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My Question Briefly

I am looking for the ability to select text (e.g. word, or group of words) from a subtitle sentence that's shown on a video — within VLC Player interface — in order to copy/reuse text snippets without the need of retyping them.


I've subtitles stored within external files (e.g. .srt), so I believe it's possible to make subtitle text selectable on the VLC Player's interface. The OCR solution would require additional manual steps and won't be accurate all the time, also it's unneeded processing while we already have the content of subtitles written within the .srt files.


Why it's important to make VLC subtitles text selectable?

On Lynda courses video player — and similar in-browser players — I can select text within subtitles simply on the video without digging elsewhere.

It's so powerful to make subtitles text selectable because of the potentials this provides.

  • If the subtitles are selectable, I can select the word I want to translate and hit the shortcut key for GoldenDict — or any-alike program — to popup the translation
  • I can also copy to search a word on Google.

This would save a lot of time specially when we're translating, taking-notes, or searching a lot what mentioned within the subtitles.


Personal Info

  • VLC Player version I'm using: VLC v2.2.4
  • OS: Windows 10
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  • this MIGHT be possible for video files with external subs, or those that load subs from within their container (though I have no idea how), but for older content like AVIs or MPEGs the subs are burned onto the image as pixel data, so no, VLC will never be able to tell that they are text. in that case you would need an OCR like product to process each frame looking for text. it would be a very manual process. Sep 10, 2016 at 21:34
  • What I'm looking specifically for is for videos that already have external subtitles (e.g. .srt). Yes, if the subtitles are burnt on video we will need an OCR. Thanks for the hint to add a more detail to the question.
    – Omar
    Sep 10, 2016 at 21:50

1 Answer 1

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  1. Use potplayer
  2. Then change the word search setting to "Copy to clipboard" instead of default option of searching Google every time you double click word
  3. Use Qtranslate software and enable Mouse mode
  4. Now double or triple click on the Subtitle text you want to translate . Qtranslate will do the instant translation

Summary:

  1. PotPlayer for making Subtitle text Selectable and pauses video(Change LMB action to Play/Pause for ease)
  2. Qtranslate to do the instant translation for us

Happy learning new language with this COMBO of tools.

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