Long-form Video Subtitle Generator

A command-line tool that automatically generates subtitles for long-form videos by splitting them at natural silence points and using OpenAI's Whisper model for transcription and translation.

Features

• Detects natural silence in videos to create optimal splitting points, ensuring that subtitles remain accurate for long-form content
• Uses OpenAI's Whisper model for high-quality transcription and translation
• Supports multiple languages
• Generates properly formatted SRT subtitle files
• GPU acceleration with fallback to CPU

Installation

Prerequisites

• Python 3.8 or higher
• A CUDA-compatible GPU (optional, but recommended for faster processing)
• FFmpeg (required for video processing)

# on Ubuntu or Debian
sudo apt update && sudo apt install ffmpeg

# on Arch Linux
sudo pacman -S ffmpeg

# on MacOS using Homebrew (https://brew.sh/)
brew install ffmpeg

# on Windows using Chocolatey (https://chocolatey.org/)
choco install ffmpeg

# on Windows using Scoop (https://scoop.sh/)
scoop install ffmpeg

Setup

1. Clone this repository:

   git clone https://github.com/pschua/generate-longform-video-subtitles.git
   cd generate-longform-video-subtitles

2. Create a virtual environment (recommended):

   python -m venv venv
   source venv/bin/activate  # On Windows: venv\Scripts\activate

3. Install the required packages:

   pip install -r requirements.txt

Usage

Basic usage:

python subtitle_generator.py video_file.mp4

Advanced options:

python subtitle_generator.py video_file.mp4 --chunk-duration 100 --output custom_name.srt --language ja

Options

• video_file: Path to the video file (required)
• --chunk-duration: Target duration in seconds for each chunk (default: 300)
• --output, -o: Custom output filename for the subtitle file
• --device: Device to use for transcription (default: cuda if available, otherwise cpu)
• --language: Language code for transcription (default: ja for Japanese)
  • language codes

Examples

Generate English subtitles using CPU:

python subtitle_generator.py my_video.mp4 --language en --device cpu

Generate subtitles from Japanese video with 10-minute chunks:

python subtitle_generator.py my_video.mp4 --chunk-duration 600 --language ja

License

MIT License - See LICENSE file for details.