So last week, I put out a clip talking about how you could
slash the amount of time and effort you spend in creating
the subtitles for your videos.
The workflow I described involved exporting an audio clip
from your final video sequence, bringing that into Otter.ai
which is going to process that.
It's going to use automated Speech to Text, to create
a transcript, we're then going to take that
transcript, proofread it,
and then once that's done, bring it into Descript.
And in Descript, we're going to use a free function that's
going to match or sync the transcript to the source file.
And that's going to create an SRT.
An SRT is a file which contains all the text and
time code information for each specific caption block.
I was particularly impressed by the accuracy of the
transcript produced by Otter.ai.
Obviously the more accurate the transcript automatically created
by the Artificial Intelligence processing, the less time
you're going to need to spend proofreading and editing the
transcript before you progress.
And because that stage,
editing and proofreading, is really the only stage
where you need to commit time and effort yourself to
get the right results, or to get the best results, then
that's really important.
Now, one of the viewers of the clip left a good suggestion,
"Have I tried Subly?"
he asked.
Now I'd never heard of Subly, so obviously I'd never tried
it, but I am always looking for ways to work smarter and
take away some of the burden of something like creating
subtitles for videos, which are really, really
important, but can be a chore.
So I decided I'd give Subly a real go.
Subly are in their Beta phase.
Before full launch, they're offering free
use of the service.
So now's a good time to try them out.
Whereas Otter.ai and Descript's transcription services cover
a range of possible, uses such as podcasts, interviews,
lectures, and meetings,
Subly seems very much targeted at short form
social media videos.
I may have overlooked this, but I could not find
information on the site about maximum length of videos or
maximum file size for upload, which would be good to know.
It seems very straightforward.
Sign up, upload a video and have Subly's AI
process Speech to Text.
Then within Subly you can either edit before exporting a
video with subtitles visible, or export the transcript as
either plain text or an SRT.
I'm not interested in exporting a video with subtitles burnt in.
I just want to have a transcript created on this occasion.
So let's go about doing that.
For me, accuracy is key.
Here Subly offers some data claiming a Word Error
Rate between 20 to 25%.
Interestingly, they make a comparison with
Watson, IBM's AI platform.
In my previous clip, I did use the demo version of IBM
Watson and was not impressed.
Subly claims to be more accurate than Watson.
I hope so.
Let's give it a go.
So we're in Premiere and this is the project that I used in
the previous clip as the source file for the transcription.
I'm going to use the same clip.
Even though I've already obviously created the SRT as
part of the previous clip, I want to use the same source
file to try and keep things as consistent as possible.
Previously, I exported an audio file.
This time, I'm going to export a video file, which
is what Subly requires.
Now this is a 13 minute 47 or so second clip, and if
I exported that at a high resolution, it would probably
be quite a large file.
So I'm going to export it, just using the Twitter
720 preset in Premiere.
Now if like me, you're just interested in using something
like Subly to create the SRT file, rather than creating
a video with subtitles burnt in, then at this stage, you
do want to make sure that if you've used any music,
you mute those music tracks.
And of course, as always, your audio tracks for dialogue
have already been optimized,
so they're nice and clear.
Basically, you want the dialogue to be as clear as possible to
give the AI the best possible chance to transcribe correctly.
So I've created a free account within Subly and
it's very straightforward.
I'll just upload the file I've just exported.
I'll confirm, from the drop down list of languages available,
the language spoken in the video, and it's got a couple of
different variants for English.
I've obviously gone for British English.
And then I'll initiate the processing, which will
convert Speech to Text and create the subtitles.
So that sequence of 13 minutes, 47 seconds, which is mainly
dialogue, took about five minutes for Subly to process.
And once it's processed, you can see the video with
the subtitles displayed.
"Hey guys, in this clip, I'm going to show you
how to use this camera...
the JVC GY-LS300 to stream directly into YouTube.
Once you've set it up..."
The sync seems to be fine, but I can already see some
errors with the transcript.
