mpv-player / mpv-player/mpv

New Youtube Auto-Subtitle Support

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#10,035 5 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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meta:feature-request
Dominant language
C
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Forks
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Avg merge
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Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

Expected behavior of the wanted feature

I'd like mpv to handle the new format of Youtube auto-subtitles, if possible. Historically I could use these subtitle files as expected, but their format changed so dramatically that they're now unusable in the program, displaying the whole transcript of the video in the first few seconds.
The codec also changed from mov_text to webvtt if that helps at all.

Alternative behavior of the wanted feature

This seems at first glance to be an unfixable issue that I might have to raise with yt-dlp maintainers instead, so no hard feelings if that's true.

Log files

Old auto-subtitle format: https://0x0.st/oqgG.vtt
New auto-subtitle format: https://0x0.st/oqgD.vtt

mpv log of old format: https://0x0.st/oqgI.txt
mpv log of new format: https://0x0.st/oqgl.txt

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by comparing the old and new subtitle files with the corresponding mpv logs linked in the issue, focusing on how the new WebVTT content is interpreted. Trace the subtitle handling entry point and determine whether mpv or yt-dlp is responsible; done means the new YouTube auto-subtitles display with correct timing rather than the full transcript at once.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
c
Domain
desktop
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
48/100

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