How MXM built a transcription and subtitling app that turned Fremantle’s untranslated wedding footage into fully editable episodes.
Fremantle approached us with a problem
They had shot 8 episodes of a new wedding show that followed couples and their families through their wedding. The issue: they were all speaking niche languages such as Dari, Amharic and Swahili, and constantly switching between them in noisy environments, making it extremely hard to use out-of-the-box AI to translate and transcribe the footage. The editors were about to begin and the team still had no idea how to understand the footage. That’s where we came in.
Building a Custom App for Complex Audio
Within just one week, we had assessed all the tools in the speech-to-text space and developed a custom app specifically tuned for noisy recordings and unpredictable switching between languages. The tool enabled the team’s editors to simply drag and drop audio files, automatically generating accurate time-coded subtitles and transcriptions that they could drop into the edit to understand the footage. This gave editors clean, reliable dialogue across all episodes, regardless of language complexity or sound quality issues.
Scaling to 120 Hours of Raw Material
The system processed 120 hours of material—transcribed, translated, and subtitled—bringing the production back on schedule and ensuring the series could move forward without costly delays.
Results and Benefits
MXM’s custom transcription app “MXM Interpreter” transformed an unworkable situation into a streamlined workflow. By solving the challenge of niche languages, dialects, and noise, Fremantle’s production team regained control of their project and kept the series on track for delivery.
Want to see it running? Ask us for a demo.