Great Subtitle Tool --> Subtitle Workshop: Check it out!

[soulfx]

Well I've been searching around these past couple of days looking for a good Subtitle editor that would fit my needs with the CC caps I'm doing with Television shows (those commercials are really annoying to get the time right on the subs).

I found this tool that works great for what I need and might be what your looking for too:

Subtitle Workshop by DekSoft
http://usuarios.lycos.es/dekoin/english/news.html

A little list of features (pulled from DekSoft's website:)

Features of Subtitle Workshop:

Conversion from/to 19 subtitle formats
Can create new subtitles
Can handle both frame based and time based subtitles
Set delay (positive or negative, time or frames)
Search for text (and Search & Replace)
Massive subtitle conversion
Can join more than two subtitles, and those subtitles may be in different formats!
Split subtitle (in selected item, in given item, in given time, in given frame, or in the end of video)
Can get a FPS from a movie file
Associates itself with the subtitles extensions you want
Duration limits for subtitles
Recent files list
Adjust subtitles
Supports multi language
Supports drag & drop
Can fix errors in subtitles! (included subtitle filtering)
And much more!


Check it out and see what you think.

Peace,
SoulFX

[Blankman]

Before encoding and timing, the actual subtitle has to be created (i.e. translation, fan-subbing). Hence on my first pass through the video, my key focus and needs are in distinguishing the dialogue source (color) and sequencing. (WYSIWYG color and font support with auto spell-checking is a major plus. An interface like Visio has worked well for me.)

Also during the first pass, I'll record the frame numbers of locations which I want to retouch before encoding. (Have access to the frame number is very helpful.) And I normally source in my video using AviSynth. Your viewer will open an .AVS file, but it normally will not display .AVS files in the file selection dialog. It needs to be coaxed into showing by manually entering a file mask of *.avs.

On the second pass, I take a break from subtitles and edit the video material. I'll touch up selected frames or frame sequences, then update the AviSynth script to insert my revision into the video stream during playback, and re-sync the audio timing. I also update the chapter timings here.

On the third pass, I'll do my subtitle timing, layout, and rendering with my revised audio and video streams. I usually use a playback rate between 30% and 50% with full frame control (pause, forward, and backward) and link each subtitle to a selected set of frames. (A WYSIWYG timing and layout tool set is a plus. A tool set similar to Visio with VirtualdubMod have worked well for me. Especially for complex scenes where I use up to six line of subtitle text with three colors and three overlapping timings.)

Finally with all that behind me, I encode video stream, then mux video, audio, subtitle, and chapter together.

[midi]

>>WYSIWYG color and font support with auto spell-checking

Just playing around with it, it looks like if you right-click in subtitle workshop you can quickly set a different color. Nothing near as powerful as pre-defined style selector in Sub Staion Alpha, though, which supports fonts and everything in quick manner.

>>and link each subtitle to a selected set of frames.

I can't fathom going forward and backward through actual frames for timing. It is so much easier to have the wave form graph for the audio displayed so you can easily click where the subtitle should start and stop. Again a feature of SSA which I can't find anywhere in this program. I would have done the wave graph before adding video support personally, I find it that convenient. ^^

[ppera2]

Blankman:
I don't know what your post has related with Subtitle Workshop (which is for sure very useful programm) ?

Can you tell us what program(s) you use to enter time (frame #) in your subs when making them ?

[Blankman]

Originally posted by ppera2
Blankman:
I don't know what your post has related with Subtitle Workshop (which is for sure very useful programm) ?

Can you tell us what program(s) you use to enter time (frame #) in your subs when making them ?

I tried Subtitle Workshop. It did not seem too useful. I described what I do, what features I'm looking for, and I identified key areas where I had difficulty using Subtitle Workshop. As for the programs I use to enter time (frame #) when making subs, they are VirtualdubMod and BSPlayer.

The point is that subtitling is not something I do simply by playing or viewing a stream in a single file source, but it is a loose assembly reshapable parts (i.e. uncompressed BMP image sequence files, and multiple ACC files). Because I do not want to finalize my audio and video stream before starting the subtitle effort. For busy scenes with multiple conversations, I may decide to readjust both the video and audio streams to lengthen the time available for displaying multiple overlapping subtitles. Hence I may have 1/4 million intermediate work files being served to my viewer. Only after I have completed the subtiles do I consolidate everything into a single file.