Complete guide to capturing video dialogue, generating multimedia flashcards, and accelerating language immersion with Anki.
Spaced Repetition (SRS): Anki leverages interval scheduling algorithms to prompt reviews right before newly acquired information decays from memory. By systematically testing difficult words while spacing out familiar ones, learners retain thousands of vocabulary items in short daily sessions.
Sentence Mining: Language acquisition is fastest when learning words embedded in genuine context—dialogue from movies, series, and lectures. Traditionally, creating cards with audio, screenshots, and transcriptions required switching between media editors and Anki manually.
Video2Anki streamlines this entire pipeline into single-keypress actions during regular video playback, generating self-contained flashcard decks with synchronized media.
The application is organized into three primary sections accessible from the top navigation bar:
| Mode | Functionality | Ideal Use Case |
|---|---|---|
| Sentence Mode | Extracts complete dialogue segment with synchronized audio, visual frame, transcript, translation, and romanization. | Listening comprehension, sentence cadence, shadowing practice. |
| Cloze Mode | Generates cloze-deletion cards for a target word. AI parses part of speech, defines meaning, and produces an illustrative example sentence. | In-depth vocabulary acquisition from authentic dialogue. |
Standard process for capturing conversational dialogue while watching video:
Drag and drop your video file directly into the application window (or click Open Video; supports MP4, MKV, WebM, AVI). Subtitles (SRT, WebVTT, ASS/SSA) can also be dragged and dropped or loaded via Load Sub.
Press [ at the start of the target dialogue line, and press ] when the line concludes. An ideal segment length is typically between 2 to 5 seconds.
Press S or Enter (or click Create Card). The engine isolates the audio slice, captures a scene frame, transcribes dialogue, translates the text, and attaches phonetic readings.
Cards are dispatched directly to the Queue tab without interrupting video playback, allowing you to mine multiple lines in a single viewing session.
Use Cloze Mode when you want to isolate and study a specific word within a spoken sentence:
Toggle the mode selector in the Player tab to Cloze Vocabulary, then mark the segment containing the word with [ and ].
Press S (or click 1. Transcribe Audio). The segment is transcribed and displayed in the draft text field. You can click ↺ to reset back to the original transcript at any time.
Highlight the target word in the text box, right-click, and select Make Cloze. The word is enclosed in brackets.
Press S again (or click Generate Cloze Card). The AI assistant analyzes the word, synthesizes definition and context sentences, and creates the cloze card in the Queue.
The Queue tab functions as your staging dashboard before packaging cards into Anki:
Video2Anki provides six core card layouts tailored to different immersion strategies:
Balanced general-purpose layout incorporating text, audio, and visual context.
Presents audio first to train natural auditory comprehension before text is revealed.
Isolates source script without phonetic or audio cues to strengthen character recall.
Prompts recall of spoken dialogue based on scene context, visual cues, and audio prompt.
Configurable dialog allowing arbitrary assignment across Front and Back sides using 5 core fields: SourceText, Romanization, Translation, Audio, and Image.
Isolates source vocabulary inside spoken dialogue with word definitions, full sentence translation, contextual example sentences, and cloze deletion tests.
The parsing pipeline automatically generates phonetic readings for major writing systems: Pinyin for Mandarin Chinese, Furigana for Japanese Kanji, Romaja for Korean, and Cyrillic Latin Transliteration for Russian.
Customize behavior and regional settings in the Settings tab:
In the Queue tab, click Export to Anki. Specify your destination path to
produce an .apkg deck file.
Double-click the exported .apkg file. The desktop Anki client will launch
automatically and import all cards and associated media files.
Sync your collection with AnkiWeb to study on iOS (AnkiMobile) or Android (AnkiDroid) with full audio and visual playback retained.
| Shortcut | Action | Description |
|---|---|---|
| [ | Mark Start | Sets beginning boundary at current playback timestamp. |
| ] | Mark End | Sets ending boundary at current playback timestamp. |
| R | Replay Selection | Plays marked dialogue segment from Start to End and automatically pauses. |
| C | Full Size View | Toggles edge-to-edge full size player view (press C or Esc to exit). |
| Esc | Exit Full Size | Exits edge-to-edge full size view and returns to standard 2-column layout. |
| S or Enter | Primary Action | Sentence Mode: Creates card immediately. Cloze Mode: Step 1 transcribes audio, Step 2 generates cloze card. |
| Space | Play / Pause | Toggles media playback. Also works by clicking directly on the video. |
| ← / → | Seek 5 Seconds | Jumps backward or forward 5 seconds. |
| Shift + ← / → (or , / .) | Micro-Seek ±200ms | Fine-tunes playback position by 200ms for exact dialogue alignment. |
| Click Timeline | Direct Seek | Navigates directly to clicked position on the seek bar. |
| Right Click Text | Make Cloze | (Cloze Mode) Encloses highlighted word into [...] for cloze deletion. |
