Bad french fonts in Subtitle Workshop

[Patapin]

Hello everybody !

I think this is my first post on your forum (do I have to introduce myself somewhere ?).

Frenchman, I like Bollywood movies, that I buy sometimes directly at induna.com.

Though I understand english at 75%, I like to watch DVDs with french subtitles, that are alas very rarely present, or in good quality.
So it's been a year now that I rebuild DVDs, adding french subtitles when they are missing, following your excellent guides such as : https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/217500-How-to-add-your-own-subtitle-to-DVD-%28keep-...u-multi-pgc%29

As you know perhaps, french language is full of tenses (like in the words "apéritif" or "touché"), and there begin the problems.

I use Subtitle edit to translate the extracted english subtitles, they seem all right. But when I open them either with Subtitle Workshop, or Subtitle Creator, I get bad fonts, such as :


or


As you can see, letters like ê should be a Ê, é should be a é, û should be û, and so on...

I used to replace them under Subtitle Workshop with "Find and replace" (CTRL R), but it takes me too much time, and I must do about 20 handlings per DVD...

So how could I configure Subtitle Workshop so that it replaces automatically the bad fonts ?

Can I modify the Default.ocr (Alt i) ?



I am afraid of making an unfixable mistake, modifying the OCR script, though I believe I just have to add lines such as :
<ERROR Find="ê" WholeWord="True" CaseSensitive="True" ReplaceBy="Ê">

Is it possible ?

[Case]

It is not a bad font, and OCR is probably fine too.
The problem is the “text encoding” of the subtitle file.

You probably left it at the default setting when working in Subtitle Workshop, which may not be right. My guess is that your subtitle file is UTF-8, and your setting in Subtitle Workshop needs to reflect that. For some programs, the decision needs to be made when opening/importing the text file, for others it may be possible to correct the text encoding setting afterwards. Because of the number of choices for text encoding, you will likely find the setting in a drop-down menu.

If you text file is UTF-8, and you open it as e.g. CP1252 or 8859-1, then you would see substitutions like:
Ê becomes Ê
û becomes û
ê becomes ê
í becomes Ã-
é becomes é
ñ becomes ñ

But if you open/import your UTF-8 text AND tell the program that it is UTF-8, then the characters will stay as intended.

Tip: When you are sure of the text encoding, rename your file to reflect that, so you don't have to figure it out again at a later time.
Like: <name>.<language>.<text-encoding>.<suffix>, e.g. my-awesome-movie.fr.utf8.srt
Media players should still be able to find it automagically for my-awesome-movie.avi .

[Patapin]

Hello Case !

Thank you for you quick reply, that's very nice.

You're propably right, although I'm not experimented enough to understand a few points. I've already heard of UTF-8 when I used Adobe Encore, but I don't know how to open my text (with S-Workshop) as CP1252 or 8859-1.

Could you be kind enough to show me how to proceed, please ?

I remind my process :
1. Open the english file with Subtitle edit
2. Translate by Google with Subtitle edit
3. Save as... ???
4. Open with Subtitle Workshop (Where is the possibility to change from Default to CP1252 ?)

If I'm not clear enough, tell me, and I'll take some screen pictures.

PS : what time is it in middle earth ? Here in France, it is 14:41 !

[videobruger]

You are aware of the export function in Subtitle Edit?

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/358150-I-want-convert-srt-to-sup

[jman98]

Using Google to translate from English to French is better than nothing, but don't the mistakes bother you? I used Google Talk to translate from Russian subtitles to English and I think the translation was about 90% correct. I know Russian well enough that I could fix the mistakes and I just wanted to use Google Talk to save me some time so I was OK with it as it did save me a lot of time even with the mistakes, but I am surprised that you would do this regularly.

Another option is under Windows go to Control Panel -> Region and Language -> Administrative and change "Language for non-Unicode programs" to French. This might fix the font problem with Subtitle Workshop.

As Case says, if you can save your subtitles as UTF-8, I think this will also fix the problem.

[Patapin]

You are aware of the export function in Subtitle Edit?

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/358150-I-want-convert-srt-to-sup

Hello Videobruger !
I just tried it, it is very easy ! I shall experiment a clip tomorrow, and I will come back here to tell you the result.

1. ...don't the mistakes bother you?...
...I am surprised that you would do this regularly....

2. Another option is under Windows go to Control Panel -> Region and Language -> Administrative and change "Language for non-Unicode programs" to French. This might fix the font problem with Subtitle Workshop.

3. As Case says, if you can save your subtitles as UTF-8, I think this will also fix the problem.

Hi jiman98 !

1. Yes, it bothers ! But my wife doesn't understand english as well as me, and I like to watch Bollywood movies with her, so...
When the movie is good, I work on the subtitles to make a good translation (it takes me a month ...)

2. Alas, my parameters are already in french for this administrative part, so that doesn't fix the problem, never mind, it was worth the glance.

3. This I still don't understand : how can I save something in a UFT-8 code ?
I remember I could do it when I was under Subtitle Workshop, but I don't know how to do it before.
Unless it is an exportation under Subtitle Edit ?

Well, see you tomorrow. have a nice evening !
Patapin

[videobruger]

Subtitle Edit uses UTF-8 as default. However you may change the encoding in the top of the window. (My recommendation would be to stick to UTF-8 on consistenly basis as mentioned by case)

[Patapin]

Brilliant !
Thank you very to all of you, it has worked !
I don't have the 8859-1 option, but with 1252 West Europe, I could save the srt and open it with Subtitle Workshop, and it now contains the good fonts. Thanks again !

(PS : the other ways, exportations, didn't work.
I tried the Blu-ray sup format, it never was remuxed by ifoedit nor rejig...
Then I tried the Vobsub format, I can't do anything with the idx... I unzipped bdsup2sub, but I don't know how to run it ! )

Well at least my wife and me can see Bollywood with with good fonts ! Thanks again