"Creating" subtitles?

Hello,

I just registered because I would like to help making German subtitles. I really like translating and I have done it before. The only problem I have at the moment is the technical part. I haven't worked much on subtitles. I helped a friend once but only with translations. I can imagine that there are quitea few things to consider when working on subtitles, such as timing, length of the subtitles etc.

Could anyone who has enough experience comment on this here or create a topic about this? I would love to help out but I'm kinda "stuck" with the whole technical thing.

Thanks in advance.

I'm a n00b myself too but I'll try to post something useful here.

Start by downloading Subtitle Edit or something similar

Then download the subtitle pack Mike upped to rapidshare:
Apparently I can't post links but its https: // rapidshare.com/#!download|767p8|2869158023| Cinemassacre_SRT_Files.zip|1763|0|0 without the spaces.

Then open one of the existing subtitles in subtitle edit and select Tools> Make new empty translation from current subtitle

And Voilá you have a new empty subtitle with correct timecodes. Subtitle edit has also an Google translate option for subtitle if you prefer that. Have fun!

-vepsi

Creating .srt is quite easy. All you need is an text-editor.

It would look like:

Code:

1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,000
Blablabla

2
00:00:05,000 --> 00:00:07,000
Even more blablabla

So its:
Number of subtitle
Timecode (starting time - ending time)
Your Text (can be more than one line, line breaks work like line breaks)
One blank line


So let's take a look at an more advanced script:

Code:

1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,000
1 - 5sec line

2
00:00:05,000 --> 00:00:07,000
2 - 2sec line
with line break

3
00:00:07,000 --> 00:00:08,300
3 - 2sec line

4
00:00:08,300 --> 00:00:09,000
5 - overlapping line
3 - 2sec line

5
00:00:09,000 --> 00:00:10,000
5 - overlapping line
4 - Some Stylings: <b>Bold</b> &  <i>Italic</i>

6
00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:11,000
4 - Some Stylings: <b>Bold</b> &  <i>Italic</i>

As you can see, you can't do overlapping lines. So if you want to let one line start a bit later in time, you have to break it down to 2 subtitles.

_____

But it's way more comfortable to use a subtitle-editor.
I use Aegisub. It's free, you can load your videos in it and it makes timing really easy. But it's kind of overkill, as it uses .ass, which is way more advanced than .srt - so you can (and have to) ignore most of it's functions.
Also Aegisub won't give you the options to save as .srt, but will do it, if you manually name your file "name.srt" instead of "name.ass" (yeah, i know, it's strange).

For timing subtitles (in Aegisub), you may take a look at this: commiesubs. com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/ A-guide-to-timing-in-Aegisubv2 .pdf
Everything (and more) you ever wanted to know about timing subtitles... Sounds complicated, but it's a really easy and fast way for doing proper timings.
(if you downloaded the videos from youtube, you won't have proper keyframes. You can do a first-pass-encode with xvid and use the *.pass.)

_____

But the easiest way is just take the times from someone, who has done it already^^


Edit: fu... "not allowed to post external links..." - delete the spaces in the links...

I used this site called universalsubtitles, it's online and free and everyone can contribute.

I use MediaSubtitler. You can open a sub file and video alongside each other and get a live preview like in many other programs, but you also get to fix timing for the individual lines by simply pressing and holding a big button whenever you want the line to pop up, and releasing it when it should disappear. So you can do the timing for the whole video by simply playing it once and pressing a button at the right moment.
It also supports pretty much every sub format imaginable and is absolutely freeware.

Moto200 wrote:So you can do the timing for the whole video by simply playing it once and pressing a button at the right moment.

Which results in horrible mistimed timecodes. Srlsy - even if you have perfect reaction, the latency of a your normal soundcard is too high for that and you will spent more time fixing your mistimed timecodes than do it proper in the first place. If you want to time "on the fly", do it on the audio-spectrum.

Codo wrote:
Edit: fu... "not allowed to post external links..." - delete the spaces in the links...

Is this some setting you think I should try to open up to the forum. I only created a basic forum with standard settings. If you want to I could see what I could do.

Codo wrote:

Moto200 wrote:So you can do the timing for the whole video by simply playing it once and pressing a button at the right moment.

Which results in horrible mistimed timecodes. Srlsy - even if you have perfect reaction, the latency of a your normal soundcard is too high for that and you will spent more time fixing your mistimed timecodes than do it proper in the first place. If you want to time "on the fly", do it on the audio-spectrum.

Yeah, download the package with the spanish subtitles that are complete, then you'll have the timing and will only need to erase the spanish and insert the text of your language. Saves loads of time.

why there isn't a package with english subtitles?

Admin wrote:

Codo wrote:
Edit: fu... "not allowed to post external links..." - delete the spaces in the links...

Is this some setting you think I should try to open up to the forum. I only created a basic forum with standard settings. If you want to I could see what I could do.

Would be helpful, IF you can change these settings, do it^^ (till the spambots find us... Than maybe it could be wise to add the waiting time again. But I don't know, if it helps at all...)

Yeah, download the package with the spanish subtitles that are complete, then you'll have the timing and will only need to erase the spanish and insert the text of your language. Saves loads of time.

Yeah, I have them - But I would have to check the timecodes (i know, i'm a bit pedantic about that), and as you can time subs proper faster than realtime in aegisub (after you get the hang of it), i'm too lazy to check them out^^

tomas wrote:

Codo wrote:

Moto200 wrote:So you can do the timing for the whole video by simply playing it once and pressing a button at the right moment.

Which results in horrible mistimed timecodes. Srlsy - even if you have perfect reaction, the latency of a your normal soundcard is too high for that and you will spent more time fixing your mistimed timecodes than do it proper in the first place. If you want to time "on the fly", do it on the audio-spectrum.

Yeah, download the package with the spanish subtitles that are complete, then you'll have the timing and will only need to erase the spanish and insert the text of your language. Saves loads of time.

How do I downlaod the spanish package?

veps2i wrote:I
https: // rapidshare.com/#!download|767p8|2869158023| Cinemassacre_SRT_Files.zip|1763|0|0 without the spaces.

here you go