Subtitle import feature for greater sentence mode experience

Hi, I’m posting this comment because I was wondering if it would be possible to import subtitle files (.srt and maybe) others directly to lingq.

This idea came up after the recent youtube import feature not working, but having using it for some time. One of the key features is that it time stamps the sentences, so when you’re studying in sentence mode, you can hear the original audio, instead of the text-to-speach. This is huge!!
Having said that, and taking into account that youtube might change on their side that might cause problems with the import feature, and also that people might have their own subtitles, I think it would be great to be able to import an .srt file directly into lingq, like we can do with ebooks. I mean, if the import feature allows to take the youtube subtitles and timestamp them, is it much more work to implement a direct subtitle import option on lingq? This way, we won’t be limited to youtube’s functionality if they change something on their side.

Anyway, hope this thread can get some traction so maybe Steve, Mark and the rest of the team at Lingq see this so maybe this feature can be implemented.

You can actually do this with your own lessons that you upload. It automatically generates timestamps and for the most part it’s pretty accurate, and then you can hear the original audio in sentence mode. Most lessons don’t seem to have it activated however.

Well, I mostly study with my own important lessons and it hasn’t generated the timestamps automatically. This doesn’t bother me with short dialogs, of even audiobooks, because the work for setting the timestamps manually is just not worth it. However, with subtitles it’s another matter. Say for instance I have the subtitles for a 20 min episode. The timestamps are already there, there would be much manual work to be done. And if I want to hear the exact sound, I could just set sentence mode and hear it, instead of the text-to-speach, which is good but is not always reliable. This is what happened when I imported from animelon, too. And it just took a click to get it done. Now, I don’t know if what I’m asking would imply much more work for the Lingq development team, but it seams to me that they already have an algorithm to convert subtitles to timestamped lessons.

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I too am having this exact problem, but also using anisub.tv. There I can get some episodes working, but content that is restricted to members isnt pulled by the lingq plugin, even if I am logged in as a member.

Spent quite a while manually pasting the timestamp for each sentence, for about 10 min worth of content and I dont want to do that again, it was so painfull, especially when I could have used it to actually consume the language instead.

I feel your pain, I can’t imagine doing that manually for a whole episode. Btw, how do you use the lingq import extension for anisub.tv, I tried it and it didn’t work. Actually, it’s not working very well lately, even when using with youtube it doesn’t pull the audio

If you can’t import the anime you find on Anisub.TV - try searching for it on Animelon.com or https://anjsub.com/ - The extension works on these sites as well.

More Japanese content:

" Hi, I’m posting this comment because I was wondering if it would be possible to import subtitle files (.srt and maybe) others directly to lingq."

To get SRT files into LingQ, you first need to download the SRT file onto your computer. Then you need to convert that file into text (google how) and afterwards, you can manually paste the text into a new LingQ lesson (desktop only)

Due to Google restrictions, LingQ will not always be able to pull audio from YouTube videos. You can do this manually by using a YouTube to MP3 site and then adding the MP3 to your lesson.

Hi Eric, thanks for your answer, but it doesn’t solve the problem, which is the ability to have the time stamp on the lessons for sentence view. The only solution I have is to upload the video or audio into a personal youtube account, add the subtitle file in youtube, setting the video to hidden (because of copyright restrictions) and finally importing the lesson using lingq’s add-on. This is a lot of hassle but that’s what i came up with. This is because sometimes lingq doesn’t pull the audio for some sites, like animelon.

That last file is awesome! Thanks Eric

Through a bit of trial,and a lot of error, my current approach to import anime content is to import it from animeleon. That way I always get the subtitles and timestamps (which are the most annoying part to fix manually afterwards) Then for the audio, i just upload it myself. In my case I am picking anime that I have seen and enjoy, where I already have the DVD of,and can get the video file of it using handbrake. Then I use VLC to convert it to mp3.

Might have some mjnor timing issues conpared to the imported timestamps from animelon, but it is the closest ive gotten to a reliable method for any anime I want to import.