subs2cia - Extract subtitled dialogue from audiovisual media for use in language acquisition

Features

• Generates condensed media from subtitled media that only contains spoken dialogue (subs2cia condense)
  • No unnatural stutters: simultaneous and overlapping subtitles lines are merged for seamless listening
  • Automatically generate condensed subtitles, audio, and video from input sources (video must be enabled with -m)
  • Automagically chooses subtitle and audio tracks from a certain language or manually specify what inputs to condense (-tl, -si, -ai, -ls)
  • Automatically filter out subtitles that don't contain dialogue using built in heuristics or user-defined regexes (-ni, -R)
  • Ignore subtitled music found in openings/endings manually (-I) or by chapter (-Ic)
  • Reinserts natural spacing between sentences that start and end close together (-t)
  • Subtitles not perfectly aligned? Pad subtitles with additional audio (-p)
  • Process multiple files with batch mode (-b)
• EXPERIMENTAL: Export subtitles with audio and screenshots into your flashcard SRS of choice (subs2cia srs)

Dependencies

• Python 3.6 or later
• ffmpeg
  • ffmpeg and ffprobe must be on your PATH (i.e. can execute ffmpeg and ffprobe from the command line)
• pip packages:
  • ffmpeg-python
  • pycountry
  • pysubs2
  • setuptools
  • tqdm
  • pandas
  • gevent
  • colorlog

Installation Instructions

subs2cia is currently a command-line script. Usage requires interaction with a terminal interface.

Windows

Install Python 3.6 or later. During or after the installation process, make sure you add Python to your PATH and also install pip.

Instructions for installing and adding ffmpeg to your path can be found here.

The subs2cia installation process is generally the same as for Linux, although some commands may have different aliases (e.g. instead of pip3, you may need to run py -m pip instead). Running

py -m pip install subs2cia

in command prompt should work.

Some useful links on installing pip and python packages:

• https://pip.pypa.io/en/stable/installing/
• https://docs.python.org/3/installing/index.html

You may need to restart Command Prompt for path changes to take effect when installing pip.

macOS:

Install Python and ffmpeg through the method of your choice, e.g. Homebrew. In Terminal, run:

# run this after installing Homebrew
brew install python ffmpeg

Homebrew should have also installed pip for you, which you can use to install subs2cia from PyPI:

pip3 install subs2cia

You should now be able to run the script:

subs2cia condense -h

Linux

On systems with the apt package manager (Ubuntu, Debian, etc):

sudo apt install python3 python3-pip ffmpeg
pip3 install subs2cia
subs2cia condense -h

Install from source

Download or clone the repository and navigate to it:

$ git clone "https://github.com/dxing97/subs2cia"
$ cd subs2cia

Use pip to install:

$ pip3 install .

On WSL, you may need to add ~/.local/bin to your PATH first.

Run Without Installing

If you prefer, you can also download the repository and run subs2cia/main.py directly.

Condense Quickstart and Examples

subs2cia condense -i "My Video.mkv"

• Condense My Video.mkv into My Video.condensed.mp3 and My Video.condensed.srt (if embedded subtitles are SRT formatted)

subs2cia condense -i video.mkv -p 150 -t 1000 -tl english

• Condense video.mkv into video.condensed.mp3 and video.condensed.srt
• Prefer english subtitle/audio tracks if they exist.
• Pad each subtitle's start/end time by 150ms
• Merge subtitles that start within 1300ms (1000 + 2x150) of each other (i.e. also add silences shorter than 1300ms)

subs2cia condense -i video.mkv "video subtitles.ass" -ae flac --no-gen-subtitle

• Condense video.mkv using video subtitles.ass into video.condensed.flac.
  • Note: subs2cia will default to try using external subtitle/audio files first.
• Don't generate condensed subtitles.

subs2cia condense -i audio.mp3 subtitles.ass

• Condense audio.mp3 and subtitles.srt into audio.condensed.mp3 and audio.condensed.srt

subs2cia condense -b -i *.mkv *.srt -I 0m 1m30s -I e2m +1m30s -tl ja -t 1500 -p 100

• Condense all .mkv and .srt files in a directory organized according to Plex standards.
• Ignore the first 1m30s of subtitles and the 1m30s of subtitles 2 minutes from the end.
• Prefer Japanese audio/subtitles.
• Set subtitle padding to 100ms and threshold to merge subtitles to 1700ms:

For a more complete usage guide, run subs2cia condense -h or take a look at USAGE.

