Subtitles with a movie help a person whose first language is not the language of the movie but who is otherwise comfortable with it, to understand the few stray words and sentences that might sound unintelligable due to some reason or other. A well-made subtitle may be an asset. Since modern subtitles may be external, one can turn them off any time one wishes, so, in any case, having a subtitle may be better than not having one.
This guide will tell the uninitiated how to synch 90% of the external subtitles downloaded separately. We will use the best freeware application for working with subtitles: Subtitle Workshop (SW). Download this excellent freeware and install it.
Subtitles can be downloaded from several sites like:
Site 1
This site is probably having issues with Google right now for using the latter's search engine. The site address is: http://subtitles.images.o2.cz/
Site 2
Site 3
Site 4
Site 5
Downloaded subtitles may be in archived forms (i.e., .zip or .rar), so extract them. You'll find that most of them have one of these three extensions: .srt, .sub, .txt; of course, there are many formats to choose from, but there's no reason to choose one over the others ordinarily and for the average user:
Subtitles usually remain in synch if ripped from the same DVD, but they usually lose synchronicity if ripped from a different edition DVD. Most commonly, asynchronicity takes the form of displacement only - the whole sub-stream a fixed amount of time before (Substream 1 in the following picture) or after (Substream 2) the movie stream so that the spoken words are a constant amount of time away from the written ones throughout the movie:
While this constant-displacement type of asynchronicity is the commonest one, there are other (more hair-raising) types, too. The worst one is when there have been scenes deleted from or added to one of the two components of the process: the DVD the subs were ripped from and the DVD your movie has been ripped from..
The subtitle downloaded separately will usually have a name which differs from your movie-file name:
Rename your subtitle file to make it exactly similar to the movie file, the only difference then being the extensions. This is essential if you want your software player to automatically play the subtitle as you open the movie, with the help of a nifty freeware utility called VobSub. Download and install this if you haven't already.
Open the subtitle file either by right-clicking it and selecting Open with > choose program > Subtitle Workshop, or just by dragging and dropping it over the SW shortcut icon on your desktop. SW will open, and play the movie in its preview window. Remember, there will be no preview if the name of the subtitle file differs from the movie file and they are not in the same folder.
SW interface will show the 3 basic parameters of Subtitles:
1. the time (each line comes on at a specified point in time, calculated in hh:mm:ss:ms format and disappears at another specified point in time),
2. the duration (i.e., time the sub remains visible), and
3. the frame-rate (suppose a movie has both NTSC and PAL versions. The sub-lines will be the same, but the timings will be different).
Please note the different parts of SW now.
On the upper left, Mode: 'Time' means you'll work with the time component of the subs. The dropdown arrow will provide a second choice: 'Frames', you can work with that as well, although we will restrict ourselves to times only. Below that, the Input FPS and FPS figures are obvious; they are practically automatic in that whenever a sub is opened in SW and a corresponding video file is also opened, then these settings take effect autometically, and your movie's framerate is displayed in the lower 'FPS' box; work on the subs continues with that framerate. If the movie preview does not open, or you have no movie and you open the subs in SW, then the 'Input FPS' figure will refer to the framerate the subs were originally made for. Then there's Work with (Duration / Final time / Both); the default is 'Both' and you should not change that. The last one is the box containing text encoding mode 'ANSI' - let's leave that alone, too. Then there are several buttons; they will provide contextual help if you place your cursor over them. Other parts are labelled and need no explanation.
Now let's see how to synch an asynchronous sub-file. In the process, as a bonus, we will also perform another necessary operation: removing the hearing impaired portions from the subfile (if necessary, as it usually is) and other errors (like too short duration, OCR error etc.)
# Play the file by clicking the play button (the first round button with > mark). Take a look at the first and the last lines by moving the vertical scrollbar to the right of the subtitle window. Delete any extra lines that the ripper may have put there:
To delete that line, select the line by clicking on it once, then click Edit>Remove selected.
# Click Tools > Information and errors > Information and errors, and you are presented with this window listing all errors:
The erroneous lines are displayed in red. Pretty neat, huh?
