Video subtitling and transcripts
As a language trainer who uses a lot of video sequences with learners, subtitles have always been important for me.
Being able to see and hear the language simultaneously helps to consolidate all the essential aspects of words and phrases.
Spelling, pronunciation, intonation, phrasing, syntax, co-text and contextual meaning are all there in one powerful package, which is why I recommend viewing short sequences as opposed to watching epic films for learning a language.
Of course, both have their place, but when you go beyond about 7 minutes or so, the focus switches from being aware of both style and substance to one of global understanding: ‘comprendre plutôt que d’apprendre’.
In 2021, I did a training course on video editing, which gave me the opportunity to work on software such as Da Vinci Resolve 17, OBS, and various subtitling interfaces. This led to me experimenting online with most of the AI-based automatic speech-to-text offers and by far the best interface in my experience is the one you’ll find at HappyScribe.
Of course, if you want something completely free (but not really very good), you can just upload your videos to YouTube and use the free subtitling software there.
However, if you’re going to spend time correcting and syncing more than a few minutes of video, it’s definitely worth paying the little extra and going for a quality interface like HappyScribe.
As well as being a customer for their subtitling interface, I’ve also had the benefit of doing scribing gigs for HappyScribe, which has been an excellent way to improve both my speed and precision in syncing and correctly transcribing the spoken word.
So I have no hesitation in recommending their services – their team of international scribes is second to none, but that doesn’t mean that I have nothing to offer you myself!
If you have a particularly tricky job, like long footage, or lots of it, or a specialist subject, then that’s where I can come in.
The biggest job I’ve done so far involved around 30 videos with about 25 hours of total run-time, which needed correcting, syncing, and translating (French-to-English) for a three-day international conference for real estate agents.
The most specialised so far was a complete four-hour video training course in the field of medicine, which is one of the fields I have myself studied in.
If you just don’t really get your head around things like SRT files, CPS and CPL, atmospherics, capsules, SDH and CC, then don’t worry, I can offer my services for small subtitling and transcribing jobs too.
Just get in touch…
