Features

A tour of what Saitenka does once it's running inside mpv — colored subtitles, a multi-dictionary tooltip on hover, one-key mining into Anki, and the surrounding study aids. Everything is composited into mpv's own OSD surface, so there's no second window and nothing to alt-tab to.

First run

If you haven't installed yet, start with the Quickstart. Once the overlay is wired in, open any video in mpv (plugin mode) or run saitenka run video.mkv directly. Every keypress below is pressed inside the mpv window — see the full keyboard shortcuts for the complete list, and configuration for the settings each feature reads.

FSRS subtitle coloring

Saitenka hides mpv's native Japanese subtitle and redraws it with each word colored by how well you actually know it. "Known" isn't a static list — it comes from your Anki review state, so a word you learned but recently forgot resurfaces as not known.

• Known set comes from Anki over AnkiConnect (decks → fields, SubMiner-style) or a manual --known "私,本,経" set.
• An optional FSRS path to a copied collection.anki2 refines that binary set into distinct learning, young, mature-known, and forgotten bands. Saitenka never opens the live Anki database.
• N+1 targeting: a sentence with exactly one unknown content word — the ideal thing to mine — is highlighted, and remaining words fall back to a frequency-band color.
• JLPT underline: words carry a level underline; frequency comes from a user-supplied Yomitan frequency dictionary, JLPT from the vendored wordlist.

# color from your real Anki/FSRS deck (config supplies the rest)
saitenka run episode.mkv --color \
  --anki-decks '{"Saitenka::Known":["Entry","Expression","Word"]}' \
  --freq "Frequency General"

The learning and young colors live under [palette] in your config; see configuration.

Hover → multi-dictionary tooltip

Move the mouse over any word and a Yomitan-style tooltip opens above it. Each word has its own hitbox, and lookups run through a de-inflector so an inflected form resolves to its dictionary entry.

• Multiple dictionaries, stacked in order. Import your Yomitan term-banks once (saitenka import ~/yomitan-dicts); they build into a single on-disk database and open instantly at play time. Each dictionary shows as its own section with a name pill and rich structured content (ruby examples, notes, cross-refs).
• Pitch accent and frequency pills sit under the headword — one green pill per frequency dictionary, plus a purple pitch pill (e.g. ほんめい [0]).
• Longest-match on hover. A phrase the tokenizer over-splits still resolves as one entry: hovering 数 in 数ある looks up the whole 数ある and stacks it above the bare 数 (longest match first, like Yomitan), with the underline spanning the matched phrase. A leading honorific folds in too, so hovering 休み in お休み surfaces お休み.
• De-inflected form and the inflection chain (🧩 -て « -いる « -た) display when the optional GPL deinflect add-on is installed.
• Nested lookups: cross-references inside a definition are themselves scannable, and the tooltip supports wildcard search and in-tooltip word scanning.

A bilingual entry can be long, so scroll the mouse wheel over the tooltip to reach the lower (monolingual) sections. With no dictionary configured, Saitenka falls back to JMdict.

saitenka import ~/yomitan-dicts        # once: build the DB, register titles in config
saitenka run episode.mkv --color \
  --dict "Bilingual Dict" --dict "Monolingual Dict A" --dict "Monolingual Dict B"

Not selectable text

The tooltip is drawn, not a text widget, so you can't select it. Press C to copy the hovered word + reading, or A / left-click to hear it (Japanese TTS).

Official-translation reveal

The default is JP primary, EN secondary — the anti-crutch setup. Saitenka auto-selects the Japanese track for reading and mining and leases the embedded English track only when you ask for it.

• T toggles the English line for the current cue, drawn above the Japanese subtitle — the professional translation on demand, not by default.
• Alt+T switches the primary subtitle between Japanese-only and English-only.

One-key & bulk mining

Hover a word and mine it straight into Anki — sentence, audio, and a clean screenshot — all without leaving the video. Mining needs Anki open with the AnkiConnect add-on.

