shortcap

Add automatic captions to YouTube & TikTok Shorts (and other videos) using Whisper and MoviePy.

Demo

Quick Start

Install shortcap:

pip install shortcap

Set required environment variables for OpenAI API:

export OPENAI_BASE_URL="your_openai_base_url"
export OPENAI_API_KEY="your_openai_api_key"

Use the command-line interface:

shortcap <video_file> <output_file>

Features

• Automatic speech recognition using OpenAI's Whisper
• Customizable caption styling
• Support for local Whisper model or OpenAI API
• Command-line interface and programmatic usage

Example

shortcap input.mp4 output.mp4 --font-size 80 --font-color white --stroke-width 2 --stroke-color black --highlight-current-word --word-highlight-color yellow --line-count 2 --verbose

Programmatic Usage

import shortcap
shortcap.add_captions(
    video_file="my_short.mp4",
    output_file="my_short_with_captions.mp4",
)

Custom Configuration

You can customize various aspects of the captions:

import shortcap
shortcap.add_captions(
    video_file="my_short.mp4",
    output_file="my_short_with_captions.mp4",
    font = "/path/to/your/font.ttf",
    font_size = 130,
    font_color = "yellow",
    stroke_width = 3,
    stroke_color = "black",
    shadow_strength = 1.0,
    shadow_blur = 0.1,
    highlight_current_word = True,
    word_highlight_color = "red",
    line_count=1,
    padding = 50,
    position = "center"
)

The position parameter allows you to control where the captions appear on the video.

Vertical position: "top", "center", "bottom", or an integer value

For example:

• position = "top": Centers the text horizontally and places it at the top of the video
• position = "center": Centers the text horizontally and places it at the center of the video
• position = "bottom": Centers the text horizontally and places it at the bottom of the video
• position = 100: Centers the text horizontally and places it 100 pixels from the top of the video

The default value is "center", which centers the text both horizontally and vertically.

Using Whisper Locally

By default, OpenAI Whisper is used locally if the openai-whisper package is installed. Otherwise, the OpenAI Whisper API is used. To force the use of the API:

shortcap.add_captions(
video_file="my_short.mp4",
output_file="my_short_with_captions.mp4",
use_local_whisper=False,
)

Install shortcap with local Whisper support:

pip install shortcap[local_whisper]

Command-line Options

For a full list of command-line options, run:

shortcap --help

Changelog

For a detailed list of changes and version updates, please refer to the CHANGELOG.md file.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

Support

If you encounter any problems or have any questions, please open an issue on the GitHub repository.

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For more detailed information on usage and configuration, please refer to the documentation.