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Mining Workflow ​

This guide walks through the sentence mining loop — from watching a video to creating Anki cards with audio, screenshots, and context.

Overview ​

SubMiner runs as a transparent overlay on top of mpv. As subtitles play, the overlay displays them as interactive text. You click a word to look it up with Yomitan, then create an Anki card with a single action. SubMiner automatically attaches the sentence, audio clip, and screenshot.

text
Watch video → See subtitle → Click word → Yomitan lookup → Add to Anki
                                                              ↓
                                              SubMiner auto-fills:
                                              sentence, audio, image, translation

The Two Overlay Layers ​

SubMiner uses two overlay layers, each serving a different purpose.

Visible Overlay ​

The visible overlay renders subtitles as tokenized, clickable word spans. Each word is a separate element with reading and headword data attached. This layer is styled independently from mpv subtitles and supports:

  • Word-level click targets for Yomitan lookup
  • Right-click to pause/resume
  • Right-click + drag to reposition subtitles
  • Modal dialogs for Jimaku search, field grouping, subsync, and runtime options
  • N+1 highlighting — known words from your Anki deck are visually highlighted

Toggle with Alt+Shift+O (global) or y-t (mpv plugin).

Invisible Overlay ​

The invisible overlay is a transparent layer that aligns precisely with mpv's own subtitle rendering. It reproduces the subtitle text at the exact position and size mpv uses, so you can click directly on the subtitles you see in the video.

This layer uses mpv's subtitle render metrics (font size, margins, position, scaling) and converts them from mpv's scaled-pixel system (reference height 720) to actual screen pixels.

Toggle with Alt+Shift+I (global) or y-i (mpv plugin).

Position edit mode: Press Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+P to enter edit mode, then use arrow keys (or hjkl) to nudge the position. Shift moves 4 px at a time. Press Enter or Ctrl+S to save, Esc to cancel.

Looking Up Words ​

On the Visible Overlay ​

  1. Hover over the subtitle area — the overlay activates pointer events.
  2. Click a word. SubMiner selects it using Unicode-aware word boundary detection (Intl.Segmenter).
  3. Yomitan detects the text selection and opens its popup with dictionary results.
  4. From the Yomitan popup, you can add the word directly to Anki.

On the Invisible Overlay ​

  1. The invisible layer sits over mpv's own subtitle text.
  2. Click on any word in the subtitle — SubMiner maps your click position to the underlying text.
  3. On macOS, word selection happens automatically on hover.
  4. Yomitan popup appears for lookup and card creation.

Creating Anki Cards ​

There are three ways to create cards, depending on your workflow.

1. Auto-Update from Yomitan ​

This is the most common flow. Yomitan creates a card in Anki, and SubMiner detects it via polling and enriches it automatically.

  1. Click a word → Yomitan popup appears.
  2. Click the Anki icon in Yomitan to add the word.
  3. SubMiner detects the new card (polls AnkiConnect every 3 seconds by default).
  4. SubMiner updates the card with:
    • Sentence: The current subtitle line.
    • Audio: Extracted from the video using the subtitle's start/end timing (plus configurable padding).
    • Image: A screenshot or animated clip from the current playback position.
    • Translation: From the secondary subtitle track, or generated via AI if configured.
    • MiscInfo: Metadata like filename and timestamp.

Configure which fields to fill in ankiConnect.fields. See Anki Integration for details.

2. Mine Sentence (Hotkey) ​

Create a standalone sentence card without going through Yomitan:

  • Mine current sentence: Ctrl/Cmd+S (configurable via shortcuts.mineSentence)
  • Mine multiple lines: Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+S followed by a digit 1–9 to select how many recent subtitle lines to combine.

The sentence card uses the note type configured in isLapis.sentenceCardModel with the sentence and audio fields mapped by isLapis.sentenceCardSentenceField and isLapis.sentenceCardAudioField.

3. Mark as Audio Card ​

After adding a word via Yomitan, press the audio card shortcut to overwrite the audio with a longer clip spanning the full subtitle timing.

