Videogrep can make supercuts from videos by referencing the content and timestamps subtitle file. If you're using videos downloaded from YouTube, you're either getting auto-generated or creator-supplied subtitles. It's not immediately clear how to get this done, because it's a sort of old program, not updated frequently, and the error messages don't tell you exactly what's going wrong .
Here are some things I learned today that can help get the job done:
Downloading from YouTube, with subs:
(definitely check out the docs for all options)
Option 1: Download video and subtitles with youtube-dl
youtube-dl [link to video] --write-sub
Example
youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch\\?v\\=zM5WVh1ll4Y --write-sub
This command downloads two files, with the same name but different extensions:
- a video file (.mkv or .mp4, both work for
videogrep
) - a subtitle file (in my experience it has downloaded
.en.vtt
files)
Sometimes you won't be able to get the subtitles, and the --write-auto-sub
flag which is supposed to grab the auto-generated subtitles/closed-captioning does not work reliably. But thankfully there are other tools that do that better.
Option 2: Download video with youtube-dl
, subtitles with downsub
https://downsub.com/ only gets the subtitles or auto-generated subtitles from a video, not the video itself. It worked first time I tried it, and worked fast. No reason I can see not to use it if youtube-dl
can't manage to get the subtitles. Just remember you have to
- re-name your file to match your video file, and
- make sure they're in the same directory before you can
videogrep
Optional: Downscale the video
You may not need the most high quality version of the video, check this link to see ways to select video quality
- To select the video quality, first use the
F
option to list the available formats, here’s an example:youtube-dl -F '<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9pzm5b6FFY>'
- Then just plug in the desired format-code supplied in the list from the previous command
youtube-dl -f 22 'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9pzm5b6FFY' --write-sub
Supercutting with Videogrep
Now you have what you need to make videogrep work. If you go into the docs, the basic command for using videogrep is:
videogrep -i [input file] -s "[search term]" -o [output file]
Example
videogrep -i smallant-lynel.mkv -s 'bounce' -o lynel-supercut.mkv
Two things you should know:
- You'll notice there's no argument for the subtitle file; that's because
videogrep
looks for a file with the same exact name in the same folder as your video; - The output flag
-o
is optional; if omitted, it will just output a supercut.mp4
One gotcha that I missed was that if you're using a .vtt file, as you probably will be from youtube, you have to pass in the flag -vtt at the end.
Here's an example of a command I used that worked:
videogrep -i smallant-lynel.mkv --search 'bounce' -vtt
Results
The results.. well the results are pretty good. Totally worth an afternoon smoothing out some of the kinks.