Note that there is a line which says:
633 Warning Has text before colon (":").
It means in line 633 of the subtitles, there is a hearing impaired portion. Hearing impaired portions usually come before a colon (as when the person speaking is named), and also within [ ] brackets (as while describing sounds like gunshots). Other errors will also be listed like OCR error.
Click Fix errors! and you're done with errors.
# Play the video until you reach the first spoken dialog (or the first place that should be subtitled in the movie), press the "Mark as first dialog in video" button (that's the second button from the last with <1 mark) or the [Alt]+[F] keys on your keyboard. Alternately, stop the video play the moment you hear the first syllable of the first spoken dialog or see the spot to be subtitled first) and copy down the time displayed on the 'Current file-time area'.
# Seek to the near end of the video and when you hear the last spoken dialog or see the last place that should be subtitled, press the "Mark as last dialog in video" button (that's the last button on the row with a 2> mark or the [Alt]+[L] keys. Again, alternately, stop the video play the moment you hear the first syllable of the last spoken dialog or see the spot to be subtitled last) and copy down the time displayed on the 'Current file-time area'.
# Please note that you can also take these two time values from an external video player.
# After you have followed these steps, click the Edit > Timings > Adjust subtitles or the [Ctrl+B] keys. Up pops the Adjust subtitles window:
This window shows the times currently present for the first and the last lines. It opens if you have stopped the video and copied down the times. It won't come if you had pressed the '<1' and '2>' buttons or the keyboard shortcuts, in which case the next window automatically appears. However, if this one above comes, then you can manually change the time-values:
and click Adjust! - immediately the times of the first and the last lines will be replaced by the ones you have put in, and at the same time the time-values of all the lines in between will be changed appropriately. Click File > Save, or File > Save as if you want to change the name or the format of the new file.
Play the file now in SW, and watch the subtitles. You can, of course, make further modifications in the same way, but, with gaining expertise, you will be able to do it on the first go.
We're all done now. Subtitle Workshop is a versatile tool and there are so many more that you can do with it! Take a look at it in your spare time.
You have my regards and thanks for your patience.
*******
EDIT: This bit is being added because of several PMs I have received:
Creation of new subtitle files:
This can very easily be done with the help of Subtitle Workshop. The job is easy, but a perfect subtitle file is usually the result of several hours of back-breaking work.
First, play the file in a software player and note down three things (here I have given example of My Fair Lady):
1. The first line spoken (Freddy, go and find a cab.)
2. The time of beginning of the first line (00:04:57) - be as close to the exact time as possible, although little mistakes don't matter.
3. The time of disappearance of the first line (00:04:59)
Now create a .txt document with the exact name of your movie-file in the folder where the movie file is kept, and open it with notepad. Write down the time and the first line in exactly the following way:
1
00:04:57,000 --> 00:04:59,000
Freddy, go and find a cab.
Please pay attention to the way the times are mentioned, the line breaks, the punctuation marks and the spaces.
Save the file and close it, and then rename it just by altering the extension from .txt to .srt. Drag the file and drop it over the Subtitle Workshop icon on your desktop. SW will open your subtitle file and the movie preview will begin.
Revise the times. It should now look like this:
Click Edit > Insert subtitle and a second line will be added:
You will note that new times have been added that start just after the previous subtitle, and the duration provided is 1 second; the text-line is blank. These are defaults.
Listen to the next line, type it down in the Text: box at the bottom right. Rectify the time-values. Carry on this way for the entire duration of the movie.
The text will appear in italics if you put <i> in the beginning of a line. If you feel that a sentence is big and you need to break into another line for that, then just press Enter at the point of your chosen line-break and continue to type. There's no ceiling on how many characters you can put in a line, but, of course, you will learn to strike a balance as you go on.
Remember, you can't ordinarily mix regular and italic typefaces in any line of your subtitle.
Also remember that professional subtitling companies take around a minimum of $6,000 for subtitling a movie. So, while the job is fairly straightforward, don't expect to be able to accomplish it without hard labor.
Good-luck! Thanks for your patience, and regards.
