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.

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

Subtitle Delivery Path (Startup + Runtime)

SubMiner prioritizes subtitle responsiveness over heavy initialization:

1. The first subtitle render is plain text first (no tokenization wait).
2. Tokenized enrichment (word spans, known-word flags, JLPT/frequency metadata) is applied right after parsing completes.
3. Under rapid subtitle churn, SubMiner uses a latest-only tokenization queue so stale lines are dropped instead of building lag.
4. MeCab, Yomitan extension load, and dictionary prewarm run as background warmups after overlay initialization (configurable via startupWarmups, including low-power mode).

This keeps early playback snappy and avoids mpv-side sluggishness while startup work completes.

Overlay Model

SubMiner uses one overlay window with modal surfaces.

Primary Subtitle Layer

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

• Word-level click targets for Yomitan lookup
• Auto pause/resume on subtitle hover (enabled by default via subtitleStyle.autoPauseVideoOnHover)
• 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 visibility with Alt+Shift+O (global) or y-t (mpv plugin).

Secondary Subtitle Bar

The secondary subtitle bar is a compact top-strip region in the same overlay window for translation/context visibility while keeping primary reading flow below. It mirrors your configured secondary subtitle preference and can be independently shown or hidden.

It is controlled by secondarySub configuration and shares lifecycle with the main overlay window.

Modal Surfaces

Jimaku search, field-grouping, runtime options, and manual subsync open as modal surfaces on top of the same overlay window.

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 Overlay Subtitles

1. Subtitles are rendered directly in the overlay.
2. Click on any word in the subtitle.
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 enriches it automatically.

1. Click a word → Yomitan popup appears.
2. Click the Anki icon in Yomitan to add the word.
3. SubMiner receives or detects the new card:
   • Proxy mode (ankiConnect.proxy.enabled: true): immediate enrich after successful addNote / addNotes.
   • Polling mode (default): detects via AnkiConnect polling (ankiConnect.pollingRate, default 3 seconds).
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. Manual Update from Clipboard

If you prefer a hands-on approach (animecards-style), you can copy the current subtitle to the clipboard and then paste it onto the last-added Anki card:

1. Add a word via Yomitan as usual.
2. Press Ctrl/Cmd+C to copy the current subtitle line to the clipboard.
   • For multiple lines: press Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+C, then a digit 1–9 to select how many recent subtitle lines to combine. The combined text is copied to the clipboard.
3. Press Ctrl/Cmd+V to update the last-added card with the clipboard contents plus audio, image, and translation — the same fields auto-update would fill.

This is useful when auto-update is disabled or when you want explicit control over which subtitle line gets attached to the card.

Shortcut	Action	Config key
Ctrl/Cmd+C	Copy current subtitle	shortcuts.copySubtitle
Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+C + digit	Copy multiple recent lines	shortcuts.copySubtitleMultiple
Ctrl/Cmd+V	Update last card from clipboard	shortcuts.updateLastCardFromClipboard

3. 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 and always maps sentence/audio to Sentence and SentenceAudio.

4. 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.

Jimaku Subtitle Search

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+Shift+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

{
  "ankiConnect": {
    "nPlusOne": {
      "highlightEnabled": true,
      "refreshMinutes": 1440,
      "matchMode": "headword",
      "minSentenceWords": 3,
      "decks": ["Learning::Japanese"]
    }
  }
}

Option	Description
highlightEnabled	Turn on/off the highlighting feature
refreshMinutes	How often to refresh the known-word cache (default: 1440 = daily)
matchMode	"headword" (dictionary form) or "surface" (exact text match)
minSentenceWords	Minimum sentence length in tokens required to allow N+1 highlighting (default: 3)
decks	Which 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

Immersion Tracking Storage

Immersion data is persisted to SQLite when enabled in immersionTracking:

{
  "immersionTracking": {
    "enabled": true,
    "dbPath": ""
  }
}

• dbPath can be empty (default) to use SubMiner’s app-data immersion.sqlite.
• Set an explicit path to move the database (for backups, cloud syncing, or easier inspection).