TL;DR: subs2srs (sentence mining into Anki) needs a timed subtitle file plus the audio. But a lot of immersion material — anime rips, Japanese YouTube, C-dramas — has its subtitles burned into the picture, so there's no subtitle file for subs2srs to work with. That's why subs2srs guides tell you to avoid hardcoded content. The fix: OCR the burned-in subtitles into a timed SRT first, then feed that SRT plus the video into subs2srs. GeekLink does the OCR step on Mac with frame-accurate timing (which is exactly what subs2srs relies on); and if the video has no subtitles at all, it can transcribe the audio instead.
If you found a perfect immersion video — the right level, a topic you love — but the subtitles are stuck in the picture, you don't have to give it up. You just need one extra step before subs2srs.
Why can't subs2srs use hardcoded subtitles?
subs2srs builds Anki cards by slicing the video's audio and screenshots along the timestamps in a subtitle file. It needs an actual .srt/.ass file with timings.
Hardcoded (burned-in) subtitles aren't a file — they're pixels painted into every frame. There's no timed text for subs2srs to slice against, which is why the standard advice is literally "download versions that do not have subtitles hardcoded into them." In-player mining tools like Yomitan or SubMiner have the same limit: they read a real subtitle track shown in the player, not text burned into the image.
So the missing step is turning those burned-in subtitles back into a timed subtitle file — which is OCR of the video frames.
Turn burned-in subtitles into a subs2srs-ready SRT (on Mac)
- OCR the hardcoded subtitles with GeekLink. Import the video, choose "the subtitles are already on screen," draw a box over the subtitle area, and it reads the text into a timed, editable SRT — locally, free.
- Fix anything flagged. GeekLink marks the lines it's unsure about, so you correct a handful instead of re-reading everything — important because clean text makes cleaner cards.
- Feed the SRT + video into subs2srs. Now that you have a real subtitle file with correct timings, subs2srs slices the audio and screenshots normally and builds your deck.
- Import into Anki and study.
Why timing accuracy matters for subs2srs
subs2srs cuts each card's audio using the start/end timestamps of the subtitle line. If the timings are off, your cards play the wrong audio — the clip starts too early or clips the sentence. This is the part beginners get wrong when they hand-time subtitles.
GeekLink detects, frame by frame, exactly when each subtitle line appears and disappears, so the SRT is time-aligned to the video. Even if you don't care about perfect OCR text (you'll recognize the word from the audio anyway), the timing comes out right — which is what makes the cards usable.
What if the video has no subtitles at all?
Sometimes your immersion clip has clean audio but no on-screen subtitles to OCR. In that case, skip OCR and generate the subtitles from the audio — GeekLink transcribes speech to a timed SRT (based on Whisper), which you then feed into subs2srs the same way. One app covers both the burned-in case and the audio-only case.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I use subs2srs with hardcoded subtitles?
Not directly — subs2srs needs a subtitle file, and hardcoded subtitles are pixels in the picture, not a file. OCR them into a timed SRT first, then subs2srs works normally.
How do I get subtitles from anime (or a video) that has them burned in?
Run frame OCR: draw a box over the subtitle area and let GeekLink read the burned-in text into an editable, time-synced SRT. That SRT is what you feed into subs2srs or open in Anki tools.
Does OCR text accuracy matter for sentence mining?
Less than you'd think. For mining, the timing is what has to be right (so the audio clip is correct); small OCR text slips are easy to fix, and you'll recognize the word from the audio. GeekLink also flags the lines it's unsure about so you fix only those.
Does it work for Japanese, Chinese, and Korean?
Yes — GeekLink uses specialized CJK OCR models for Japanese (kanji + kana), Chinese (simplified/traditional), and Korean (Hangul), plus Latin scripts.
Is it free? Is it on the Mac App Store?
Extracting and exporting subtitles is free. GeekLink is a direct download from geeklink.dev — not the Mac App Store — and no account is required.
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Disclosure: GeekLink is our own product, built for burned-in subtitle OCR and speech-to-text on Mac. subs2srs and Anki are separate free tools we link to for the mining step.