Can rolling closed captioning be used as subtitles?

[jeanpave]

Hi.

I ripped some closed captioning from a TV recording into a .srt file. The problem is, each letter of the CC rolls out onscreen after the previous one is already there; it's not the regular subtitle look, where 1-2 propositions appear on screen, then disappear, and then the next ones appear, and so on. (Hopefully, it's clear what I mean. If not, maybe the example below helps.)

The problem with this kind of .srt file

(e.g.
1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,005
3

2
00:00:00,005 --> 00:00:00,010
3 w

3
00:00:00,010 --> 00:00:00,015
3 we

4
00:00:00,015 --> 00:00:00,020
3 wee

5
00:00:00,020 --> 00:00:00,025
3 week

6
00:00:00,025 --> 00:00:00,030
3 weeks

7
00:00:00,030 --> 00:00:00,035
3 weeks a

8
00:00:00,035 --> 00:00:00,040
3 weeks ag

9
00:00:00,040 --> 00:00:00,045
3 weeks ago
-- I know what I typed above wouldn't exactly work out, but this is roughly how the .srt file came out)

is that no DVD authoring program I have tried can mix it into a DVD properly, and the DVD players that read AVI files won't read it, either.

Other than modifying it manually, is there any way to make such a file usable?

Thank you in advance.

[AlanHK]

I can't see how to automatically fix it, but you can do it manually fairly rapidly in Subtitle Workshop.

Load the SRT, then select the series that builds to the complete line, then "Edit/Subtitles/Combine" (or Control-K).

That will give you, in your example:

1
00:00:00,005 --> 00:00:00,045
3 w
3 we
3 wee
3 week
3 weeks
3 weeks a
3 weeks ag
3 weeks ago

-- note that the time ranges have also been combined. Then delete the incomplete lines.

1
00:00:00,005 --> 00:00:00,045
3 weeks ago

If your subs were all one line only, you could work out a macro to do that in a wordprocessor, but it's a bit tricky if the sub is sometimes two or three lines.

[jeanpave]

Okay, I'll try the method. Hopefully, it won't be too tedious. Thank you very much!

The CCs are not one line only. Mostly, they're three lines, unless the person who speaks shuts up for a while.
When three lines are full, the top line disappears, the next two lines move up and the third line starts to grow again. It's the closed-captioning method they use for news.

[handyguy]

It's called live captioning. They are doing it live so sometimes you see funny typos.

[jeanpave]

Well, this live captioning is really hard to transform into the other kind of subtitling method because it takes hours, even in Subtitle Workshop, to get rid of the unnecessary lines. It takes longer than authoring the DVD for which the subtitle is meant, burning the DVD and watching it put together, I would say.

Is there, by any chance, a DVD authoring program that would accept a .srt file with live captioning inside (and would create valid BMP subtitles)?

Thanks.