SubTTS reads a movie subtitles file, and uses the built-in speech synthesiser to read the subtitles aloud while you are watching the movie.
The program is a standalone "Menulet", a program that sits in the menu bar and talks to your favourite video player. Currently it supports Quicktime Player X, Quicktime Player 7, VLC Player, and DVD Player. It should work for Mac OSX 10.6 and above.
The latest release can be downloaded from Googlecode.
To install, just move the program to your Applications directory.
To use, just double-click on the program icon, as you normally do.
If you want the latest development snapshot, you have to install from the source code. Open a Terminal window and do the following:
cd ... (someplace where you want the source code to be)
git clone git://github.com/... (URL to the repo, or use the free GitHub.app)
cd subtts-mac
git submodule update --init --recursive
open SubTTS.xcodeproj
Hit Command-R to build and run the project in Xcode.
You need to download and install Xcode from the Mac App store.
When you start SubTTS it will reside as a Status Menu in the top right menu bar. Let it reside there -- if you want you can set it to start when logging in in the System Preferences.
Open your video in your favourite program (currently one of VLC, DVD Player, Quicktime Player, or Quicktime Player 7).
Now you can select "Start speaking" from the SubTTS menu. It will try to find a matching subtitle file -- currently it has to have the same name as the movie, but with a file suffix ".srt", and the two files have to be in the same directory. E.g., if your movie is called "MyFamousMovie.avi", then your subtitle file has to be named "MyFamousMovie.srt".
Note that you need to get hold of a subtitle file your self -- either by writing it in a text editor, or by downloading it from a subtitle repository. Please don't download illegal stuff!
SubTTS is open-source and released under a dual GPL/BSD license:
- GNU General Public License, version 3.0 or above. See COPYING.GNU for details.
- The Simplified BSD License. See COPYING.BSD for details.
There is a completely different version (based on the same concept) for Windows/Linux, which can be downloaded from http://code.google.com/p/subtts/
The program was developed during the research project "Pratmakaren", hosted by DART at Sahlgrenska University Hospital, and CLT at the University of Gothenburg. The project was financed by the Swedish Post and Telecom Authority.
The underlying idea is described in the following publication:
Peter Ljunglöf, Sandra Derbring and Maria Olsson (2012). A free and open-source tool that reads movie subtitles aloud. In proceedings of SLPAT'12: 3rd Workshop on Speech and Language Processing for Assistive Technologies, Montréal, Canada, June 2012. Can be downloaded from http://www.cse.chalmers.se/~peb/bibliography.html