Using Transcripts / Subtitles / Captions

Open Forum
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It took me several hours of searching. I recently discovered sites where one can download the text of subtitles for thousands of movies and TV shows. At last, I’m using the text for NARCOS (netflix) to learn spanish, and importing the text into LingQ as private lessons. I had this idea back in March. I recently finished season 1, and now I’m rewatching it.

Anyway, the files are *.SRT

After hitting many dead-ends searching for “transcripts” and “captions,” the magic keywords to find NARCOS subtitle files by searching “NARCOS SRT”. So you could find your favorite series by searching " [series name] SRT "

You can open .SRT files as simple text (.txt) files. To make them more user friendly in LingQ for a private lesson, I use “find and replace” to delete the timestamp info. Takes about 10 minutes to format. A one hour episode of NARCOS seems to have about 4000 words, and at this point, about 400 new words for me.

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brilliant

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can you explain a little more how you import the text, delete the time stamps and also how you study this material? i may try to do this if i find suitable content in german

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When I try to download files I get what looks like a zip file, but it doesn’t open. How does it work for you?

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Maybe a search on youtube for a tutorial could help you find step by step instructions in video form.

I opened the SRT files using Windows Notepad. Next I saved it as a TXT file. Then I opened it in MS Word.

I use it to study by reading the subtitles in LingQ the following day after watching an episode. I lingq all the new words.

A few days later, I watch the episode one more time. I find this repetition helps me acquire vocabulary.

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Here is also an additional tip: Quite a few youtube videos now come with full subtitles. I use a site called keepvid.com where I can copy the youtube video link and then download the text and audio. Keep in mind that some clean up is needed with the SRT file as already mentioned above and in some cases you have to convert the audio file to MP3 (I use http://online-audio-converter.com/) before uploading it to Lingq.

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If you study Spanish and like to use transcripts you might want to look up RTVE. RTVE (Spanish state TV) has transcripts for their programs. For example here is a link to a chapter of Cuentame como paso. Cuéntame cómo pasó - Temporada 8 - Capítulo 13 | Ver serie gratis

On the right side there is the full transcript. I move the curser so that it points at the transcript and press ctrl + a so that it copies the whole transcript. Then I paste it in a word document. On both ends of the pasted transcript there are images and some other text. I then get rid of the useless text and images so that I am left with the complete transcript and import it to lingq. On episode between 1.10 to 1.35 tends to mean about 7000 to 8000 words.

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Thanks for the online audio converter link :relaxed:

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Thanks for the RTVE link

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There’s a site, where you can get a lot of movies and series transcripts, already as a text.

That’s the link: http://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/

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I use Subtitle Edit 3.4.6 program. Is free. I export subtitle to plain text, very fast without numbers.

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But how is it used? Can you export from a video file? Or from a subtitle file , for instance, a SRT file?

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No, you can’t export from video. But subtitles you can find in internet, like https://subscene.com/

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14

thanks for the tip!

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I used Subtitle Edit today to export .SRT to plain text. Intuitive and fast! This will save me a lot of valuable time!! Thanks!