I figure that instead of cluttering up the regular message boards with our questions and complaints, we could perhaps start a forum thread for questions about editing subtitle files (Not for requesting them!) Feel free to ask about syncing, translating, or editing your subtitles. We're always glad to help you make a superior product for the site! RK

I've always been a Microsoft fan, but I'm sure many Apple polishers will weigh in with their preferred methods and tools. Notepad: Good tool for the initial editing of a file, but not for the line-by-line and filling in missing dialogue part. Subtitle Edit: Excellent and free software platform for editing, and sometimes for creating subtitle files. https://subtitletools.com/ : good online tool for syncing entire or partial subtitle files, and many other tools available on the site. Check for yourself. https://translatesubtitles.co/index.php : Fairly good tool for translating an entire subtitle file from one language to a myriad of others. Probably, most likely, will need editing afterwards. Any questions or tips you may share will be appreciated. RK

I will admit, I started with notepad. My first subtitles were made with that, then having to do a lot of cleaning afterwards. Then later, I found Subtitle Edit, and it made it all a hell of a lot easier. That is now the program I use 90% of the time. And it keeps getting better, with new things added all the time. I just wish they would make it easier to add colors, as I would like to be able to set a color for each person speaking. And the latest update has actually made that more difficult. However, it is still a long and tedious process. It typically takes me from 2-4 hours in real time per video time to either create or clean up a subtitle. I must have 4 or 5 in various stages of completion, as I normally move from one to another. It really can be a lot of work, even if there is no translation needed. One of the ones I am doing now is Taboo American Style. and I am often having to replay a 5 second segment over and over again just to understand what it is they are saying. And that is because the English subtitles I have found (and even translating the foreign ones) is nothing like what the cast is actually saying.

Have you tried using the 'audio to text' option in subtitle edit? Load only the video. Click on menu button for video and you'll see the selection. I don't use 'whisper' ($$$). choose the other, select the languages, download the packs, and extract. I've never tried it on an English language video, but if it's anything like the Japanese extractor, you'll need to do a LOT of editing anyway, but the sync should be good. It seems to catch every grunt. RK

Oh yeah, right clicking on the dialogue in the editing box allows you to choose from hundreds of fonts and colors. Changing the size of one line, like title pages, banners, etc still requires hard-coding by hand. <font size="60px"> Dialogue </font>

4h per video is a really good rate! Congrats! This is what I need for a video in my native language. But if I want to make subtitles for English video, it may take up to 20 or 30 hours :( I've just started to sub "Space Nuts" and spent 7 hours for 35 minutes... (this is a 3h movie...) But you're right, it highly depends on audio quality, characters accents, etc. (+ I personnaly have some hearing issues...) Some tools I use: === Subtitle Edit: Can also be used to auto-translate, fix the sync, extract/OCR and speech-to-text. I'll make some short HowTos for it one day. The only HowTo available now: https://www.avsubtitles.com/howto_SE_speech2text.php === VLC: A good video player is important, and VLC is one of those. You can easily add an offset to subtitles by using G and H keys. https://www.avsubtitles.com/howto_delay_subtitles.php For Linux users, mplayer is also a great movie player. === Online subtitle converter: http://subtitlefix.com/index.php Yet another subtitles tool online, old fashioned but more clear if you know what you want to do.

