WebVTT caption transcription app
How it works
(vtt or txt)"] --> B["Regular expressions remove
metadata such as timestamps"] B --> C["Text formatted
into a paragraph"] C --> D["Result displayed
on the website"] D --> E["Download as docx
or txt document"]
This open-source, R-based web application converts video captions (subtitles) from the Web Video Text Tracks (WebVTT) Format into plain text. For this purpose, users upload a WebVTT file with the extension .vtt or .txt (examples available here and here).
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.