Extracting/Downloading Subtitles from Netflix Movies for FF Learners

Fluent Forever Language Learning Community

Website links to the software used in this exercise.

Chrome Extensions.

Be aware that the range of subtitle languages available seems to be rather limited. It may get better.
It’s a good idea, and probably necessary, to install these in order.
Enable Multiple  Subtitles on Netflix  (Approved, and installs right from Chrome)
Tampermonkey is used to run so called userscripts (sometimes also called Greasemonkey scripts). Install this one first, before the next one, the ‘script’
Script.
Netflix – subtitle downloader. You will almost ertainly need the previous one, Tampermonkey installed first before you try to install this one. Chrome doesn’t like it.
Allows you to download subtitles from Netflix
UPDATE: Latest from greasyfork:
https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/26654-netflix-subtitle-downloader?version=923299
Be Very Careful that you follow the link to the NEW version from this page. Not the old version. It does warn you.
All installations should be done now.
Close your Chrome browser and reopen it. Open Netflix and find your favourite Spanish (or what ever language you like, film.)
Now to extract your subtitles.
With Chrome open, you should now look up in the top right hand corner. See the little icons, SN, and next to it, what looks like sort of two clear circles on a black background? Like this if the image sticks.
As far as I know, you don’t need to do anything with either of these. They are just there to remind you that you installed them.
Now, with Chrome -> Netflix open, I selected Veronica (A Spanish (Madrid) Film)
The first thing I see pop up is the Subtitle info overlay. This goes away automatically. You can play with this if you like. I haven’t yet, but it’s pretty self explanatory.
 
Ok, lets grab the subtitles.
Hover the mouse over the icon in the bottom right and the menu will popup. You can see the Netflix suibtitle downloader there behind the red arrow?
 
Simply click “Download subs for this episode”. BUT FIRST. Click the Options button, and UNtick all the options. It puts formatting code in with the text if you leave it there.
Look at the bottom left of your screen, you will see the downloaded file type .srt. Fear not. you can open it with your favourite Text editor. It’s a pure text file.
 
This one’s full name is..
Click the three dots to reaveal your opening options, or your File Manager/Finder option.
It looks like this.
1
00:00:39,458 –> 00:00:40,542
This is the police.
2
00:00:40,917 –> 00:00:43,458
Help! Help, please!
3
00:00:47,083 –> 00:00:51,750
JUNE 15TH, 1991
4
00:00:52,083 –> 00:00:55,375
01:35 AM
5
00:00:56,125 –> 00:00:57,833
Please, calm down
so I can understand you.
Now you need the next option. The extract text only.
This is online.
Extract Text Only from Subtitles and Remove Timestamps. Online/Internet based.
Open this website, and highlight al lthe text in your srt text file, copy it, and paste it into the left pane of the web interface, and click [Do the Job]
Presto, you have pretty much raw text with no time stamps. You will need to stil lclean it up a bit though….
Now, in the right pane, highlight all the converted text, and copy it, then past it into a text document and save it on your computer. (ctrl+a for windows, or Cmd+a for Mac)
 
Have some fun … put the strings into Google. Read and listen.

Copy and paste, Put ALL the strings into Google.
 
Finally, highlight all of your converted text and past it into a Word Frequecy Counter.
this is just one of thousands.
 
You could put the list into a word or text editor again, and using search and replace, remove all the colons : and counts.
Or, use bash if you know about Unix. From your shell interface.  “cat yourlist.txt | cut -d’:’ -f 1 >> newlist.txt”
Enjoy
Robert Chalmers
@R_A_Chalmers

Last Updated on June 3, 2021 by @R_A_Chalmers

11 thoughts on “Extracting/Downloading Subtitles from Netflix Movies for FF Learners”

  1. I followed all your steps exactly and I’m able to download the subtitles well enough except for 2 issues: 1) I don’t see the “options” feature and I’m not sure why… 2) The subtitles are downloaded in the .vtt format, which is a bit annoying b/c I have to use an online converter to convert them to .srt and apparently this can only be done one at a time. If anyone knows a tool that can do these in batches, please let me know! Furthermore, if I want to extract just the text (for language learning), I then use Aegisub to convert the .srt to .txt…..It’s a lot of effort but worth it, I guess.

      1. Hi, I’m not sure what’s causing the missing options button. Could be a Chrome thing, or something in Settings. Or a simple change in the interface. Could be something in caching. I’ll try and track it down when I get some time.

  2. Rare to find a hacky solution like this that just works out of the box and apparently keeps working for years. Impressive. Thanks a ton for sharing!

  3. How do I get rid of the pop up in Netflix. It shows up even after I uninstalled the extensions and it gets pretty annoyiing

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