4 Best Automatic Subtitle Generator (2020)

4 Best Automatic Subtitle Generator (2020).

YouTube provides auto-generated subtitles for videos, but other platforms such as Instagram and Facebook do not. So, if you create these subtitles in post-production, here are four easy ways to get subtitles for your videos.

Automatic translation generator

1. Live Captions in Google Pixel

If you have a Google Pixel device, the job becomes much easier. Pixel devices have a built-in Live Captions feature that allows you to automatically create captions for any video. However, if you don’t have a Pixel phone but have rooted access to an Android phone, you can still get this feature using Magisk modules.

To enable live captioning on Pixel devices, go to Settings Live Search. Once you’re in the menu, you can turn on live subtitles.

Moreover, you can also turn on / off live subtitles through the volume menu. You can change the size and position of clickable labels by dragging them around the screen. Alternatively, you can also pinch to increase the scale and font size of your signatures.

Now that you have live subtitles, put your video in full screen mode and record the screen using any screen recording app. This way you will have a video with automatic subtitles.

Google Pixel Live Captions works offline, meaning it doesn’t upload your video or speech to the cloud. And yet it works for both offline and online videos. At the moment Live Captions only supports English, but future updates may support other languages.

Pros:

• Works completely offline and does not upload data to the server.
• Works with both offline and online videos.

Cons:

• Limited to Pixel devices.
• Subtitling uses machine learning on the device and therefore improves over time.

2. Android application

For owners of other Android devices, we can always use third party Android apps. Here is an app called Kaptioned that will automatically generate subtitles for your video. All you have to do is upload the video to Kaptioned, let the application process it, choose the subtitle language. In my case, the language is English.

The first video conversion is free on Kaptioned. Post it, this is a subscription or a video fee.

When the app finishes processing, it will present the titles along with the video timeline. You can fix subtitles by editing them. Kaptioned also gives you the ability to customize subtitle color, font size, font family, and more. Publish your changes, click the Done button in the upper right corner to export your video.

In case you’re wondering, Kaptioned has no time limit for watching videos. To test this, I tried to download an hour-long video clip and the application crashed. So, the golden mean is a 7-10 minute video.

Kaptioned supports quite a few languages ​​besides English such as Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, etc. Compared to Google Pixel Live Captions, Kaptioned has more precision. While I could not find any mention of using the Kaptioned API, it is most likely the native Google Speech-to-Text Cloud API.

Another caveat about the Kaptioned app is that it’s paid. The first video conversion is free, and after that you have to pay $ 2 per video or $ 10.99 per month. Surprisingly, Kaptioned does not require you to register using an email ID, and hence if you reinstall the app, you get one free video export every time. Hope they fix it soon. You can also get a 7-day free trial from the Kaptioned web app.

Pros:

• Works better than Live Captions Pixel.
• Ability to customize the style and font of subtitles and even fix subtitles.
• Supports multiple languages ​​like German, French, Spanish, etc.
• Each reinstall gives you one free video export.

Cons:

• Longer videos cause the application to crash.

Download Kaptioned (Android | iOS | Web App)

3. Upload the video to YouTube

The easiest way to get subtitles for your videos is through YouTube. Upload your video to YouTube and it will automatically create subtitles for your videos. Here’s how.

First of all, upload your video to YouTube. Once you do that, play it back and you will see the “CC” icon in the lower right corner of the video player. Click on it to enable automatic subtitles. YouTube uses machine learning to convert speech to text. Then, when you have the “CC” button, the subtitles will start. You can make the video full screen and record the entire clip from the screen.

There are also YouTube downloaders like 4k video downloader that allows you to download YouTube videos with embedded subtitles. However, in my testing, they were more of a miss than a hit.

Setting up YouTube subtitles

YouTube also provides options to change the language, font size, subtitle background in subtitle settings. To do this, click the gear icon next to the CC icon, and then select the Subtitle / CC option.

Then click the Options link next to the Subtitle / CC label.

In the title options menu, you can change the opacity, background, font color, etc. It allows you to customize the preview of the subtitles.

Pros:

• Support for multiple languages.
• Free.

Cons:

• YouTube video upload required.
• Not the most accurate.

4. The Long Way

The problem with the above method is that YouTube doesn’t know how to use subtitles unless you are a native English speaker. Also subtitles cannot be edited. Hence, another workaround is to extract subtitles from YouTube, edit them, and insert them back into the video. This is a 4 step process.

• Upload the video to YouTube and wait for it to process.
• Extract the subtitle file (.srt) from YouTube via a third party website like SaveSubs.
• Edit the SRT file for errors in Notepad.
• Upload the SRT file and video to a web application like HappyScribe and it will combine both of them.

In case you’re wondering, SRT stands for SubRip Text Files. These files contain subtitles along with a time stamp. Let’s start with this process.

First of all, upload your video to YouTube and make sure it’s public. At least we need it publicly until we can extract the auto-generated subtitle files. After you upload your video to YouTube, go to the SaveSubs web application. Paste the YouTube video link into the text box and click the Extract and Download button.

After the web application has extracted the subtitles, scroll down a bit and you will find a button to download the SRT file. The SRT file will contain all timestamped dialogs. Here you can change the subtitles by opening them in Notepad.

See also: How to Stream Live Streams with 2+ People to YouTube for Free (It’s Easy)

With the SRT file and video, go to the HappyScribe web app. Upload the SRT and video file by clicking the “Select File” button respectively.

When you are finished uploading files, click the Create button. The web application will take a while to download and process the video. In the meantime, let’s go have some coffee.

The final video output will be right-aligned according to the timestamps described in the SRT file.

Pros:

• Allows you to manually change subtitles.
• Works well for longer videos.

Cons:

• lengthy process.

Closing words

I found the Kaptioned app to be worth the investment if you deal with a lot of videos. For single use or large videos, the latter method is quite useful and tested. If you have further problems or questions, let me know in the comments below.

Also Read: How to Download Your Own YouTube Videos in 4K