Timing theatrical subtitles?

[architectofpain]

Hello.


I am currently working with a DVD release of a film that lacks English subtitles. To my knowledge the only available releases with English subtitles were an old laserdisc and a vcd. I have a transcript of these subtitles. Presumably these are also the theatrical subs.


If I go to time them in Subtitle Workshop they run in and out of sync. I tried timing them to the Chinese subtitles that were also on the disc but they still run out of sync. Is there something I am missing (I've tried changing the frame rates), or am I going to need to retime them one by one?


Thanks.

[johns0]

Check to see if the dvd has cc,if it does you can extract them and use them as subtitles,to time the subtitles properly it best to use subtitle edit and use the synchronization feature,if it's still out of sync then it's because there are different scene changes altering the timing.

The only way to fix that is to see where the sound starts to differ and adjust that part and keep adjusting.If there are added or deleted scenes then it will be a real chore to fix.

[architectofpain]

It doesn't have CC. I'm not familiar with subtitle edit but I'll give it a shot.

Thanks.

[MaverickTse]

Since you are working on a DVD with Chinese subs, check the video format, i.e. is it PAL or NTSC.If it is PAL (~25fps) and you work in 30fps mode when timing/extracting the subtitle (if the subtitle program is fussy about this), it might get out-of-sync, but that depends on the subtitle program.


Also if you're just extracting the timeline from the DVD sub, the extraction process may go wrong.


Subtitle files such as srt, ssa and ass all record their time not in frame, but in usual time format to milisecond precision. Therefore, framerate is not suppose to be an issue for manual timing.(but another story for DVD subs...)


Personally I use AegisSub.

[architectofpain]

The format of the video is NTSC, 30fps. Might be a bad PAL conversion.

Subtitle Workshop was actually pulling the Chinese subs out of sync by a few seconds when I looked at them. Maybe as you say Subtitle Workshop was fussy about it.


I'm not that familiar with Aegisub. It looks a little difficult but I'd like to see how I go using it.


Thanks.

[MaverickTse]

The format of the video is NTSC, 30fps. Might be a bad PAL conversion.

Subtitle Workshop was actually pulling the Chinese subs out of sync by a few seconds when I looked at them. Maybe as you say Subtitle Workshop was fussy about it.


I'm not that familiar with Aegisub. It looks a little difficult but I'd like to see how I go using it.


Thanks.

If you already have extracted the idx/sub file, you can try other program to extract the timeline first, before resolving to manual timing with Aegisub.

Example:
SubExtractor
SubRip
SubToSrt

[architectofpain]

Thanks. I have extracted the Chinese subs properly. The weird thing is (and I have confirmed this by manually checking the DVD) that (for example) the first subtitle line appears later than it should, and the last line appears later as well.

I wonder if this is a timing issue on the retail DVD, or, would it be caused by a bad conversion from PAL to NTSC?

I was able to sync the English (and Chinese) subs to another source I had of the film (a laserdisc transfer), but it is just this DVD that they go out of sync on.

Regards.

[MaverickTse]

Many VCD/DVD sold in mainland China are poorly mastered (a lot of them are not even standard-compliant). Those made-in-Hong Kong or made-in-Taiwan are *usually* better.

Anyway, since you have problem with this disc only, you may conclude that it is a matter of sloppy timing for the DVD producer. If it were a problem of wrong framerate conversion(25[PAL]/30[NTSC]fps), timing will be completely screwed all over the place, not just the beginning and the end.

[architectofpain]

This was HK produced.

It does seem to be constantly out of sync.

[MaverickTse]

Thanks for the info. I will need to watch out here

[architectofpain]

HK releases are usually pretty good though. Now that I think about it, the problem has to be the framerate conversion. Using subtitle workshop (for example) I can adjust the timing by setting the beginning and the end. The beginning and end will be fine but everything else appears much too soon.

[johns0]

It's not the framerate that's causing the issues in between,it's that the scene changes are not the same length plus missing or added scenes that cause this problem.it takes hours to fix when you edit at the point where the audio no longer matches.

[architectofpain]

Thanks.I've gone through the film and there are no missing/added scenes compared to the source the subtitles came from.


Is the only way to fix it going to be to retime them one by one?

[johns0]

Just check the first 10 or so minutes of the audio to sub sync and see where it goes out of sync,its usually a scene change where it's either longer or shorter than the subs,what i mean by scene change is where there is a period of blackness.Once you find where the audio goes out then adjust all those lines to match.

Then you got to the next scene change and keep adjusting and saving,it's a real pain to do.

[architectofpain]

I understand what you mean but that sounds quite difficult. Especially as the audio I'm working with is not in my native language. Trial and error I guess.

Thank you!

[johns0]

You don't need to adjust each line by itself,in subtitle edit you can highlight all the lines that need to be adjusted and choose a time to show earlier or later by 5 secs or whatever time is needed.

[architectofpain]

The subtitles aren't off by a specific amount each time though. Still, I'll see where I get with subtitle workshop and then try that in subtitle edit.

Thanks!

[johns0]

It's going to take a lot of time and editing if that's the case,I've had subs like that and i gave up on them,one sub i had to fill in 10 minutes of missing lines.It took over 2 hours to do that.

[architectofpain]

It will. At this point I kind of wish I was bilingual in Chinese, it may be easier translating the Chinese subs. Haha.

I've timed and added subtitles before but nothing to this extent. It's a good way to learn I'm sure.

[Spiny Norman]

Did you solve this eventually?

I was looking at the problem of extracting CC from LD and so I found this. I may have some ideas, but you probably already solved it or gave up.