaps VLC’s offline subtitle generator might be a better solution for this. But it is not the first to offer such a feature. There are other tools that use Whisper of Open AI to generate subtitles Feeling Or sub headlineBut these apps themselves are not user-friendly. It seems like what VLC has created might be an easier solution.
VLC will get automatic AI subtitles and real-time translation
VLC’s GitLab has some merge request Relating to implementing speech-to-text technology in video players. It will use Whisper, but it does not rely on OpenAI’s Whisper model. Instead, VLC will be used whisper.cppC-based fork of Open AI’s Whisper automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology.
VideoLAN’s AI subtitling tool will work offline without connecting to online services, i.e. without any need for an account or service. This also means that it will be privacy friendly. Furthermore, it also eliminates the need to manually search for subtitles, download them, and enable them for videos.
It’s not just about generating subtitles, what’s even more impressive is that VLC’s AI capabilities will also translate subtitles in real-time. This feature will support more than 100 languages, so users will be able to understand dialogues in any language. Imagine you are traveling or do not have access to the Internet, and VLC can not only provide subtitles for videos, but also translate them offline. It is worth mentioning that. Requirements for the feature have not been disclosed, but it will require an optional download that will include the AI model needed to generate and translate subtitles.
AI subtitles is not available in VLC yet, it will be added in the future. You can watch the announcement video here Videolan’s X Account And LinkedIn page,
Do you know the latest version of PotPlayer Also supports automatic subtitles? It also uses the whisper model.
I’ve called Amazon Prime Video’s AI recap a good use of artificial intelligence, and I think VLC’s AI subtitles are even better. This is another example of how AI can be beneficial when it doesn’t invade your privacy. But the success of the feature will depend on the accuracy of the subtitles generated. Hopefully it will work as promised.
Thanks for reading..
