Support for subtitles while streaming

[forthrin]

Today you can stream videos like this:

youtube-dl -o - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=<id> | vlc -

It would be nice to be able to have subtitles when streaming. Something like:

youtube-dl --write-sub-file /tmp/subtitles.srt -o - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=<id> | vlc --sub-file /tmp/subtitles.srt -

• I've verified and I assure that I'm running youtube-dl 2019.01.24
• At least skimmed through the README, most notably the FAQ and BUGS sections
• Searched the bugtracker for similar issues including closed ones
• Checked that provided video/audio/playlist URLs (if any) are alive and playable in a browser
• Bug report (encountered problems with youtube-dl)

$ youtube-dl --verbose
[debug] System config: []
[debug] User config: []
[debug] Custom config: []
[debug] Command-line args: [u'--verbose']
[debug] Encodings: locale UTF-8, fs utf-8, out utf8, pref UTF-8
[debug] youtube-dl version 2019.01.24
[debug] Python version 2.7.15 (CPython) - Darwin-16.7.0-x86_64-i386-64bit
[debug] exe versions: ffmpeg 4.0.2, ffprobe 4.0.2, rtmpdump 2.4
[debug] Proxy map: {}

[alexvong1995]

After putting the right value for lang and url, the following shell command
should do what you want.

lang=en; url='https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=<id>'; pwd_sv="$PWD"; tmpdir=`mktemp -d`; cd "$tmpdir" && youtube-dl -o sub --write-sub --skip-download --sub-format best --sub-lang "$lang" "$url" && test -f "$tmpdir"/sub.* && youtube-dl -o - "$url" | vlc --play-and-exit --sub-file "$tmpdir"/sub.* -; cd "$pwd_sv"; rm -rf "$tmpdir"

I suspect the vlc subtitle auto-detection is buggy at the moment because I
cannot make it work. I have to pass --sub-file explicitly in the above
command. I can turn the above into a proper shell script if you really need it.

For myself, I use mpv and because it has youtube-dl integration, the command
is as simple as mpv https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=<id>.

[forthrin]

@alexvong1995: Augh! That's a bit long, and probably slow, since you have to request the video twice.

However, I found out that it's better to watch this way, as eliminating the pipe makes it possible to jump in the video, see the video length, etc.

vlc "$(youtube-dl --get-url 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=<id>')"

I'll leave the issue open for someone to suggest a way to get subtitles with this approach, or interest from the developers to add supports for this.

PS! Good to know about mpv!

[alexvong1995]

@forthrin forthrin <notifications@github.com> writes:

@alexvong1995: Augh! That's a bit long, and probably slow, since you have to request the video twice. However, I found out that it's better to watch this way, as eliminating the pipe makes it possible to jump in the video, see the video length, etc. vlc "$(youtube-dl --get-url 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=<id>')" I'll leave the issue open for someone to suggest a way to get subtitles with this approach, or interest from the developers to add supports for this.

I incorporate your suggestion into my last command:

id=<id>; lang=en; tmpfile=`mktemp "${TMPDIR:=/tmp}/tmp.XXXXXXXXXX"`; wget -O "$tmpfile" "https://www.youtube.com/api/timedtext?v=$id&lang=$lang&fmt=vtt" && vlc --play-and-exit --sub-file "$tmpfile" "$(youtube-dl -f best --get-url "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=$id")"; rm -f "$tmpfile"

The command is now slightly less long. It uses 'wget' instead of 'youtube-dl' to download the sub, which is faster for me.

PS! Good to know about mpv!

I like the intuitive and minimalistic interface of mpv!

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[forthrin]

This is much better! This should be useful for several people out there. This snippet would be very suitable for a FAQ or the manual pages.

[forthrin]

I'll close the issue, as it's probably not feasible to make youtube-dl pass both subtitles and streaming URL on to a video player in a uniform, straight forward way. This can be accomplished using a relatively simple script, as shown above, and in other ways.