cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/37011397

[email protected]

The popular open-source VLC video player was demonstrated on the floor of CES 2025 with automatic AI subtitling and translation, generated locally and offline in real time. Parent organization VideoLAN shared a video on Tuesday in which president Jean-Baptiste Kempf shows off the new feature, which uses open-source AI models to generate subtitles for videos in several languages.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    12417 hours ago

    This sounds like a great thing for deaf people and just in general, but I don’t think AI will ever replace anime fansub makers who have no problem throwing a wall of text on screen for a split second just to explain an obscure untranslatable pun.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      69 hours ago

      It’s unlikely to even replace good subtitles, fan or not. It’s just a nice thing to have for a lot of content though.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        4
        edit-2
        2 hours ago

        I have family members who can’t really understand spoken English because it’s a bit fast, and can’t read English subtitles again, because again, too fast for them.

        Sometimes you download a movie and all the Estonian subtitles are for an older release and they desynchronize. Sometimes you can barely even find synchronized English subtitles, so even that doesn’t work.

        This seems like a godsend, honestly.

        Funnily enough, of all the streaming services, I’m again going to have to commend Apple TV+ here. Their shit has Estonian subtitles. Netflix, Prime, etc, do not. Meaning if I’m watching with a family member who doesn’t understand English well, I’ll watch Apple TV+ with a subscription, and everything else is going to be pirated for subtitles. So I don’t bother subscribing anymore. We’re a tiny country, but for some reason Apple of all companies has chosen to acknowledge us. Meanwhile, I was setting up an Xbox for someone a few years ago, and Estonia just… straight up doesn’t exist. I’m not talking about language support - you literally couldn’t pick it as your LOCATION.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      1511 hours ago

      They are like the * in any Terry Pratchett (GNU) novel, sometimes a funny joke can have a little more spice added to make it even funnier