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filmstud
28th February 2003, 10:02
I don't have the fancy authoring softwares to make DVD's. My Impression asks for the text file that databases the BMP files.

Is there a cheap/free software that create and edit simple text, and then create the proper 8 bit BMP file. And then create a text database for import.

Thanks so much!

P. S. Please don't tell me paint or photoshop, because they've become a hassle.

McPoodle
3rd March 2003, 06:35
You've got three seperate operations here: create a text subtitle file with all the timings, generate all the bitmaps, and generate the Impression script file. For the first part (and assuming you don't want to pay anything), I'd recommend SubCreator (http://www.radioactivepages.com/). The program is capable of playing your video files and you can press various keys to record the start and end times for each line. When you're done, be sure to output in SSA (Sub Station Alpha) format.

Next, download MaestroSBT from the Full Download section of Doom9. This program will convert the SSA file into a whole lot of .bmp files plus a standard script. Unfortunately, Impression is not one of the formats offered--just pick DVDMaestro (.son format), as it's the closest.

Finally, you need to convert the .son file into Impression's .txt file. I can't find a tool for this, so try the following procedure: Open the .son in a text editor and remove all the lines before the ones that include .bmp file names. If you look at what you have left, you'll see four columns: a counter, the start time, the end time, and the name of the file to display. You need to remove the first column to make it work in Impression. If you have any text editor designed for programming, it can be put in a mode to delete columns. Otherwise, bring the file into Excel, using Fixed Width. The columns should all be located correctly (assuming you didn't use any spaces in the filename in MaestroSBT). In the third page of the Text Import Wizard, select the first column and shift-select the last column (thereby selecting all columns) and select Text as the data format (this so Excel doesn't mess with your data). Once the file is imported, delete the first column, then save as Formatted Text (Space delimited). Finally, re-open the file in a text editor and add the the first three lines and the last line from the sample below and save with the correct name: it need to be in the same directory as the .bmp files and with the same base name and extension .txt.

Example of what finished file should look like (movie.txt):

-------------------------------------------------
#INPOINT OUTPOINT PATH
-------------------------------------------------
00:18:14:26 00:18:20:05 movie.003.bmp
00:23:05:16 00:23:09:14 movie.004.bmp
-------------------------------------------------


On the other hand, if you're willing to pay $60 for a program that will do the whole thing in a single program, you can try Stream SubText (http://hem.passagen.se/jmorones/Pages/StreamSubText.htm).

filmstud
11th March 2003, 00:21
Thanks so much! One of these should work fine.

-filmstud