Also, you will immediately see that there is a
watermark added by Subly.
I can obviously understand why they've done that, but it's
pretty much a nonstarter for me if that were mandatory.
But fortunately they do allow you to remove the watermark
within the Style Editor.
So you don't have to live with that, certainly
at this Beta stage.
There will always be errors.
You've just got to accept that that is part of this process.
Even with services which claim.
a very high accuracy rate, I'm talking 99% or so, accept
the fact that there will be errors within a transcript.
As far as I'm concerned, you've always got to proofread
the transcription closely.
That said, you obviously want as accurate a
starting point as possible.
If you were using Subly to export a video with subtitles
burnt in, then you would use the interface here
to make your corrections.
That's not the case for me, but I wanted to give it a quick try.
The interface seems very straightforward.
The only thing I didn't really like is that the
transcript doesn't seem to automatically scroll with
playback of the video.
You need to manually find where you are in terms
of the transcript to make the relevant corrections.
So once you've edited the transcript, you can go
ahead and download either an SRT, or a plain text file.
I'm going to download a plain text file for the next stage.
So here is the transcription produced by Subly now
in a plain text file.
And all I'm going to do is copy the entire contents of that
and paste it into a Google doc.
The reason to do that is that native plain text apps
like Notepad can be a bit of a pain to edit within.
And here's the transcript of the same sequence, exactly as
produced by Otter.ai and I'm just going to compare the two.
All I do is play back the source file and closely read the
transcript correcting as I go.
I'm looking for words that have been mistranscribed or
words that have been emitted entirely during processing.
Apart from minor punctuation changes, which can be open to
individual preference anyway, a much more significant problem
across all AI Speech to Text processing is ending sentences
at the wrong point.
You can do this editing in Subly within the interface
provided, as I say, in my case, I'm not interested in exporting
the final clip from Subly.
So I've taken the transcript outside the platform.
It also allows me to edit the Otter.ai transcript in
exactly the same way so we can treat them like for like.
Since this is a near 14 minute clip, another version of which
I've already edited previously
you'll understand, I hope, why I didn't want to do it all again.
Instead I limited my proofreading to about the first
minute for both transcripts.
In fairness, that's probably representative of the
duration of many of the clips that will be imported into
Sublay anyway, I'd guess.
As I edited, I kept a note of the major
changes I needed to make.
The results from this head-to-head, across the first
minute of the transcripts, were five corrections made in the
Sublay transcript, compared to three major corrections in the
transcript produced by Otter.ai.
So what did I think of Subly after my little trial?
Well, I thought it was a good product.
I thought it was very easy to use, straightforward to kind of
set up the account, bring in the file, initiate the processing,
foolproof dare I say.
Which a lot of people really appreciate it.
Accuracy was really, really important for me to get some
sort of idea about, and I do think it offers an accurate
transcription, certainly more accurate than some of the others
I've tried.
Not as accurate as Otter.ai based on my
limited testing of it.
But I have used that source file across a couple
of different platforms.
So I'm very happy to use that as a benchmark,
at least for myself.
Based on what I've seen, the transcription isn't
as accurate as Otter.ai.
The big question mark, of course, about Subly
is what the pricing structure is going to be?
They've opened it up, it's at Beta stage, and so you're
welcome to go and try it and get a feel for the product.
And when they do release the pricing structure, you'll
be able to take a view about whether that works for you.
Personally I'll probably go onto to sign up for Otter.ai,
because I have found that, you know, overall a very good
platform for me and my workflow.
And also obviously I know what the pricing structure
will be, which is less than 10 US dollars per month.
So those were my thoughts on Subly for
subtitling your videos.
If you've enjoyed this clip, a Like is always welcome.
If you want to watch the clip that I've referenced, that talks
in depth about how to create an SRT file for your captions
and your subtitle workflow,
take a look at the clip that's on screen right
now, where I go, as I say, comprehensively step by step,
what's involved in that workflow.
And if you're just interested in creating better content,
consider subscribing, because that's what this
channel is all about.