How to add subtitles to a video in html?

Question

I tried using the track element, but it didn't work..could you please tell me if there's something I am doing wrong?

<video controls="controls" id="video1" width="450">
    <source src="A taste of TED.mp4" type="video/mp4">
    <track src="TED.vtt" kind="subtitles" srclang="en" label="English">
 </video>

The subtitle file (TED.vtt) looks like this:

WEBVTT

1
00:00:01.000 --> 00:00:10.000
This is the first line of text, displaying from 1-10 seconds

2
00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:20.000
And the second line of text
separated over two lines

Azimuth

Not 100% sure but this might help you out. storiesinflight.com/js_videosub – Shreve

Answer 1

The code:

<video controls="controls" id="video1" width="450">
    <source src="A taste of TED.mp4" type="video/mp4" />
    <track src="TED.vtt" kind="subtitles" srclang="en" label="English" />
</video>

Works. What you may be doing wrong is that you are using .srt subtitles instead of .vtt

srt:

1
00:01:21,700 --> 00:01:24,675
Life on the road is something 
I was raised to embrace.

vtt:

WEBVTT

01:21.700 --> 01:24.675
Life on the road is something 
I was <i>raised</i> to embrace.

What you need to do is:

• Start the text file with WEBVTT
• Remove the cue markers at the start of each subtitle, or replace them with Cue - prefixes.
• Optionally, remove the 00: hour marker at the start of each timestamp.
• Convert the comma before the millisecond mark in every timestamp to a decimal point (easy enough with a find-replace: ,7 to .7, for example).
• Optionally, add styling markup to the subtitle text.
• Save the file with a .vtt extension and link to it from a element in an HTML5 page.

Also it may be possible that your web bowser does not support the video tag, I know for example that some cellphones do not play videos with this tag!

• The second part of the answer was taken from a post by Dudley Storey.

Marquetry

Answer 2

I also had the same problem when I have hosted my site in IIS. The issue was, I hadn't added the MIME type of vtt file under supported MIME types of the site. Just click on the site and add .vtt extension with MIME type text/vtt under the supported MIME types. It worked for me.

If this is not added a 404 not found error will be logged in the error console when searching for the subtitle file.

Sleazy

Answer 3

Adding captions and subtitles to HTML5 video

<video id="video" controls preload="metadata">
           <source src="video/sintel-short.mp4" type="video/mp4">
           <source src="video/sintel-short.webm" type="video/webm">
           <track label="English" kind="subtitles" srclang="en" src="captions/vtt/sintel-en.vtt" default>
           <track label="Deutsch" kind="subtitles" srclang="de" src="captions/vtt/sintel-de.vtt">
           <track label="Español" kind="subtitles" srclang="es" src="captions/vtt/sintel-es.vtt">
        </video>

Stomodaeum

Answer 4

<video controls="controls" id="video1" width="450">
    <source src="A taste of TED.mp4" type="video/mp4" />
    <track src="TED.vtt" kind="subtitles" srclang="en" label="English" />
</video>

Congenital

you can not just copy paste the code -1 for that. – Cohleen