New Passive Immersion and Compact Video Viewing Requests

Complex idea to automate the process of watching a show w/ native subs first then again in the target language again. In addition create an “Compact Video Viewing” that can be used in conjunction with this.

Compact Video Viewing

When turned on, Language Reactor skips portions of the video that don’t have spoken subtitles. Basically the opposite of auto pause. This option has user setting to add time padding to start and stop times of subtitle lines (if padding overlaps there’s no skip). Additional options can skip lines that are bracketed (usually for sound effects) or has music notes (usually for montages).

Benefits should be obvious. It takes a 48 minute show and can compact it down to 30 minutes of pure dialogue, skipping over non-dialogue portions that aren’t essential to learning a language. Great for the second or later viewings of a show.

Repeated Viewing

When activated, the episode will passively repeat itself. Needs a number of user options to be versatile and effective.

  • Users can set how often a repeat happens (ex: 2 can be set so the show repeats twice before playing the next episode)
  • Users can set a specific amount of time before a repeat or just the entire episode. The end portion will just repeat whatever was remaining (ex: 15m 00s means every five minutes that section gets repeated a certain amount of time before next section of five minute plays)
  • Users can set the language option of the repeated sections (ex: English subs first time, No subs second time and beyond)
  • Users can select if Compact Video Viewing is active for either the first or repeated viewing.

If done correctly, this can be a POWERFUL passive immersion tool for language learners.

Ex: I set up so there’s a repeat every 10m 00s of the video. The first viewing I set for Japanese audio with English subs plus Compact Viewing is activated (0.1 second padding). The second viewing is just Japanese audio and no subs without the Compact Viewing activated. The first 10 minutes is actually much faster as I’m just getting what the dialogue means in English. The repeated viewing is now in native Japanese as it’s meant to be watched (so a full 10 minutes).

Such a setting can be amazing for parents wanting to teach their children another language. As it’s passive, the kids can watch and rewatch in two separate languages (their native audio, then the target audio). Shows like Peppa Pig will shine.