Shotcut is a free, open-source, cross-platform video editor for Windows, Mac, and Linux. It supports a wide range of formats and resolutions including 4K. Features include subtitles, timeline editing, multiple tracks, and various effects.[1]
Subtitling in Shotcut is the focus of this post. Through Shotcut’s subtitling feature, you can create video transcriptions. Shotcut can create, import, edit, export, render, and embed subtitles. Shotcut can also import subtitle formats such as: SRT, VTT, ASS, and SSA. It can translate from most languages to English, and do Speech to Text subtitling in different languages. To do this it uses Whisper.[2] Shotcut also has a Subtitle burn-in feature, meaning it can embed the subtitles into the video so that they are always visible and permanently a part of the file.
Shotcut’s subtitling does not include diarization—it cannot yet recognize different speakers.
Follow the steps below to create a transcript from a video using Shotcut.
- Download Shotcut: https://www.shotcut.org/download/
Download Shotcut by going to the webpage and clicking on the windows installer that matches your processor (Intel, AMD CPU, or ARM CPU).
- Locate the shotcut-win64-250125.exe in the downloads folder and double click on the .exe file to install the program.
- After you install the program, find it on your PC and double click to open it.
- When you open the program, it opens an Untitled – Shotcut window. You can either click on Open File icon in the toolbar or click and drag an audio or video file in the Projects window on the right side of the screen.
- After opening the video or audio file, the video or audio file will start playing. Pause it and click and drag it to the Timeline section below.
- Once the video or audio file is in the timeline section, click on the Subtitle tab and click on the Speech to Text icon.
- In the Speech to Text window you have the option to Name the Srt file, select the Language, and select the Translate to English option.
- Once you click on OK to begin the process, you will see the Extraction Audio job start over to the right. When the audio is extracted, a separate job begins for the Speech to Text job. Wait until the Speech to Text job has been completed. If successful you will get two green checkmarks as shown below.
- Once completed, go to the Subtitles hamburger menu (three lines) and under there you have the option to Export Subtitles to File or Burn In Subtitles on Output.
- If you select Export Subtitles To File, the Export SRT File window will pop up. You will have the option to rename the file and save it wherever you want.
- If you select Burn In Subtitles on Output, you will see the subtitle over the video or audio, you will then click on the Export icon in the toolbar. Once you click on the Export icon, you will see a list of options to export to such as MP3, WAV, MPEG-2, etc. If you want to save it as MP4, select the H.264 Baseline Profile option. Once that’s selected, click on the Export File button.
- Once you click on the Export File button, the Export File window will appear. Notice the file type is mp4. Give it a name and hit Save.
The mp4 video will have the subtitles burned. If you want to save the subtitle file separately you can select the “Export Subtitles to File” option as shown above. Note: You can either edit the subtitles in Shotcut before burning in the Subtitles or you can edit the subtitle srt file after it has been exported. After you are done with the edits, import the subtitle file, and use the Burn In Subtitle on Output feature.
- The exported subtitle srt file can be opened in a text editor such as Notepad and will look like this. Because a srt file is technically a type of text file, it is fully searchable.
That’s it! If you have any questions, feel free to send an email to NLST through Kelly_Scribner@fd.org
[1] For the list of features go here: https://www.shotcut.org/features/