• Ctrl+M mines the hovered word into a Lapis-style card: Expression / reading / Sentence (mined word bolded) / Glossary / Picture (clean frame) / SentenceAudio (the subtitle's audio span as mp3) / provenance / JMdict ID. Dedup checks the deck first, so there are no silent duplicates.
• Shift+M bulk-mines every unknown content word in the current cue, all sharing one screenshot and audio clip; a toast reports mined N · M dup.
• Post-mine preview: a fixed-layout panel shows the card (status, headword + reading, the sentence, meaning, the actual captured frame, and ▶ Ns audio that auto-plays) so you can verify it without alt-tabbing. Mining an existing word previews the card already in Anki. P replays the last preview.

saitenka run episode.mkv --color --mine \
  --anki-decks '{"Saitenka::Known":["Entry"]}' \
  --mine-deck "Saitenka::Mining" --mine-model Lapis
# then hover a word and press Ctrl+m

Mining writes real cards

Mined cards go to Saitenka::Mining tagged saitenka and are kept by default. Review or remove them in Anki via Browse → tag:saitenka.

Subtitle sidebar & analysis

Two playback-neutral study views, both toggled from the player:

• \ opens the whole-track subtitle sidebar — every cue of the episode, with active-cue tracking and manual scroll. N+1/N+2 badges appear once episode analysis finishes, and cues you bookmark (Alt+B, save a cue for later without pausing) survive reopening the same file elsewhere.
• ` (backquote) opens the whole-track analysis: sentence and content-token totals, unique lemmas and kanji, unknown vocabulary, known coverage, N+1/N+2 counts, and optional JLPT/frequency distributions. It runs in the background and is cached per subtitle
• vocabulary snapshot, so it opens without pausing playback.

Opt-in local session history ([stats] in your config) records watch time, cues, lookups, deferred captures, and cards mined without telemetry; saitenka stats lists recent sessions.

jimaku fetch

When the file has no Japanese subtitle, Saitenka fetches one in the background from jimaku.cc — the title and episode are parsed from the filename. Fetched Japanese is added without switching tracks; if Japanese is unavailable it shows English immediately rather than blocking.

# no JP subs on the file → fetch from jimaku (key via config, --jimaku-key, or $JIMAKU_API_KEY)
saitenka run show.mkv --jimaku --color

• Ctrl+Shift+T retries the enabled provider chain (jimaku, then opt-in TsukiHime) for the current media without switching tracks.
• Store the key once with saitenka set-jimaku-key; saitenka jimaku-check diagnoses it without launching a video.

Subtitle resync

Mistimed subtitles are auto-aligned (alass) so the redrawn line matches the audio without manual nudging. When automatic alignment isn't enough, tune it live:

• Z / Shift+Z nudge sub-delay by ∓0.1 s.
• X resets sub-delay to 0.

mpv coexistence

Saitenka doesn't need to own mpv — it joins the player over IPC and coexists with other mpv scripts (mpv_websocket, animecards) on the same socket. Two modes:

Attach modePlugin mode

Join an already-running mpv by pointing at its IPC socket (input-ipc-server in mpv.conf, or pass the path). Good for a one-off session over a player you started yourself.

saitenka attach /tmp/mpv-socket

On Windows, bare attach uses mpv.net's \\.\pipe\mpvsocket default. saitenka doctor reports whether mpv.conf sets input-ipc-server and which known tool uses that socket.

Install a one-file user-script so any mpv launch auto-spawns the overlay in attach mode — open a video in mpv and the overlay is just there.

saitenka install-plugin      # writes ~/.config/mpv/scripts/saitenka.lua (backs up first)
saitenka uninstall-plugin    # removes it (backs up first)

If another script owns the OSD

If another mpv script already uses OSD overlay ids 1–6, set overlay_id_base in your config to shift Saitenka's ids. Alt+O hides/shows the overlay and restores mpv's native subtitles and OSD while hidden.

Watch-party controls

Saitenka runs alongside Syncplay — it attaches to each participant's local mpv, so it doesn't fight the synchronized playback. Turn hover auto-pause off (Alt+P) and the study actions stay room-safe: opening tooltips, switching JP/EN, retrying providers, bookmarking, and opening analysis/help never pause or seek the room. Subtitle navigation stays available too:

• Alt+Left / Alt+Right — jump to the previous / next subtitle line.
• Alt+Down — replay the current line from its start.

An explicit sidebar seek is an ordinary synchronized seek, so the party stays aligned. For the full mapping, see the keyboard shortcuts.