The cheapest way to make a film understandable in another language is voice-over: one voice reading every line on top of the original audio. You can follow it, but it is not much fun to watch. Real dubbing is something else: each character has their own voice, the original voices disappear and the scene stays as it was. That is what MovieCineLab does, automatically.
How a film gets dubbed
- Listening. The film is transcribed and listened to a second time: misheard words, such as names and places, are corrected by comparing them with the rest of the film.
- Who is speaking. The characters are recognised and every line is assigned to one of them. Each character gets a voice, male or female, that stays the same for the whole film. When the audio allows it, the new voice picks up the timbre of the actor's own.
- Translation that fits. Every translated line is counted in syllables and adjusted to last as long as the original, so voices don't overlap or stop halfway through a scene.
- The soundtrack. The original voices are separated from music, noise and effects. The new voices go in their place, on top of the film's own sound.
Hear it in a real scene
Below, three minutes of Charade (1963) dubbed into Italian: four characters, four voices. No line has been touched up by hand.
Which languages
The source film can be in a great many languages, and we detect it on our own. Dubbing is available in nine: Italian, English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Russian, Polish and Romanian. The same film can be dubbed into several languages: the characters' voices are chosen once.
Ten minutes at a time
Films are dubbed in ten-minute segments: you can do one to try it, or ask for all of them. The first time, the film has to be prepared, with its characters and screenplay; for a 90-minute film that takes about an hour and a quarter. After that each segment is ready in about twenty minutes, and you can listen to the first while the others are being made: the whole film takes about three hours. You don't need to keep the page open; the work carries on if you close the browser.
If you don't like a line
Speaker recognition is automatic and sometimes gets it wrong, especially with similar voices or characters who say very little. With Change the words you rewrite a line, or say who speaks it: only that line is redone, with the same voice, in about half a minute. As you type, the page counts syllables, because the new line has to fit the same time. Before buying you can try it three times on a scene from the example film.
What you download and what it costs
You download the whole dubbed film as MP4. SRT subtitles are included, also in the dubbing language, and so is the screenplay, which the dubbing needs. Dubbing costs one minute from your pack for every minute of film, per language: a 90-minute film dubbed into one language uses 90 minutes.
They don't expireYour minutes stay in your account until you use them.
10 free minutesWhen you sign up we dub 10 minutes of one of your films for free, in one language.
If a job failsThe minutes go back into your pack.
Good to know first
- The film can be up to an hour and a half long and up to 1.6 GB. A file works, or a link from a public archive such as archive.org; YouTube links don't.
- The voices are generated by artificial intelligence: they are not voice actors. The result is good, not perfect, and the odd line can come out in a different tone from the scene.
- We recommend using public-domain films or videos you hold the rights to.