Using the editor

The editor is where all the work happens. Every project opens into one workspace that holds your video, the spoken lines broken into segments, and every control you need to turn the original into a dub in another language.

The end-to-end flow looks like this:

1. Create a project with a video, a source language, and a target language.
2. Transcribe to pull the original dialogue out of the audio (and get a first translation).
3. Review and edit the transcription, translation, and speaker names segment by segment.
4. Calibrate (recommended) — it tunes the dubbing for the best results, keeping the original speakers' voices.
5. Dub the whole project — or re-dub individual segments — then preview and export.

Start from the Projects page in the left sidebar. Give the project a name, upload the video you want to dub, and set the source and target languages. Once it's created you land directly in the editor.

After the video uploads, DubDuck automatically splits it into segments based on natural pauses in speech, ready for you to review.

The editor is divided into four regions:

• Top bar — project title, status, and every project-wide action (transcribe, translate, calibrate, settings, save, and the main Dub button).
• Video player (center) — plays the original or the dubbed video with custom playback controls.
• Right sidebar — the Speakers panel plus the editor for whichever segment is currently selected.
• Timeline (bottom) — a thumbnail strip of the video with every segment laid out in order, plus zoom and cut controls.

The top bar runs across the top of the editor and holds project-wide controls. From left to right:

• Project name and a status badge — the badge shows draft, processing, completed, or failed.
• Original / Dubbed toggle — appears once a dub exists; switches which video the player shows.
• Calibration — a switch to turn calibration on or off (once you've calibrated), or a label showing it's not calibrated yet. While calibration is running it shows a Calibrating… state.
• Lip sync ON / OFF — toggles whether the dubbed video uses lip-synced footage. Switch to the Dubbed view to compare. Turning lip sync off is generally recommended for animated videos, as it tends to give better results there. Ultimately it depends on the video's style, so it's worth deciding per video.
• Auto-Transcribe — pulls the original dialogue out of the audio.
• Translate All — translates every line into the target language in one pass.
• Settings — a popover for the source language, target language, and quality tier. Changes auto-save after a moment.
• Save — manually saves your segment edits. It spins while saving and shows a green check when done. (Edits also auto-save on their own — see below.)
• Dub — the primary action. Dubs the whole project.

The player sits in the center of the editor. Click the video to play or pause it.

Use the Original / Dubbed toggle in the top bar to switch sources. In the Dubbed view you'll also see:

• A Calibrated / Not calibrated badge in the top-left corner of the video.
• An Export button in the top-right corner that downloads the finished dubbed video.

The timeline along the bottom shows a strip of video thumbnails with every segment overlaid in order. The colored regions are segments, numbered to match the sidebar; a white vertical line marks the playhead.

• Click or drag anywhere on the strip to seek the video.
• Zoom — the − and + buttons zoom from 25% to 400% so you can work precisely on long videos.
• Segment selector bar — numbered buttons beneath the thumbnails, one per segment, sized by duration. Click one to select it and jump the playhead to its start.

Splitting a segment: move the playhead to where you want to cut and press T. Each side of a cut must be at least two seconds long. If you change your mind, the Undo cut button merges the segment back with the next one.

Auto-Transcribe (in the top bar) listens to the video's audio and fills in each segment's Original dialogue in the source language, along with a first pass at the Translation. It also detects the different speakers and assigns them to the dialogue lines, so each segment comes back with its speakers already separated. Segments with no detected dialogue are skipped automatically, so they're left untouched on a dub. While it runs, most editing is locked until it finishes.

Translate All (in the top bar) translates every line's original dialogue into the target language in a single pass, filling in the Translation field for each one.

To redo just one line instead of the whole project, use the per-line Translate button inside a segment (see Editing a segment).

At the top of the right sidebar, the collapsible Speakers panel sits above the selected segment's dialogue lines. Collapsed, it just shows the speaker count; the rest of the sidebar is the segment editor.

Expand it to see every distinct speaker across the whole project, sorted by how many lines they have. Each row shows a color dot, the speaker's name, and their line count.

Click a name to rename it. Renaming here updates that speaker across every segment at once — handy for naming "Speaker 1" to an actual character name in one move. Press Enter to confirm or Esc to cancel.

Select a segment — by clicking it on the timeline, or by letting the playhead move into it — and the right sidebar shows its details. The header gives the segment number and its time range, plus two controls:

• Skip — leaves this segment at its current version on the next dub: an already-dubbed segment stays dubbed, and an un-dubbed segment stays un-dubbed. Use it to lock a segment so a project-wide Dub won't touch it. Skipped segments appear dimmed and struck through on the timeline.
• Dub — opens a popover to re-dub just this one segment, with its own quality picker (defaults to the project's quality).

