Use the web app with local video files, or install the browser extension to work with streaming video. The user guide covers setup and the complete workflow.

Features​

• Load subtitles onto local and streaming video.
• Move through a video using its subtitles.
• Capture the current sentence, image, and audio.
• Send mined cards directly to Jiten.
• Mine new words from Jiten Reader and attach sentence, image, and audio context.
• Review and edit each card before sending it to Jiten.

Getting started​

1. Install Jiten Reader, then create or select a mining deck.
2. Open the asbplayer Jiten web app, or install the browser extension.
3. In Settings, set Mining destination to Jiten.
4. Add your Jiten API key, then load a video with subtitles.

Read the Jiten mining guide for instructions on automatic context attachment, mining buttons, and troubleshooting.

I don't use the asbplayer extension myself, so I may have missed something. You will probably need to enable developer mode to install it.

A lot of features unrelated to Jiten were cut from this fork, and some documentation is outdated—sorry! Create an issue on GitHub if you encounter something that is not working as intended, or create a pull request.

Support for Jiten in upstream asbplayer will probably come with plugin support.

Lots of enhancements and bug fixes were included in this release.

• As usual @ShanaryS made very large contributions to this release. Notably, asbplayer now supports generic subtitle detection for websites it doesn't explicitly support, with around 85% efficacy from his own testing.
• MvJ Primed Listening is now supported thanks to play mode enhancements by @JayXT
• @xwxb continues to own the Jimaku integration and implemented episode number auto-detection.
• A long-time bug where the Anki card browser doesn't refresh was fixed by @mvanhorn
• Crunchyroll subtitle detection was added by @cbgmvinicius and subtitle visibility in fullscreen was fixed by @rajpiskala.
• Stremio subtitle detection was fixed by @eXaminator

Thanks to all the contributors both old and new for making this release possible. Full release notes can be read here.

v1.20.0 was a very large release.

• @ShanaryS introduced a huge architectural change to playback modes, incidentally implementing a lot of new features, and making it easier to build more.
• Also from @ShanaryS - lots of bug fixes and quality-of-life changes. The YouTube integration is much improved as well as the overall quality of the code base.
• @mcgrizzz continues to improve the external API, adding a get-subtitles command and targeting by mediaId.
• @Ayase-the-Dark made the Disney Plus integration fully functional. It used to be completely broken!
• @steckums updated the Comprehensible Japanese integration to its new name, Natural Japanese.
• @artomsR introduced a way to resume playback from previous sessions, which was re-implemented by ShanaryS during his refactoring efforts.
• @Otto-Deviant1904 fixed subtitles with exactly the same timestamp appearing in the wrong order. Unfortunately, the fix has since regressed due to the amount of change in this release, and will need to be fixed in a future release. We still acknowledge @Otto-Deviant1904's efforts here.

Following the release of v1.20.0, critical issues were discovered and are now fixed on Firefox with v1.20.1 and on Chrome with v1.20.2.

• Netflix subtitles would be frozen sometimes.
• Sites with a content security policy, like Gmail, were broken on Firefox.

Thanks to all the contributors both old and new for making this release possible. Full release notes can be read here: v1.20.0, v1.20.1, v1.20.2

• Big thanks to @jprostko for taking the time to make a high-quality, critical bug fix to Netflix subtitle detection within a few days of the bug report.

• @ShanaryS is continuing to make enormous contributions to the project. In this release, @ShanaryS added support for Japanese pitch accent annotations, bringing asbplayer another step closer to parity with similar software.

• @ShanaryS also reimplemented subtitle list rendering using a virtual table - vastly improving its performance. This has been a long time coming but is even more important with the new annotation features.

• @mcgrizzz has been consistently working to improve asbplayer's API by introducing useful commands. In this release they have implemented get-bound-media which allows callers to fetch asbplayer-bound media. @mcgrizzz's followup contribution to implement get-subtitles will be released in 1.20.0, and will allow callers fetch the subtitles of bound media.

• @xwxb has continued to own and improve the Jimaku API integration by introducing the "Recent" list to the Jimaku search UI.

• Shoutout to first-time contributor @thntx who added a highly desired feature that allows users to target specific Anki cards to supply with asbplayer content.

