Troubleshooting common issues

Solutions to the issues that come up most often, gathered in one place.

"Setup Required" banner won't go away

Go to Settings → Dependencies and check which core tool (FFmpeg, Whisper.cpp, or FFsubsync) shows "Not Installed," then click Download & Install on it. The banner lists exactly what's missing.

Transcription produces no subtitles at all

This is the classic symptom of Voice Activity Detection (VAD) being too aggressive on quiet or softly-spoken audio — it can filter out speech it mistakes for silence. Turn off VAD in Settings → General and try again.

Transcription repeats the same phrase over and over

This is a known Whisper failure mode on music-heavy or noisy audio. Enable Reduce hallucinations in Settings → General, which disables cross-chunk context specifically to stop this looping.

Translate / AI Clean Up buttons are missing or disabled

Both features need a DeepSeek API key. Add one in Settings → AI Providers — the AI Clean Up button doesn't render at all without a key, and Translate shows a banner explaining the same thing.

License won't activate

Double-check the key for typos (format WCSL-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX). If it's correct, you may be at your device limit — deactivate an old device from the website license portal and try again. See Managing your devices.

Subtitle Edit isn't available on my Mac

That's expected — Subtitle Edit is a Windows-only external tool, used only for an optional OCR shortcut right after extraction. It doesn't affect OCR in general: converting image-based subtitles (Blu-ray SUP, DVD VobSub) to text works on both Windows and macOS via the Convert screen, which uses its own bundled OCR engine and needs no external tool.

No waveform, or playback controls are greyed out

You're working with a subtitle-only file that has no video attached. Load the matching video via the banner's "Open Video" button, or the folder icon in the editor header.

Where are my exported/extracted files saved?

By default, right next to the source video or subtitle file. Extraction and Save both try the source folder first; if that fails (a permissions issue), a "Save As" dialog lets you pick a location instead.