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Activity Forums Apple Final Cut Pro Subtitle and dub workflow?

  • Subtitle and dub workflow?

    Posted by Robert Gilman on November 7, 2014 at 3:33 pm

    I’m just getting started on internationalizing some videos. I have the human translators covered but I’m pretty clueless about best-practice workflow. I’d love to get some help up the workflow learning curve.

    The videos are educational (think TED-like), about 20 minutes in length and currently hosted on vimeo and youtube. We created English transcripts using Dragon Dictate followed by human proof-reading of the machine transcription.

    I’m starting to learn about dot.sub and amara as subtitling platforms. I also see that youtube will do automated captioning. The resulting text would, no doubt, need to be corrected but it gives an automated start for the timing. Is this helpful or is it better to do the timing by hand?

    More generally, what workflow works for you to create captions and multilingual subtitles? These won’t get burned in but uploaded to vimeo and youtube as caption/subtitle tracks. What software do you use?

    I have similar start-at-square-one questions about foreign-language dubs. It looks like vimeo and youtube don’t support multiple, user-selectable audio tracks, so is it right that each language dub needs to be a separate video file and upload? Is it best to keep some of the original (English) voice in the background or completely replace the original with the foreign-language dub?

    Any help on these questions, plus on all the questions I’m still too clueless to know I should have asked, would be greatly appreciated.

    Michael Novak replied 10 years, 3 months ago 4 Members · 7 Replies
  • 7 Replies
  • Bret Williams

    November 7, 2014 at 8:27 pm

    The are companies out there that will transcribe and create subtitle files for extra fee like scribie.com

    Most are insanely cheap for the number of hours put in.

  • Robert Gilman

    November 7, 2014 at 8:38 pm

    Thanks Bret. Interesting to hear about scribie.com but I’m doing this in a nonprofit context with lots of good volunteer help for what scribie.com does and no budget for outsourcing.

    I’ve already got good quality transcripts and foreign-language dub audio files. What I’m looking for is advice on the workflow to put those pieces together.

  • Claude Lyneis

    November 8, 2014 at 1:27 am

    I have heard people have had poor results with Youtube subtitles, so if you want it to be accurate and profession, you need to look elsewhere. I guess you are looking for something more automated than the titling available in FCPX?

  • Robert Gilman

    November 8, 2014 at 3:00 am

    Thanks Claude. Do you mean poor results on youtube in terms of the quality of the language or poor visually. I’ve got the language part covered. I already have quality transcriptions.

    I would, however, like to simplify the production side by using their overlay system and not doing any burn-in. This makes the production much easier, especially for multiple languages. So I guess then I’m stuck with their visual display. Good question as to whether that would work visual in my case. Thanks for raising it.

    Any other thoughts on the subtitle workflow for web delivery (not burn-in)? Assume that I’ve got full-quality transcriptions. The transcription just needs be broken up into chunks, timed and exported as something like a .srt file.

    Thanks.

  • Claude Lyneis

    November 8, 2014 at 5:24 am

    I think the quality issue referred to Youtube converting the audio phrases into closed captions. I looked at a few how to videos for using Youtube to incorporate written captions and it looks straight-forward. Here is an example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9K4WJs94FfY

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  • Robert Gilman

    November 12, 2014 at 5:50 pm

    Thanks Claude. That tutorial was helpful for the YouTube part of the workflow.

  • Michael Novak

    January 31, 2016 at 11:06 pm

    Our company produces a unique, karaoke form of captioning as the best front end to any subsequent translation into other languages.

    Our objective is to first make it easier to reach the $100Billion ESL market before spending money on translation to other languages. We also provide an interface to Amara, dotsub, etc for subsequent translation.

    We offer variable length captions to inform to any standard. We also distribute films into Korea and Japan that use our Same Language Subtitle format.

    https://www.1plus2media.com
    mnovak@1plus2media.com

    Happy to speak to anyone about this.

    Michael Novak
    CEO, One Plus Two Media
    http://www.1plus2media.com
    \”Media for a Connected World\”

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