Microsoft Edge now includes a widely available AI-powered translator for videos that translates them in real time. It is accessible in the Beta and Dev versions of the browser as of now. You can now activate it with a couple of flags. The feature allows translating videos on the fly. As you may remember, it made its first appearance in November 2023 to a few users, but wasn't working by that time. Now you can give it a try.
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The AI translator is capable to handle both audio and subtitles. For the first time use, it will download an extra language package.
Please note that the translator does a great amount of work on your local hardware. Specially, it uses GPU acceleration. So if you have an integrated aged GPU, it will consume a lot of resources, and will work notably slow.
It works much faster with a modern video card that is optimized for AI tasks. On laptops with hybrid graphics, you should run Edge on the discrete video for best results.
Microsoft is yet to announce the translator officially. While waiting for that, you can enable it manually by following the steps below.
Enable AI Video Translator in the Edge Browser
- Open the Edge browser, and navigate to its Menu > Settings.
- In settings, go to System & performance, and disable the Startup Boost option.
- Now, close Microsoft Edge browser, and right-click its desktop shortcut. Select Properties from the right-click menu.
- On the Shortcut tab in the Properties window, click in the Target box, and put the cursor after
msedge.exe. - Next, type
--enable-features=msTranslateVideo,msTranslateVideoCaptionright after the msedge.exe portion. You will get path\msegde.exe --enable-features=msTranslateVideo, msTranslateVideoCaption.
- Finally, launch the browser with the modified shortcut.
Congrats, you have enabled the AI translator feature in Edge.
Here's what you actually did
1️⃣ You had to disable the Startup Boost option to make the enable-features option take effect. When enabled, it makes the Edge browser run in the background (for faster start). But the problem is that it opens new windows from that background processes and ignore the command line params you specified in the shortcut.
2️⃣ In case if you need to specify more than one enable-features argument, add them separated by a comma. You will find more details in this guide.
Now, a couple of words on how to use the AI translator.
How to translate a video in Edge?
- Open Microsoft Edge, and dive into its Menu > Settings > Languages page.
- Under the Translation section, enable the Offer to translate videos on supported sites option.
- Navigate to YouTube, play a video and hover over it with your mouse pointer. You will find a new button - translate video.
- Choose the source language, say English, if your video is in English.
- Next, set the language for translating the video to, say Spanish. Place a check mark for the audio and subtitles options.
- A one-time language model download is required, so click Continue to download it.
- Enjoy Edge translating your video in real time!
That's it!
Many thanks ❤️ to HotCakeX for the tip.
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I set it all up, but when it starts the download of the language model it stays stuck at 0%. Any advice on how to fix it?
I believe it is an issue on Microsoft’s side.