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Most effective subtitling / caption method
I’m potentially going to have to do a LOT of subtitling over the next few months. My current workflow is:
* use Premiere to analyse speech, generating metadata text
* copy text into notepad, listen to the audio & fix text where needed
* in premiere, create a series of titles
* drop these titles into the timeline edit and syncThis works, but takes time. Are there any great alternatives?
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6 Replies
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Yes there is! We use this workflow, and it adds quite a bit of automation.
First, we’ve not had good success with Premiere Pro’s Speech Analysis. You’re experience may be better, but we’ve found that the time we spend editing the transcript that is created is better spent doing other tasks, and simply send the audio to a transcriptions service. I know that it can seem less expensive to do it yourself, but please keep in mind that your time IS worth money, and you have to weigh it’s value.
Next, once you have your transcript in hand, use a program like Subtitle Workshop to develop a subtitle file(SRT). There are many such programs out there, but we like Subtitle Workshop, plus it’s free.
Then use this most excellent After Effects plugin, ‘pt_ImportSubtitles’, which can be found easily by Googling. It’s only $25. ‘pt_ImportSubtitles’ will directly import the SRT file created by Subtitle Workshop, giving you a timeline of the subtitles to then place directly over your video, either by rendering a separate video file, or via Dynamic Linking.
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“98% of all computer issues can be solved by simply pressing ‘F1’.”
Steve Brame
creative illusions Productions -
Think the idea of using a transcribing supplier is totally valid. Text to speech is clever, but not accurate. Guess I’d need to find one that’s happy with an NDA, but I expect that’s nothing extraordinary.
After this phase of the work however, I’m wondering if your suggested steps offer any real advantage over my current method. I think I’d certainly lose some flexibility it some subs needed amending in iterative drafts, and unsure whether it would speed things up much anyhow
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Once you’ve created your captions in AE, they’re completely editable either directly in AE or back in Subtitle Workshop. I recently had to do just that on a project. Still. If you’re more comfortable with the method you’re used to, stick with it.
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“98% of all computer issues can be solved by simply pressing ‘F1’.”
Steve Brame
creative illusions Productions -
Thanks Steve, very helpful!!
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I was recently enlightened by another COW member of a better and free solution.
First install ‘Subtitle Edit’, easily found with a Google search. It’s a free subtitle editor that has some nice features.
Then…
Create your subtitles in Subtitle Edit
Save as FCP XML + images (use PNG’s for image format). Each subtitle will be created as a single PNG graphic. Save these in a folder next to your project’s media.
Import the resulting XML into Premiere. When you import the XML, you may have to locate the first PNG, since they all will probably be showing as offline. Once you’ve shown Premiere where the first one is, it should locate the rest automatically.Asus P6X58D Premium * Core i7 950 * 24GB RAM * nVidia GeForce GTX 770 * Windows 7 Premium 64bit * System Drive – WD Caviar Black 500GB * 2nd Drive(Pagefile, Previews) – WD Velociraptor 10K drive 600GB * Media Drive – 2TB RAID0 (4 – WD Caviar Black 500GB drive) * Matrox MX02 Mini * Adobe CC * QuickTime 7.7.5
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“98% of all computer issues can be solved by simply pressing ‘F1’.”
Steve Brame
creative illusions Productions -
Steve thanks a lot, Subtitle Edit saved my life.
Regards
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