mwangip Video Captions

Description

Pick a video from the Media Library, click Generate Automatic Captions, then edit, style, preview and publish.

• Automatic transcription with timestamps (word-level when your provider supplies it)
• Visual caption editor: edit text and timing, drag on the timeline, split, merge, duplicate, search, undo/redo
• Caption styling, presets, animations and word highlighting
• Multiple caption tracks per video with a language selector
• SRT and WebVTT import/export, JSON export
• [mwcap_video id="123"] shortcode and a Gutenberg block
• Background processing with progress, so long videos never block a page request
• System Status screen with FFmpeg, memory, upload and cron checks

External services

Automatic transcription needs a speech-to-text service. You choose it in Settings → Transcription:

• API provider — any OpenAI-compatible /audio/transcriptions endpoint. No provider is preselected: you enter the base URL and API key of the service you choose (for example OpenAI, Groq, or your own Whisper server). When you press Generate, the audio of the selected video (or the video file itself when FFmpeg is unavailable), the chosen language and your API key are sent to that service. See the provider’s terms and privacy policy. You must confirm this each time.

• Local / self-hosted — a Whisper-compatible server you run yourself. Audio is sent only to the URL you configure.

• PayPal (optional donation link) — the Donate links in the plugin only open paypal.com when you click them. Nothing is sent to PayPal otherwise. See https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/ua/privacy-full.

Nothing is sent until you start a transcription. No data is sent to the plugin author. You can also create captions manually or import SRT/VTT without any external service.

FFmpeg

FFmpeg is optional but recommended: it extracts and splits audio so long videos work. It is not bundled; install it on your server and, if needed, set its path in Settings → Video. The plugin runs it with PHP’s proc_open() using an argument array (no shell), and only with the binary path an administrator configured. If your host disables proc_open(), the plugin falls back to sending small MP4/WebM files directly to the provider.