The popular video player, VLC media player, is getting new useful features, including automatic subtitles and AI translation, in real time (locally and offline).
During CES 2025, VideoLAN shared a video in which president Jean-Baptiste Kempf demonstrates the new feature. Open source AI models have been integrated into the VLC media player to generate subtitles in multiple languages.
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“At the same time, we have machine translation working to translate the subtitles into your own language,” says Kempf. Soon, more than 100 languages. “What’s important is that this runs on your computer locally, offline, without cloud services. It runs directly inside the executable,” he added.
AI-powered automatic subtitles have been in development for some time now as a plug-in that uses Whisper . But according to the new presentation, the feature is now built directly into the VLC media player app and generates translated subtitles in real time. However, it was not clear when the feature will be released to users.
See also: Google Chrome: New API for fast translation of complex content
This new development is an important step in making videos accessible to a wider audience. AI subtitles and real-time, offline translation benefit both the hearing impaired and people who want to watch videos in different languages.
With the increasing popularity of video content on social media platforms and streaming services, the need for accurate and timely subtitling has become more critical than ever. AI technology is a great help in this process.
See also: Telegram v9.4: Translation of entire conversations and other new features
VLC media player is one of the most popular video players, and VideoLAN is constantly finding ways to improve. People seem to appreciate that, as the program recently reached 6 billion downloads!
Source: www.theverge.com
