AI has changed (almost) everything in many areas, even the least logical. For decades, users have searched for subtitles for series and films on download sites, or had to discard videos because they didn't understand them. Automatic subtitles via AI are now as common as playing the video itself.
VideoLAN, the well-known creator of VLC Player, has revealed a unique new feature at CES 2025. It has surpassed 6 billion downloads, becoming the most used multimedia player in the world. It will be even more exclusive with the arrival of automatic subtitles.
As Jean-Baptiste Kempf, CEO of VideoLAN, explains, VLC Player can now generate automatic subtitles in real time, in over 100 languages. The best part is that “it works locally on your machine, offline, without any cloud services. It works directly in the executable.”
It is not yet known what AI VideoLAN is using to achieve this unique capability. It has not been revealed whether it is its own AI or if it uses some version of OpenAI's Whisper or similar. The details of this new feature will be explained soon on the company's blog.
The most accurate way to generate captions is to use a powerful AI that transcribes audio to text, such as OpenAI’s Whisper. Then, a translation AI, such as DeepL Translator, is used to translate the original captions into the desired language.
The news that the world's most famous multimedia player, VLC Player, is now capable of generating automatic subtitles using artificial intelligence in 100 languages, in real time and locally, is excellent news. However, the quality of this transcription and translation still needs to be validated and verified. Furthermore, there is still the unknown about the date when it will be made available to users.
The most accurate way to generate captions is to use a powerful AI that transcribes audio to text, such as OpenAI’s Whisper. Then, a translation AI, such as DeepL Translator, is used to translate the original captions into the desired language.
The news that the world's most famous multimedia player, VLC Player, is now capable of generating automatic subtitles using artificial intelligence in 100 languages, in real time and locally, is excellent news. However, the quality of this transcription and translation still needs to be validated and verified. Furthermore, there is still the unknown about the date when it will be made available to users.