Some of the things that bother me about some of the subtitles I've seen. Believe it or not, the average person can read over 18 words a second. Bunching a sentence up into 3 short lines actually makes it harder to read and understand the sentence than if it were one long line. The screen is pretty wide. Unless the sentence is over 60 characters long, just use one line. Subtitle Edit prefers 2 lines of dialogue in each time slot, and it is quite easy to insert lines before or after the one you are working on for rapid dialogue interchange. This also makes it far easier for the end user to read. Each speaker's dialogue should be on its OWN LINE. Especially if there is a slight pause between the first and second person's dialogue. Even if it is just one or two words, separate lines! (Lose the Hyphens!) If there is only one speaker, but two lines of dialogue with a slight pause between them, separate lines! If there is a ten to fifteen second section with 4 lines of dialogue with pauses between each line, break it into separate lines. Even if some are only one or two words. It's ridiculous for the first person's dialogue to still be on the screen when the fourth person is done speaking! It's just as ridiculous to know what the fourth person is going to say before he says it! And that brings us to timing.... We'll use 'Start Time' (When the line of dialogue is being spoken) and 'Hang Time' (How long it stays on the screen) As much as I would like to start and end the subtitle with the speaker, realize that people speak faster than they read. A one word "Yes" may take .1 seconds to say (or less) but it takes at least .5 seconds to read and register it before it vanishes. It's also annoying for it to appear 2-3 seconds before it's said and stick around for 5-10 seconds after. (I exaggerate). My personal rule is to have the subtitle appear .01 seconds before the person speaks and hang until the person stops speaking, checking if it was enough time for me to read it. If not, I just add .1 to .3 seconds, depending. I want the end user to be able to read and comprehend the dialogue, and having enough time to read it is exceedingly important. Knowing how to compact sentences/meanings is handy as well. Being able to convey the same idea with fewer words helps tremendously with cutting down on hang time. (Saying the same thing with fewer words saves time) (See what I mean?) I'm sure that most of these rules can be readily applied to many other languages, at least in the west. Cyrillic, Arabic, and every other language structure east and south of Europe I have no knowledge of, so I can't be sure. My Ancient Mayan may be a little rusty as well. "Make a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door" Same goes for subtitles.

For timing, the best tool I have found is in Subtitle Edit, using the Waveform on the bottom of the screen. That gives me a visual reference, as well as where every line starts and ends. And many times you can "see" exactly when somebody starts talking, so that is a huge help also.

When i want to make subtitle for a movie, i search if it got one in any language : _ if it's not the case, i use the voice recognition of "Subtitle Edit" to have a start to work, i use other voice recognition online like MicrosoftAzure, ConvertSpeech, (for short audio file) it's better to have more different IA transcriptions. _ If it's the case, i use "AHD Subtitles Maker"(now only 32bits) because i can load many subtitles and switch easily between them, good for translation. It got a function to export and import "GT Text" to change all subtitles without touch the time, so i can use GoogleTranslation to start (now it's a little different, need to convert txt to docx and docx to txt). It got waveform but it very slow to generate it on my computer. I re-work the subtitles to make beautiful sentence and if need i adjust the time. Then i put effects on text like color, italic, etc... It's hard when i don't understand a language like German or when the actors speak too low or at the same time. And if i use IA voice recognition, i note it because in this case, the accuracy is not very good. Sometime "AHD Subtitles Maker" can have bugs but i really appreciate his features.

Some would use Subtitle Edit for this simple fix, but let's just keep it at that: Simple. Especially for the novice, soon to be a titler. For a simple syncing fix, I use... https://subtitletools.com/ click 'all tools' Syncing Subtitle Shifter When videos are copied, downloaded, uploaded, etc... changes can be made along the way to the length of the video through personal editing and editing tools. I have video editors that can cut at 24 fps, 30 fps, and even 60 fps. Not everyone uses the same one or edits a video the exact same way. Miss by a few frames and the subtitle sync goes 'Bye-Bye'. Many times ads are removed from the start of a video. Sometimes the editor du jour prefers starting with a 'fade-in' to first scene, others start with the first active frame, so yeah, the sync of the subtitle file you've downloaded is going to be off. Your video player should have a fairly good counter, at least to hundredths/tenths of a second. Figure out the difference between when the dialogue starts and when the subtitle appears. A little simple math needs to be performed. Upload the .srt to subtitletools.com, and shift the file accordingly (+/-). (It can be shifted to within a thousandth of a second). Then download it and check to see if it 'fits' now. Lather, rinse, repeat until it's just right for your copy. Trial & Error until you get it right. Good luck. RK