WebVTT caption transcription app
This open-source, R-based web application allows the conversion of video captions (subtitles) from the Web Video Text Tracks (WebVTT) Format into plain texts. For this purpose, users upload a WebVTT file with the extension .vtt or .txt (examples available here and here).
WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en-GB 6fbb1fca-421a-4ee9-942b-cee0dc425f8a 00:00:00.760 --> 00:00:08.640 Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Duis sed tempus nisi. Sed 635ad194-26db-4fb7-90d6-26bfbbaefdf3 00:00:08.640 --> 00:00:14.400 lorem diam, fermentum id hendrerit eu, efficitur at nulla. Aenean vitae pulvinar 11fc831a-59a3-40da-9c5c-5a8556a40a45 00:00:14.400 --> 00:00:15.540 magna. Pellentesque metus nisi, elementum 0826c1e2-0c4c-4517-b1a8-0dc745d603e3 00:00:15.540 --> 00:00:28.760 nisi, mattis fermentum nulla. Donec quis varius metus, suscipit vulputate neque.
When the caption file is uploaded to the web application, metadata such as timestamps are automatically removed, and the text is formatted into a paragraph. The result is displayed on the website, and can be downloaded as .docx and .txt documents. Overall, this application serves to improve the accessibility of video captions.
The data is only available to the user, and is deleted when the website is closed.
Programming details
The source code is available on Github, where the app can be extended via pull requests. Questions and suggestions can be submitted as issues or emailed to pcbernabeu@gmail.com. The licence is Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.
The core of the application is in the index.Rmd script, which uses ‘regular expressions’ to process the VTT file.
In turn, the script above draws on the one below to enable the download of .docx documents. Last, the latter script draws on this Word template.