Welcome to TriplePlayer
Discover TriplePlayer, a free and open source tool designed to transform your language learning experience. This innovative platform makes it easy to load MP4 videos along with up to three three sets of subtitles.
(If you are interested in Chinese videos, download Moonlight01.zip and follow the instructions below.)
TriplePlayer: Compatibility and Availability
TriplePlayer is compatible with Windows, MacOS and Android devices. It does not support iPhone and iPad.
Get started with TriplePlayer
For this demonstration, we have chosen a Level A1 German video produced by Deutsche Welle.
Source: Nicos Weg. Copyright: Deutsche Welle .
First, download the file Nico.zip and extract the ZIP file to a new directory. Now open the HTML file (“TriplePlayer_v.1xx.html”). You should see something like this:
1. Load the video: Use the green button or press “G” to load the video you downloaded earlier.
2. Load the German subtitles: Click the orange button or press “V” to load the German subtitles. Make sure you select the subtitle file with the “.de” extension.
3. To add more subtitles, click the yellow or light yellow buttons to add one or two additional subtitle files of your choice. Alternatively, you can press “C” or “X” on your keyboard to perform the same action.
4. Click the ‘Settings’ button to adjust the font sizes and positions of the subtitles to your convenience.
Explore all the features on the TripePlayer Features page.
If you’re learning Chinese, the “Chinese Videos” section below provides comprehensive instructions for finding and downloading your favorite Chinese videos, as well as instructions for Pinyin transcription.
Key Features
- Multiple subtitle display: Enhance your Chinese learning by watching dramas, movies or educational content with dual or triple subtitles, such as English-Spanish, German-French, or Chinese, Pinyin and English.
- Adjustable playback speed: Adjust the video playback speed to suit your learning needs, so you can understand every word and phrase with ease.
- Customizable Subtitle Delay: Fine-tune the timing of subtitles to perfectly match the audio.
- Pleco Dictionary Integration: Tailored for Chinese learners, this feature allows you to transfer the Chinese subtitles into the Chinese-English Pleco Dictionary app with a single click. Once in Pleco, sentences are broken down into individual words, allowing for detailed study of each term. You can also save these words in custom word lists for personalized vocabulary practice. This feature requires the Pleco app to be installed on your phone or tablet.
For a complete description, including helpful keyboard shortcuts, see the TripePlayer Features page.
Chinese Videos
Find Your Preferred Chinese Videos
The IQIYI website is a popular online video platform that offers a wide range of content, including TV dramas, movies, and more. Their selection often includes popular Chinese dramas, many of which are also uploaded to YouTube. These series on YouTube often have subtitles in different languages. Therefore, we performed a Google search for “iqiyi.com chinese drama ep01 eng sub” and selected TV dramas that offered Chinese and English subtitles. Table 1 shows some of the dramas we found. In general, subtitles are available in 8 languages other than Chinese. For a comprehensive list of more than 50 Chinese dramas with corresponding YouTube links, see a dedicated page.
Download Your Preferred Video Files
We used NewPipe to download the videos and their subtitles. NewPipe is an open source media player that allows users to stream and download videos from multiple platforms without using Google services. It’s not available in the Google Play Store, but can be downloaded from the F-Droid repository (https://f-droid.org/en/) or directly from the NewPipe website (https://newpipe.net/). Once installed, NewPipe provides an intuitive interface for downloading videos in MP4 format and, if available, the corresponding SRT subtitle files.
Pinyin transcription
To generate a Pinyin version of the Chinese subtitles, we used Google Translate (https://translate.google.com/). The process is as follows:
- Set both the input and output languages to “Chinese (Simplified)”.
- Paste the Chinese text into the input area.
- After translating, scroll to the bottom of the output area to find the Pinyin transcription.
- Transfer the Pinyin subtitles to a text document, save it with an SRT extension, and identify it as the Pinyin version by adding “py” to the filename, such as “Moonlight01_py.srt”.
Phase I Study
For a description of its purpose and development, and a detailed discussion of TriplePlayer, visit https://osf.io/cbepm.
License
“Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this code and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:”
For more information about how you can use and distribute TriplePlayer, please see our license agreement.
Creation of Triple Player: A Collaborative Effort in Paris
Triple Player was created in Paris between February 20 and 28, 2024. We are grateful for the assistance of ChatGPT Pro in creating the JavaScript code.
.