MELANCHOLY404 TECHNOLOGY

Do you own a really awesome speaker or speaker system that you just wish was Bluetooth-capable so you can stream music wirelessly to it from your smartphone or computer? The experience playing Spotify or Apple Music through a solid sound system is killer. Fortunately, this is far from impossible.

The good news is that almost any regular speaker (non-Bluetooth) can quickly and easily be turned into a Bluetooth streaming device. The bad news is while you won’t have to buy an entirely new Bluetooth-ready speaker, you will have to spend money. But the options outlined below are pretty inexpensive solutions to bring your speakers into the wireless world.

Buy a Bluetooth Audio Adapter

The primary device you’ll need to turn your speakers into a Bluetooth-compatible audio system is an adapter. This adapter would plug into your speaker and accept incoming requests for a Bluetooth connection. Enabled, it can transmit Bluetooth streaming to your speaker.
Fortunately, these aren’t very expensive at all, but they do come with their own sets of features and as such, different pricing options. We’ve picked out the best budget, mid-tier, and high-end options available, so let’s run through the choices.

On the low end is the AmazonBasics Bluetooth 4.0 Audio Receiver. It’s just $20 on Amazon and put simply, it gets the job done. It can handle a connection for as far as 10 meters (or 30 feet) away and one Bluetooth device at a time. If you want something basic that works, shelling out $20 on AmazonBasic’s adapter is an easy choice.

However, I’d recommend moving up to the mid-tier option on our list: Logitech’s Bluetooth Audio Adapter. The retail price is $39.99 but it currently sells for just over $27 on Amazon. It stays connected to your device up to 15 meters away (or 50 feet) so you’re free to roam a bit more, plus connects to up to two devices at once. You can switch between which device you want to stream from on the fly. For $7 more than the low-end adapter, Logitech’s popular offering is worth the step up.

Folks who might categorize themselves as more genuine audiophiles should consider the Bose Bluetooth Audio Adapter. It’s $60 on Amazon and while it drops down to that 10-meter connection range, it can remember up to eight different devices that you’ve connected. Plus, you can switch between three active device connections simultaneously. This is the adapter ideal for large households or parties.

How to Set Up Your Adapter

Once you get your adapter, setup should be pretty simple. First, you’ll need to take the included power adapter and plug it into an outlet. Yes, unfortunately, these adapters must run on their own power, so make sure the speakers you want to hook yours up to is near a wall.
Next, take the auxiliary cord and plug one end into your adapter and the other end into the Audio In (sometimes called Aux In) port of your speaker. This is located in different places on different speakers, so you’ll have to search around to find it.
The last step would be to connect the adapter to your speaker. How to do this will vary based on your adapter, so check your instruction manual. Generally, you should have to press some sort of Connect button (as is the case with the Logitech adapter) and wait to hear a sound that verifies it’s working.

Finally, head over to the device you want to stream music out of, make sure Bluetooth is enabled and connect to the Bluetooth adapter via your Bluetooth settings. And you’re all set. Start playing music with an active Bluetooth connection to the adapter and it should automatically come out of your previously antiquated speakers.

When a video is ripped from a DVD including the subtitles, it’s generated in IDX+SUB format. While most of the subtitle files are in text format, these VOB subtitles in IDX format are not text, but images that are just a repacked file from the DVD and are given the extension of .SUB file. When compared to the normal SRT files, the combo of the SUB and IDX file tells the player where to place the subtitles on the screen and also give them various format and colors like bold, italics etc. This way, the subtitles can be placed near the person who is speaking the dialog and you can get to know who’s speaking.

While the combo of SUB and IDX file can be used on modern day players like GOM, POT Player, and VLC, they might not be compatible with your phone, handheld, casting devices and your TV. They just need the good ol’ text format subtitle in .SRT format to work and we often download them from many online sources.
But then, there’s the issue that has always haunted subtitles and that’s perfect syncing. Most of the online sources that you download the .SRT subtitles from are not perfectly synced and even when you sync the beginning manually, it might go out of sync till you get to the end. In such scenarios, the best way to get the perfect subtitle is by converting. The only problem is that the IDX/SUB files are not text but images and needs a bit more effort in conversion. So let me give you a step-by-step guide to getting things done.

