auto-subs 0.3.3

A powerful, local-first library and CLI for video transcription and subtitle generation using Whisper.

Auto-Subs

Effortless Subtitle Generation from Whisper Transcriptions.

A powerful, local-first library and CLI for generating subtitles with precise, word-level accuracy.

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Auto-Subs bridges the gap between raw transcription data and perfectly formatted subtitles. Whether you're a developer integrating transcription into your application or a content creator needing quick subtitles, auto-subs provides a robust, simple, and reliable solution.

Key Features

• 🎯 Intelligent Word Segmentation: Automatically splits word-level transcriptions into perfectly timed subtitle lines based on character limits and natural punctuation breaks.
• ⚙️ Simple & Powerful API: Use it as a library with a clean, dictionary-based input that requires no complex objects, or as a feature-rich command-line tool.
• 🛡️ Robust Validation: Automatically handles common data issues, like inverted timestamps (start > end), ensuring your process never breaks on imperfect data.
• 📄 Multiple Formats: Generate subtitles in the most popular formats: SRT, ASS, and plain TXT.
• ✅ High Quality & Tested: Strictly typed with Mypy, linted with Ruff, and rigorously tested to ensure reliability.

Installation

pip install auto-subs

Quickstart

As a Command-Line Tool (CLI)

The fastest way to generate a subtitle file from a Whisper-compatible JSON.

# Generate an SRT file with default settings
auto-subs generate path/to/transcription.json

# Generate a styled ASS file with a custom character limit
auto-subs generate input.json -f ass -o styled.ass --max-chars 42

CLI Options:

• --output, -o: Specify the output file path. (Defaults to the input filename with a new extension)
• --format, -f: Choose the output format (srt, ass, txt). (Defaults to srt)
• --max-chars: Set the maximum characters per subtitle line. (Defaults to 35)

As a Python Library

Integrate auto-subs directly into your application for full control.

import json
from auto_subs import generate

# 1. Load your Whisper-compatible transcription data (as a dict)
with open("path/to/transcription.json", "r", encoding="utf-8") as f:
    transcription_data = json.load(f)

try:
    # 2. Generate SRT content with a 40-character limit per line
    srt_content = generate(transcription_data, "srt", max_chars=40)

    # 3. Save the content to a file
    with open("output.srt", "w", encoding="utf-8") as f:
        f.write(srt_content)

    print("Successfully generated subtitles!")

except ValueError as e:
    # Handle validation errors for malformed input data
    print(f"Error: {e}")

API Design: Simplicity First

The public API of auto-subs is designed to be as simple as possible. All functions, like auto_subs.generate(), accept a standard Python dictionary (dict).

This approach was chosen intentionally to:

• Reduce Friction: You can directly use the JSON output from Whisper after loading it into a dictionary, without needing to import and instantiate our internal Pydantic models.
• Decouple Your Code: Your project doesn't need to depend on our internal data structures, making your code more resilient to future updates.

While the input is a simple dictionary, auto-subs performs robust internal validation to ensure the data is well-formed, giving you the best of both worlds: a simple API and the safety of strong data validation.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! If you find a bug or have a feature request, please open an issue. If you'd like to contribute code, please open a pull request.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.