VLC media player, the very popular universal media player, will soon be able to subtitle videos in the language of your choice, in real time and without an Internet connection, thanks to local AI. A little revolution!

VLC media player, the very popular universal media player, will soon be able to subtitle videos in the language of your choice, in real time and without an Internet connection, thanks to local AI. A little revolution!

VLC media player, more simply called VLC, is a real institution in the IT world. Born from a French student project in 1996, before becoming open source in 2001, this multimedia player naturally established itself as a reference thanks to several qualities. First, it is completely free and devoid of any advertising or commercial data collection mechanisms. Then, it can read practically all existing audio and video formats without requiring additional elements (the famous codecs, which are used to decode data), whether files or streaming streams.

Above all, it is available on all platforms (Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS), which allows it to be used on a multitude of devices (computer, tablet, smartphone, TV box, television, etc.). Finally, even if its interface may seem austere and old-fashioned – it can easily be dressed up with skins – it remains very easy to use while offering a host of practical and advanced functions. This universal character explains why it is one of the rare software programs to have survived more than two decades while maintaining such strong popularity. So much so that it has exceeded 6 billion downloads!

To celebrate this symbolic threshold, the team of VideoLanthe non-profit organization that publishes and develops it, went to CES 2025 to announce a more than promising new feature: VLC will soon be able to automatically generate video subtitles and even translate them into n any language in real time. And this, without relying on subtitle files downloaded beforehand, as the application has done for many years. We’re talking about a generation and a translation on the fly, while reading! A feat made possible thanks to the use of artificial intelligence. But not with online services like ChatGPT: because VLC will rely on “local” AI installed on the device for this. And therefore without requiring an Internet connection as explained by Jean-Baptiste Kempf, the president of VideoLan, who also demonstrated it during CES 2025, the major tech show in Las Vegas. A real revolution which will finally show a practical use of AI for users, at a time when all manufacturers and publishers want at all costs to put artificial intelligence everywhere, without always being able to justify its interest to the public .

Subtitles on VLC: an AI that works locally

Until now, watching a film or series with subtitles with VLC was a real obstacle course. We had to look for a .srt subtitle file – hoping that it was of good quality –, integrate it into the software by associating it with the video file, set the subtitles to the nearest tenth of a second, and finally rename the subtitle file with the video file name to get synchronized playback on the TV. Not to mention that you generally had to wait several hours for the French-speaking community to publish a first version of a .srt, sometimes of dubious quality.

However, this new function will allow VLC to automatically generate and translate subtitles under videos viewed in real time. To do this, development teams use several open source artificial intelligence models that work locally on the user’s device. As a result, it will be possible to use this tool without an Internet connection. Practical ! In addition, the translation and generation of subtitles will be done in real time, without the need for AI to analyze the played video in advance. A bit like what you find on YouTube after all!

Operating AI locally avoids questions regarding privacy and energy consumption of artificial intelligence. On the other hand, the question of the power of the device arises. Will entry-level smartphones be able to support such a feature? Finally, for once, we have an AI-powered tool that is actually useful!

We don’t yet know when real-time subtitle generation and translation will be available. As the tool is still in development, you will surely have to wait a few months before being able to take advantage of it. But there is no doubt that this will make the software even more popular!