Converting IDX/SUB Subtitle to SRT

Step 1: Download the latest version of Subtitle Edit tool from Niesk.dk. The program is available as a portable ZIP file that can be extracted to a folder and executed or saved as an installer. I would recommend you to go with the portable version. Subtitle Edit is a powerful tool with a lot of features but in this article, I will only concentrate on converting the IDX files to SRT files. But feel free to explore the tool on your own.
Step 2: When you launch the application, this is the screen that you will see. Here, click on the Open button and load the SUB subtitle to the app. Also, make sure that the .IDX file is in the same directory and has the same file name as that of the SUB file. If that’s not the case, you will get errors while importing the subtitles.

Step 3: After the subtitle is imported, the tool will load the OCR module to convert the images to text from the subtitles. There would be many settings to configure in this page, so make sure you have a look at the screenshot and replicate the exact settings at your end. This will make the process seamless and take care of words that are not from a dictionary. Once everything is done, click on the Start OCR button.

Step 4: The tool will start the OCR process and it might take some time before it goes through the entire time codes. The OCR is almost perfect with minimum errors, but still if the tools feel that it might need review, it will highlight the particular line for you to have a check after the conversion has finished.

Step 5: After the entire process completes, you can review the subtitle (if you really have that patience) and then save it as an SRT file format. As the time codes are taken from the DVD subtitle itself, the new SRT file will be perfectly in sync and you can now enjoy the movie on your TV set.

Online IDX/SUB to SRT Converter

If you are looking for an online tool that can convert IDX/SUB file to an SRT with minimum effort, you will run out of luck. Before trying the Subtitle Edit tool myself, I looked for online tools using which the conversion can be done easily, but I failed. None of the online tools were able to convert the IDX file to an SRT file as you would hope for.

A picture is worth a thousand words and a video is worth a thousand pictures and if you see recent trends, users have now started to share more videos than ever before. However, people still refrain from posting videos online and one of the major reasons is because of the crappy audio that’s captured from your phone’s microphone.
The audio can also be embarrassing sometimes when someone around you is not aware that you are filming. But still, the audio should not stop you from uploading your beautiful holiday video to the web. Just remove the audio from the video and mute it and later, add some soothing music in the background and it will be perfect.
So here’s the trick to mute a video using VLC and YouTube for free and without any limits.

Removing Sound using VLC

If it’s a personal computer and you can install VLC on it, it’s one of the best ways to remove audio from any video. To start, open the VLC Media player and click on Media and select the option of Convert/Save (Ctrl+R).

On the Open Media window that opens up, click on Add and select the video file that you would like to mute the audio from and click on the Convert/Save button.

When the convert window opens up, first, select the profile you would like to use to convert the video. Next, click on the option of Edit Selected Profile next to it and you will be taken to the page where you can edit the selected profile.

Any profile you choose will have an audio tab to configure the audio codec and bitrate that you would like to use. Here, just uncheck the audio option and save the settings.

Finally, select the output path again when you are on the Convert window and beginning the conversion process. The conversion will approximately take the same amount of time as the duration of the video and you will be able to see the process on the VLC seek bar.

After the conversion if done, just play the converted video and it will not have any sound like the original media. You can now re-edit it to include custom tracks or upload to social media without worrying.

Removing Audio using YouTube

This method must be taken as an alternative if you are not able to use VLC on your computer, as this process includes uploading the video to the web and then downloading it. It will not only take added time but also cost you some additional bandwidth. If you are ready, upload the video to your YouTube account and remember to mark it as private.

Keep the upload settings as default as it won’t matter much and wait for YouTube to process it completely.

Once the video is processed, open the YouTube video editor page and drag the video you uploaded to your library. When on video editor, navigate to the audio tab and use the volume slider to mute the video. If that’s all you want, give a name to the new video (project) and click on the button Create video.

Cool Tip: You can also add background music to these videos using the YouTube video editor.
The new video will be processed which might take a while and will be added to your video library along with all the uploads you have done. Now, all you need to do is, click on the down arrow next to the Edit button and select the Download option.
Watch the Video: If you’re more of a visual kinda person, then here’s our video explaining the above steps. If you like it, share it with your friends too!

Conclusion

So that was how you can use VLC and YouTube to remove audio from any given video. The reason I choose these two tools is because they are free to use without any limitation and works with most of the well-known media file format. If you have any tool in mind that can perform better, please do share it with us.