About this collection
mydubly reads video and audio in the formats your browser supports and exports subtitles and transcripts in standard formats. Each page covers quirks of that format and what you get back.
Inputs and outputs
The format pages are split by direction. Video and audio pages cover the files you bring: what's inside that container, where such files usually come from, what tends to go wrong with them, and what you get back. Subtitle and transcript pages cover the files you take away: how an SRT, VTT or timestamped transcript is structured, where each is used, and how to edit it.
Accepted video files are MP4, MOV, MKV, WebM and M4V; accepted audio files are MP3, WAV, M4A, AAC, OGG, FLAC and WebM. Every one of them works up to two hours per file, so a format having its own page or not doesn't change whether it's supported.
Which page to read first
- A phone video: iPhones usually record MOV, and most Android phones and editors export MP4.
- A voice recording from a phone: often M4A.
- A podcast episode or a download from a hosting service: usually MP3.
- A recorder, studio or archive file: often WAV.
- Captions for YouTube, social platforms or an editor: the SRT generator.
- Captions for a web player built on the HTML video element: the VTT generator.
- Text you'll quote or search, with times to jump back to: the timestamped transcript.
There's rarely a reason to convert before uploading. Converting re-processes the file, and a compressed recording doesn't regain detail by being saved in a bigger format.
Files you get back that don't have their own page
Two outputs of a dub run aren't covered by a format page. The translated video is an MP4 with your original picture and the translated voice, or an MKV when the original video codec can't be placed in an MP4; the merge happens in your browser. The translated audio is an M4A containing the translated voice on its own, ready for an editor or for platforms that accept extra audio tracks. The plain transcript is a .txt file, readable in any text editor or word processor. If a downloaded MKV won't open where you need it, a remux to MP4 in a desktop tool usually works without touching picture quality, though some codecs simply aren't allowed in MP4.
Problems that show up before transcription
Most format trouble is about what's inside the container rather than the extension. A file can carry more than one audio track, use a codec your browser can't read, or come from a protected purchase that can't be opened at all. Unsupported video file errors explains what the message usually means, files with several audio tracks shows how to check which one holds the speech, and MKV vs MP4 explains why a translated video sometimes comes back as MKV.