Quick Start for Beginners - First-Time Use - Translating an English Video into Chinese | pyVideoTrans Official - Open Source Free Video Translation & Dubbing Software pyvideotrans.com pyvideotrans github github.com/jianchang512/pyvideotrans

Quick Start for Beginners: Translating English Video to Chinese Dubbing + Subtitles

This tutorial uses "Original English Video ➔ Chinese Dubbing + Chinese Subtitles" as an example to help you quickly complete your first video translation. (The process is exactly the same for translating between any other languages.)

Step 1: Select the Video You Want to Translate

Click the Select Video/Audio button in the top-left corner of the software to import one or more English videos.

💡 Check for clear audio and remove special characters from file names:

The video must contain clear spoken voice (some videos downloaded from YouTube might not have audio, so please play it first to confirm).
Avoid emojis or special characters in the file name (especially long YouTube file names). We recommend renaming the file to something simple before processing.
If you import multiple videos in batch, make sure they are all in the same spoken language.
If you select "Clear Output" in the upper left corner, the generated content will be deleted first when translating the same video repeatedly. If you want to use the generated content and avoid duplicate recognition, uncheck this option.

Step 2: Select Speech Recognition Engine (To Extract Subtitles from Video)

This step converts the spoken voice in the video into subtitle text.

For first-time use, simply keep the default: faster-whisper (Built-in) + large-v3-turbo.
If you are translating short videos (e.g., Shorts/Reels/TikTok), you can check Secondary Recognition to make the subtitles shorter and punchier.
To learn more about available engines, check out the: Speech Recognition Documentation.

Step 3: Select Translation Engine (Translate Subtitle Text)

The default engine is Google (Free).
Spoken refers to the spoken language in the video. In this example, select English.
Target is the language you want to translate into, which also determines the dubbing language. In this example, select Simplified Chinese.

Advanced Quality (Recommended)

Select DeepSeek / OpenAI ChatGPT in the translation engine dropdown for more natural translations. Simply enter your API Key when prompted (or go to the top menu bar: Translation Settings -> DeepSeek). When using AI translation engines, it is recommended to check Send Full Subtitles.
Click here to go to DeepSeek and create an API key (minimum recharge of 1 RMB required).

Step 4: Select Dubbing Engine (Chinese Voice in this Example)

For first-time use, simply keep the default Edge-TTS (Free).
Choose your preferred voice under "Voice Role" / "Voice Actor", and click Preview next to it to test the sound.
If you do not need dubbing, simply set the voice role to No.
To learn more voice options, check out the: Dubbing Engines Documentation.

Step 5: Audio-Video Sync and Subtitle Embedding Settings

Due to differences in speech rate, syllables, and sentence length between English and Chinese, the duration of the dubbed audio usually differs from the original voice. This is the root cause of audio-video desynchronization. Proper alignment settings will prevent or minimize out-of-sync issues.

Recommended settings: Check TTS Speedup or Slow Video (or both). The software will automatically adjust the speed to keep the audio and video aligned.
Subtitle Embedding Method:
- Hard Subtitles (Recommended): Subtitles are burned directly into the video frames, ensuring they are always visible across phones, web browsers, and media players.
- Soft Subtitles: Embeds subtitles as a separate subtitle track. You can toggle them on/off in local media players, but web players generally do not display them automatically.

Step 6: Background Audio Processing (Optional)

By default, the process replaces all original audio. If you want to keep background music, ambient sound, or sound effects from the original video:

Click More... ➔ Check Separate Vocals/BGM and Re-embed BGM.

Step 7: Start Processing

If your computer is equipped with an NVIDIA graphics card, it is recommended to check Enable CUDA for significantly faster speeds.
Click Start.

💡 Subtitle Fine-Tuning During Processing (Only for single-video tasks):

When processing a single video, 3 to 4 editing pop-up windows will appear during the process (e.g., Recognized Original Subtitles ➔ Translated Subtitles):
To edit: Directly fix any typos in the text box, then click Save Change proceed.
To skip editing: No action is needed; it will automatically jump to the next step after a 30-second countdown, or you can click Continue Without Saving / Save Change proceed.