live-subtitle

Project Overview

Live Subtitle is a Windows desktop tool that captures system audio, runs speech recognition and translation, and shows the English audio from videos or games as real-time Chinese floating subtitles. In video mode, both recognition and translation run locally on your GPU, fully offline and free; in game mode, translation switches to an online API, using far less VRAM so games stay smooth. The subtitle window can be dragged and resized, or locked so the mouse clicks through.

Watch English videos or play games with live Chinese subtitles on screen.

Key Features

• Real-time subtitles: captures system audio and shows Chinese about 0.2 to 0.5 seconds after a sentence ends
• Video mode: recognition and translation run locally, offline and free, using about 7 GB of VRAM
• Game mode: translation switches to an online API, using about 2 GB of VRAM with minimal impact on games
• English preview: shows an English preview while a sentence is being spoken, then replaces it with the translation
• Subtitle window: draggable and resizable, with separate font size and color for Chinese and English
• Click-through: you can lock the subtitle window so mouse clicks pass through
• Hardware acceleration: both recognition and translation use local GPU acceleration
• Model download: downloads the required models on first run with visible progress

Target Audience

• Users who watch English videos
• Users who play English games
• Users who prefer offline tools
• Users with an NVIDIA GPU

Quick Start

1. Download the zip from the release page and extract it to a short path
2. Double-click the program and click Start translation
3. The first run downloads the recognition and translation models, with progress shown in the status area
4. Choose video mode for videos and game mode for games
5. Adjust the font size, color and lock state as needed

Core Advantages

• Real-time translation: Chinese subtitles appear soon after a sentence ends
• Works offline: video mode runs locally without depending on the network
• Controllable VRAM: game mode uses less memory and keeps games smooth
• Customizable subtitles: font size, color and click-through are all adjustable

System Requirements

Item	Requirement
OS	Windows 10/11
Hardware	NVIDIA GPU, 8 GB VRAM or more recommended
Runtime	Python runtime bundled; source runs need Python 3.12
Network	Game mode translation needs the network; first run downloads models

Notes

• GPU requirement: only NVIDIA GPUs are supported; switch to game mode if VRAM is limited
• Game display: games must run in borderless windowed mode for subtitles to appear on top
• Model download: the first run downloads the recognition and translation models, using significant disk space
• Python source: for source installs use Python 3.12 from python.org to avoid runtime library conflicts