General Subtitle Question

[artios]

Hi

I am quite new to subtitling.
I used and found very convenient the guide from “TheMatrixx”, which is the third sticky from the top. I must admit that results were brilliant, but I have one question regarding synchronization, please read the following maybe you can help me:

Most of the movies that I rip and then add subts are NTSC, “Region 1” (American movies)
These movies are available longtime before official European release. I downloaded some subtitles for one specific movie, but all of them are 25’’ FPS. When I tried to add these subts to the movie, the result was unsynchronized subts.

In order for me to add successfully Greek subts to the NTSC-Region1 movie I did the following:
1. used subrip to rip the (English) subtitles from original movie
2. open both the .srt file (created by subrip) with notepad.exe and the subts I downloaded in .srt format also with notepad.exe and then manually replaced the English subts with the Greek subts. I must admit that it was a lengthy procedure.

Please advise me if there is a way to synchronize the 25’’fps subts with the NTSC-Region1 movie. Another issue is that the original subtitles of the movie exceed the number (in lines) of the downloaded subts, because they are mainly for persons with hearing disabilities and therefore they contain more subtitles than the dialogues, e.g. door opens, door closes, big explosion etc.

I understand that applications like “time adjuster” etc are for synchronize subts with *.avi only, but correct me if I am wrong

Best regards

[niamh]

Any subtitle app will let you change the framerate, but if you want to get rid of the hearing impaired subtitles as well, then you can do it in one go with subtitle workshop, which is the best subtitle editing app I've ever encountered.
Once you've installed said app, open your 25fps srt. You will see 2 drop down tabs to the left, saying input fps, and fps
Both will say 25, change the second one (fps) to 29.97(NTSC). Save. your subs will be in synch now.
Then press alt+I and go to "check for", make sure hearing impaired is ticked, then press ctrl+I. It will show you all the errors on the subtitle. Note:It is quite safe to let it correct stuff on its own. Well at this stage, all the hearing impaired stuff will have been cleaned up(as well as bad OCR, unnecessary spaces, and so on << added bonus). Save the file and you're all set :)

[artios]

Hi niamh, thanks for reply

The said subtitles are written to be inserted to an .avi file, which most of the times is shorter than my movie (which is NTSC), because the movie contains various piracy warnings etc. in the beginning. The movie is in files and I cannot preview. There is a way to preview the movie when it is in files?

[niamh]

You can load these type of files in subtitle workshop for direct and live preview:avi, asf, ogm, ogg, mkv, mp4, divx, mp3, mpg, mpeg, m1v, qt, vob, wav, wmv

A PAL subtitle will always be shorter, because it's sped up from 24 fps to 25 fps, so it runs faster. Changing the fps fixes this and the reason why they're out of synch.Alternatively, for your case, there is an even faster way, if the subs have the same number of lines only though:
shift+ctrl+T = read timings from file. it will import the timings of the english file to the greek file you have loaded .OR, you can do reverse, and use shift+ctrl+X = read texts from file, and load in the greek texts on the english subtitle you've loaded. (that makes sense?)

edit: To deal with the pirate warnings, you can adjust delay ctrl+D. If the subs are early, it's a + delay, if they're late, it's a - delay. It's very easy to adjust with the preview. then to finish off, you can use the shortcuts, shift+ctrl+H = +100 ms, and shift+ctrl+N = -100 ms, until your subs appear where you want them.
PS: all these shortcus are options in the menu too.

[artios]

Originally posted by niamh
Alternatively, for your case, there is an even faster way, if the subs have the same number of lines only though:
shift+ctrl+T = read timings from file. it will import the timings of the english file to the greek file you have loaded .(that makes sense?)


Hi niamh thanks so much for the advises.
Ref the text quoted above, this alternative method looks attractive, and
i think it will be easier to edit the english subts (english in my case are always larger in numbers than the greeks). I have only to remove all the unmatched lines and re-number the english subts only (I believe I am not wrong here).

I will try all the suggestions in the weekend and I will revert if necessary.

Thanks/regards