Thanks to everyone for their contributions.

Read the full release notes for v1.19.0 here.

• @ShanaryS made huge enhancements and fixes to the statistics and annotations features. WaniKani integration, more advanced projected stats, and more.
• @jprostko fixed subtitle detection on Hulu and made general improvements to subtitle detection code. Another huge thanks for their high quality contributions.

Shout out to first-time contributors:

• @nerisal localized asbplayer in Italian. Thank you for taking the time to do translate the 100s of strings in asbplayer.
• @Roka20012 added a way to download audio from the Anki export dialog.
• @Dr-TNineS made it possible to switch between anime and drama categories for Jimaku subtitle downloads.

Read the full release notes for v1.18.0 here.

• @ShanaryS added a word browser, which allows users of annotation features to explore their known words.
• @jprostko fixed subtitle detection on Amazon Prime and UR Play. Huge shout out for their high-quality contributions to subtitle detection.
• @rodrigo-suarezmajor added a very highly-requested feature - the ability to choose which subtitle tracks are affected by keyboard shortcuts and playback modes.

Read the full release notes for v1.17.0 here.

• Extension v1.16.0 was released just now.
• Extension v1.15.0 was released almost a couple months ago, but I forgot to post about it.
• asbplayer now belongs to its own GitHub org.

I'd like to acknowledge the first-time contributors in this release:

• @jprostko added subtitle detection support for SVT Play and UR Play.
• @AkihaZhang greatly improved and extended the Simplified Chinese localization of asbplayer.
• @xwxb added online subtitle support via the Jimaku API.
• @yqmmm fixed POT usage in YouTube subtitle detection.

Read the full release notes for v1.16.0 here.

The flagship feature of this release is subtitle annotations, driven entirely by ShanaryS. ShanaryS will continue helping out with the project as a maintainer, building on top of their impressive work.

I would also like to acknowledge new contributors:

• @iamllama added hover tooltips for keyboard shortcuts.
• @Hawkheart fixed up integration the Jelly integration.
• @danthemango added subtitle detection for iwanttfc.com.
• @L-M-Sherlock improved "jump to subtitle" UX, and fixed up the one-click Yomitan integration.
• @Hit2Skill enabled sidebar support on Firefox

Thank you!

Read the full release notes here.

This release was expedited to fix issues exporting cards on YouTube due to the mp3 encoding worker running inside the page, where YouTube has been recently enforcing different CSP policies for different users.

The rest of the release consisted of contributions from the community:

• Bulk card export from @agloo. This was a big, difficult feature that a lot of people wanted. Thank you!
• The WebSocket client is now enabled on Firefox, thanks to @mwojick taking the intiative to test it out.
• @ShanaryS implemented support for internal Plex subtitles, through careful and meticulous application of the newly-released Plex API docs.
• @Bennycopter and @extremq added subtitle detection for Comprehensible Japanese.

Thanks everyone!

Lately I have not been able to contribute as much as I'd like to asbplayer, but on the bright side this release sets the record for most contributions from the community.

Thanks to @mseh1128, @fuyuka1d3su, @artjomsR, @yaaacha, and @SpazzTL for their contributions. Read the release notes here.

asbplayer is now 5 years old but it's not remotely close to being done. Some features I'd like to build:

• Integration with Yomitan's API for sentence tokenization and word lookups (requested by @NovaKing001).
• ffmpeg integration for the local video player to speed up audio/screenshot extraction, mkv subtitle track detection, in-app video re-encoding.
• A community website where learners can share their progress and cards.

Thanks to bpwhelan, RicBent, jaybird1291, kekulta, Gyaru Jinsei Juku, and mwojick for their contributions to this release. Full release notes are here.

Thanks to mwojick's migration of the project to WXT it's now even easier to contribute to asbplayer. The contribution guide is here.

asbplayer has always appealed to tools-savvy users, but with the upcoming extension version 1.11.0 including an in-app tutorial, it felt appropriate to full-send layman-friendly features and build this site.

A lot of it is just a reorganization of the README but I hope that with community feedback it will improve over time.

In the long run, hopefully asbplayer becomes easier and easier to use, benefitting not just the tools-savvy, but anyone who wants to learn languages and enjoy doing it.