Subtitling and captioning

LILT’s new subtitling and captioning functionality enables end-to-end workflows for subtitling and captioning, bringing major improvements to scalability, efficiency, quality, file security, and user experience. Key highlights include:

• In-context video review during all workflow stages, including Secondary Review, to facilitate translation and quality analysis.
• Integrated subtitling-specific QA checks that are configurable at the organization level.
• Translation for on-screen text, titles, and synopses.

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Creating a subtitling job

To create a subtitling job:

1. Log in to LILT and go to “Translate”. Upload your video file and toggle “Receive an expert-verified translation” on.
2. We support the following video file types: MP4, MOV, AVI, MKV, WebM, WMV. If you have a subtitle file (e.g., SRT or VTT), you can upload it directly; if not, LILT will extract text using Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR). If you don’t have a third-party provider configured, please configure one in AI Providers. An ASR provider is mandatory if you’re uploading a video without an associated subtitle file; optional if you already have one.
3. Click “Send for translation”. LILT will start background text extraction (status visible in the job view).

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Source Review workflow stage

After file upload and text extraction, the job enters the Source Review workflow stage. When in this stage, each source file needs to be reviewed to proceed to translation, and the project-related tabs are hidden. The Source Review workflow stage can be assigned to a linguist, or can be reviewed internally by LILT. This stage provides:

• Side-by-side viewing and editing of the source extracted text alongside the video.
• Ability to make corrections for timing, segmentation, and transcription quality.
• Adding and removing segments as needed, for example, to capture on-screen text for localization.

The Source text review stage looks similar to CAT, but only has source segments. The purpose of this stage is to compare the text with the source video file, and ensure the caption times and text are accurate. QA errors will flag issues related to subtitling-specific QA checks (see section below for more information). To add or delete a segment, click on the Segment Editing tools, and select “Add a new segment” or “Delete this segment”. To insert a line break, click into the top menu, select Insert, and then Line Break. Alternatively, you can use the hotkey shortcut.

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Complete Source Review

Once all segments are confirmed, the source review gets marked as “Reviewed”. You can also accept all segments by going into the “Edit” dropdown and selecting “Accept all segments”. Once all source files in the job are reviewed, click on “Complete Source Review” to move the job to the next stage in the workflow (e.g. Translate). Alternatively, you can mark the job as “Source review complete” without marking all documents as “Review completed”.

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Segment states

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Progressing through the workflow

After completing the source text review, the video will move through the rest of the workflow stages. All of the standard CAT functionality will be available, as well as the in-context video for review and the Subtitling QA checks.

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Subtitling QA checks

LILT includes automated QA checks tailored for subtitling, ensuring:

• Compliance with character limits, line lengths, and reading speed guidelines.
• Verification of synchronization between subtitles and video content.
• Detection of overlapping or missing subtitles, and issues with timing or placement.

These QA checks are configurable at the organization level.

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Subtitling QA checks at the org level

Users can set minimum and maximum limits for each of the QA checks, and define whether this is a Blocking issue. If any of these checks are determined as blocking, then linguists will not be able to confirm a segment until the issue is resolved. These QA checks will flag in Quality Assurance Tools and in Segment QA:

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Linguist homepage

Assignments for any subtitling or captioning will appear in the Linguist homepage with the “Video subtitling chip.

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FAQs

1. What file types are supported for upload and export?
   • Upload: MP4, MOV, AVI, MKV, WebM, WMV file types up to 2GB.
   • Subtitle download formats: SRT, VTT, ITML, ITT.
2. Can I submit subtitling jobs through the LILT API? Yes, job creation, cloud uploads, and retrieval are supported via the LILT API. To submit files through the API, customers will need to update their API endpoints to take advantage of the new size limit released in July by following the instructions for direct cloud uploads in our API documentation: Uploading files and Instant and Verified uploading guides.
3. Will captions be burned into my videos automatically? No, this is currently out of scope. Subtitle files are delivered in one of the following formats: VTT, SRT, ITML, ITT. Advanced post-processing for burnt-in captions and other video post-editing features will be considered in the future.
4. Can I download the original source video? Yes, to access the original source video, go to the Source Files tab and select the video file for download.