Below the header, the segment is a list of dialogue lines in the order they're spoken. Each line has:

• Who is speaking? — a short description of the speaker for this line, with autocomplete suggestions from descriptions already used in the project.
• Original — the transcribed line in the source language.
• A Translate button between the two fields that translates just that line.
• Translation — the line in the target language; this is what gets dubbed.
• A trash icon to remove that line from the segment.

Multiple speakers in one segment

A single segment can hold several lines from different people. Use Add speaker at the bottom to add another line, and order the lines as they're actually spoken. For example a back-and-forth might be "the man" → "the woman" → "the man" — that's three separate lines, in that order, even though the first and third are the same person.

Writing good speaker descriptions

The "Who is speaking?" field is a description, not a fixed character ID. Its job is to tell the speakers in this specific segment apart from one another. Aim for a description that clearly distinguishes one speaker from the others present in the same segment — for instance "The old lady", "The man with the hat".

Edits auto-save a couple of seconds after you stop typing, or you can hit Save in the top bar.

After editing one line you usually don't need to re-dub everything. Use the Dub button in the segment header to regenerate just that segment, optionally at a different quality.

The skip toggle in the segment header leaves a segment at its current version on the next project-wide dub: an already-dubbed segment stays dubbed, and an un-dubbed segment stays un-dubbed. It's a way to lock a segment so a full Dub won't touch it.

• Use it to keep an un-dubbed segment as the original — handy for music, silence, or lines you don't want translated.
• Use it to protect a segment you've already dubbed and are happy with, so re-running the project doesn't change it.

Skipped segments appear dimmed and struck through on the timeline, and are excluded from the "needs a translation" checks for the full Dub. Toggle skip off any time to bring the segment back into the next dub.

Calibration analyzes your video and tunes the dubbing process for the best results, keeping the original speakers' voices. It takes about 3-5 minutes and only needs to run once per project. The first time you Dub, a dialog offers to Calibrate first (it dubs automatically afterward), Skip, or Cancel. If you've calibrated but the calibration switch is off, a warning dialog confirms you want to dub without it.

Lip sync controls whether the dubbed video reshapes the speakers' mouths to match the new audio (lip-synced) or keeps the original footage with only the audio replaced (audio-only). Toggle it from the top bar, then switch to the Dubbed view to compare.

Turning lip sync off is generally recommended for animated videos, where reshaping mouths tends to look worse than leaving the original animation untouched. Ultimately it depends on the video's style, so it's worth deciding per video.

Here's the typical order of work, from a new project to the finished dub:

1. Create the project and let the video split into segments.
2. Run Auto-Transcribe to fill in the original dialogue (and a first translation). If you already have the transcript, you can skip this and type or paste the lines into the segments yourself.
3. Review each segment: fix the transcription, refine the translation (per line or with Translate All), and name the speakers.
4. Calibrate when prompted (see Calibration).
5. Press Dub, wait for processing, then switch to Dubbed to preview.
6. Export the finished video from the player.

Test on a single segment

If you'd like to preview the result before committing to a full run, you can try a single segment first:

1. Pick a representative segment.
2. Get its translation and speaker descriptions right.
3. Use Dub single segment to dub just that one, optionally at Fast quality for speed.
4. Switch to the Dubbed view to check the voice and timing.
5. When you're happy, apply the same approach to the rest and run a full Dub.

Both the project-wide Dub and per-segment re-dub let you pick a quality tier. Higher quality takes longer and costs more, so use a faster tier while you iterate and a higher one for the final render.

• Fast — quickest turnaround, best for drafts and checking timing.
• Balanced — the everyday default.
• High — maximum fidelity for the final dub.

• Controls greyed out? A job is probably running. Transcribe, translate, calibrate, and dub all lock most editing until they finish — watch the status badge and the spinning buttons.
• Status stuck on "processing"? The editor refreshes on its own every few seconds while a job runs; give it a moment and it will update automatically.
• Skip vs. dub. Skip freezes a segment at its current version so a project-wide Dub won't change it — keep an un-dubbed segment as the original (handy for music or silence), or protect a segment you've already dubbed and like. Skipped segments are also excluded from the "needs a translation" checks for the full Dub.
• Lip sync looks off? Toggle Lip sync OFF in the Dubbed view to fall back to the audio-only dub, then compare. For animated videos, off is usually the better choice.
• Edits not saved? Edits auto-save a couple of seconds after you stop typing, but you can always press Save in the top bar and wait for the green check.