Efficiently capturing vocabulary from movies/TV?

[character]

Has anyone found a good way to capture vocabulary from a film/TV show without the process taking a significant amount of time? I once captured stills from a VCD and captured vocabulary from that, but it was very time-consuming. Now that I'm slightly further along in my studies, the fastest way I can think of is to watch a VCD and stop it when an interesting word comes up and add it to a flashcard deck. I just don't have that many VCDs. Is there good software which will display two subtitle tracks from a DVD at once?

[renzhe]

This is what I used to do:

- run the movie in a window (unmaximised).

- keep an editor open next to it

- alt-tab and space, entering things as I see them, one line per word

- run the resulting file through a python script which looks up each word in CC-CEDICT after I'm finished watching.

With some practice, and provided the material is not far beyond your reach, you can do it in close to real time. Since you don't look up each word while you're watching, you don't lose much time.

[icebear]

I'm not very disciplined about this (renzhe's real time method sounds impressive), mostly because I end up adding way too many words from a 30 minute show to be feasible in SRS or pleasurable watching the show.

My approach to vocab is stopping and looking up novel words which I notice repeated several times, adding to Pleco flashcards if they seem worthwhile, and limiting additions to five or ten new ones per show. I still will pause if I'm falling behind in dialogue to read more carefully, but not bother with the flashcards at that point.

renzhe, out of curiosity what is the script doing for you with that list? Is it because you use Anki or some other program for flashcards? (Instead of Pleco or Skritter, which add definitions to word lists)?

[lukoktonos]

I think QQ 电影 can play 2 subtitle tracks at once

[renzhe]

renzhe, out of curiosity what is the script doing for you with that list?

I wrote it myself, it's quite simple. It takes a list of words and adds pinyin and the three most common translations. Check the First Episode forum for some examples, I used it to make most of those. You can easily import those into Mnemosyne or Anki, and probably into other SRS programs.

In general, if you are interested in expanding vocabulary in general, I recommend going through the First Episode project and simply taking the word lists from there. something like 奋斗 and 爱情公寓 have loads of useful vocabulary.

[evasiege]

Similarly, I will have something like pleco on my phone or other device and check the words I don't understand as they come. After the episode or movie, input them into another flash card system to check on later. Though I really think you need to be at a decent listening level otherwise it's a pain in the ass. Particularly when it's a good movie or show and you find yourself constantly pausing, significantly reducing entertainment value. Nowadays, I've got a bit lazy with recording new vocab. It's really is a nuisance and sometimes you just want to enjoy what's going on. I think its best to just input words you don't know that seem central to understanding the plot, or words often being repeated. And of course, its better to watch with Chinese subtitles as associating the characters with the words spoken makes it stick more easily.

[character]

Just ran across the subs2srs project:

http://subs2srs.sourceforge.net/

http://sourceforge.net/projects/subs2srs/files/

"What is subs2srs? subs2srs is a small utility that allows you to create Anki (flash card software) import files based on your favorite foreign language movies and TV shows to aid in the language learning process."

http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?pid=42394

Anyone used this?

[Gleaves]

Subs2srs discussion here. Impressive little program. I was never able to totally fit it into my study routine, mostly because it was a bit too much of a firehose of not totally vital cards. I've since had better luck with old fashioned repeated listens (in general, I don't have the patience to watch a show more than once, but have no problem listening to audio-only multiple times).

[character]

Thanks; sounds like it's a lot of work, but still worth exploring at some point. Thinking about the problem makes me wonder if there's an automated way to capture images from letterboxed VCDs if the subtitle region changes sufficently.