SRS Export Quickstart and Examples

Most options are shared with condense. See subs2cia srs -h for a full list of options.

Example commands

subs2cia srs -i video.mkv

• extract the first audio and first subtitle track in video.mkv and generate video.tsv and a lotta .mp3 and .jpg files

subs2cia srs -b -i *.mkv *.ja.srt -d srs_export -p 100 -N 

• enable batch mode and use all .mkv and japanese .srt files in the current directory
• save output files to a directory called srs_export
• pad timings by 100ms
• normalize audio to be roughly the same volume Note that each input file group will have its own .tsv output

Usage notes

The same overall idea is the same: give subs2cia an audio and subtitle source. Instead of generating a set of condensed outputs, a .tsv (tab-seperated values) file is generated along with audio clips and screenshots (if a video source is given).

Each column of the .tsv file represents the following:

1. Subtitle text
2. Time range of subtitle in milliseconds: start-end
3. Audio:[sound:media_start-end.mp3]
4. Screenshot: <img src='media_start-end.jpg'>
   • Screenshot resolution is the video file's resolution
5. Video clip (currently disabled)
6. Comma-seperated list of input files used

Note that in batch mode, multiple .tsv files are generated, one for each input group.

Since there could be hundreds output files, it's highly recommended to specify an output directory with -d in order to avoid cluttering your filesystem.

Anki Import Instructions

1. In the main screen, click on File->Import...
2. Select the .tsv file you would like to import
3. In the Import dialog box:
   1. Choose the note type and deck you'd like to import to
   2. Make sure fields are separated by tabs
   3. Make sure Allow HTML in fields is checked
   4. Adjust the 6 fields (detailed above) to fit your note type
   5. Click Import
4. Verify audio and screenshots were automagically imported as well. If audio and/or screenshots are missing, they may need to be manually moved into your collections folder. If the .tsv file isn't in the same directory as the generated audio clips and images, Anki won't copy them for you.

Limitations and Assumptions

• Won't work on bitmap subtitles (e.g. PGS subtitles), only text-based supports subtitle formats supported by ffmpeg and pysubs2 encoded in UTF-8 will work
• Subtitles must be properly aligned to audio. No attempt is made by subs2cia to align subtitles.

subzipper

Renames subtitle files to match a reference (video) file to conform with Plex-style naming standards, optionally adding language information to the suffix. Intended for use with shell wildcards.

Usage

$ subzipper -h
usage: subzipper.py [-h] -s <input files> [<input files> ...] -r <input files>
                    [<input files> ...] [-l ISO_LANG_CODE] [-ns] [-d] [-v]

SubZipper: Map video files to subtitle files

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -s <input files> [<input files> ...], --subtitle <input files> [<input files> ...]
                        List of subtitle files. Number of subtitle files
                        should equal number of reference files.
  -r <input files> [<input files> ...], --reference <input files> [<input files> ...]
                        List of reference files, typically video files. Number
                        of subtitle files should equal number of reference
                        files.
  -l ISO_LANG_CODE, --language ISO_LANG_CODE
                        Language code to append to end of subtitle file.
                        Optional. If set, will be checked for validity.
  -ns, --no-sort        If set, will not sort input files alphabetically.
  -d, --dry-run         If set, will print out mappings but will not write any
                        changes to disk.
  -v, --verbose         Verbose output if set.

Examples

Rename episode01.ass to MyShow_S01E01.ja.ass and episode02.ass to MyShow_S01E02.ja.ass,

subzipper -s "episode01.ass" "episode02.ass" -r "MyShow_S01E01.mkv" "MyShow_S01E02.mkv" -l ja

Map all subtitles to all video files,

subzipper -s *.ass -r *.mkv -l ja