Secondary Subtitles ​

SubMiner can display a secondary subtitle track (typically English) alongside the primary Japanese subtitles. This is useful for:

  • Quick comprehension checks without leaving the mining flow.
  • Auto-populating the translation field on mined cards.

Display Modes ​

Cycle through modes with the configured shortcut:

  • Hidden: Secondary subtitle not shown.
  • Visible: Always displayed below the primary subtitle.
  • Hover: Only shown when you hover over the primary subtitle.

When a card is created, SubMiner uses the secondary subtitle text as the translation field value (unless AI translation is configured to override it).

Field Grouping (Kiku) ​

If you mine the same word from different sentences, SubMiner can merge the cards instead of creating duplicates. This feature is designed for use with Kiku and similar note types that support grouped fields.

How It Works ​

  1. You add a word via Yomitan.
  2. SubMiner detects the new card and checks if a card with the same expression already exists.
  3. If a duplicate is found:
    • Auto mode (fieldGrouping: "auto"): Merges automatically. Both sentences, audio clips, and images are combined into the existing card. The duplicate is optionally deleted.
    • Manual mode (fieldGrouping: "manual"): A modal appears showing both cards side by side. You choose which card to keep and preview the merged result before confirming.

What Gets Merged ​

  • Sentence fields: Both sentences kept, marked with [Original] and [Duplicate].
  • Audio fields: Both audio clips preserved as separate [sound:...] entries.
  • Image fields: Both images preserved.

Configure in ankiConnect.isKiku. See Anki Integration for the full reference.

SubMiner integrates with Jimaku to search and download subtitle files for anime directly from the overlay.

  1. Open the Jimaku modal via the configured shortcut (Ctrl+Alt+J by default).
  2. SubMiner auto-fills the search from the current video filename (title, season, episode).
  3. Browse matching entries and select a subtitle file to download.
  4. The subtitle is loaded into mpv as a new track.

Requires an internet connection. An API key (jimaku.apiKey) is optional but recommended for higher rate limits.

Texthooker ​

SubMiner runs a local HTTP server at http://127.0.0.1:5174 (configurable port) that serves a texthooker UI. This allows external tools — such as a browser-based Yomitan instance — to receive subtitle text in real time.

The texthooker page displays the current subtitle and updates as new lines arrive. This is useful if you prefer to do lookups in a browser rather than through the overlay's built-in Yomitan.

Subtitle Sync (Subsync) ​

If your subtitle file is out of sync with the audio, SubMiner can resynchronize it using alass or ffsubsync.

  1. Open the subsync modal from the overlay.
  2. Select the sync engine (alass or ffsubsync).
  3. For alass, select a reference subtitle track from the video.
  4. SubMiner runs the sync and reloads the corrected subtitle.

Install the sync tools separately — see Troubleshooting if the tools are not found.

N+1 Word Highlighting ​

When enabled, SubMiner highlights words you already know in your Anki deck, making it easier to spot new (N+1) vocabulary during immersion.

How It Works ​

  1. SubMiner periodically syncs with Anki to build a local cache of known words (expressions/headwords from your configured decks)
  2. As subtitles appear, known words are visually highlighted in the visible overlay
  3. Unknown words remain unhighlighted — these are your potential mining targets

Enabling N+1 Mode ​

json
{
  "ankiConnect": {
    "nPlusOne": {
      "highlightEnabled": true,
      "refreshMinutes": 1440,
      "matchMode": "headword",
      "decks": ["Learning::Japanese"]
    }
  }
}
OptionDescription
highlightEnabledTurn on/off the highlighting feature
refreshMinutesHow often to refresh the known-word cache (default: 1440 = daily)
matchMode"headword" (dictionary form) or "surface" (exact text match)
decksWhich Anki decks to consider "known" (empty = uses ankiConnect.deck)

Use Cases ​

  • Immersion tracking: Quickly identify which sentences contain only known words vs. those with new vocabulary
  • Mining focus: Target sentences with exactly one unknown word (true N+1)
  • Progress visualization: See your growing vocabulary visually represented in real content