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Subtitles in Vegas 6 ?
Facing a lot of work with adding subtitles to a movie in Vegas I’m wondering: How could this be done easily?
What I can do so far, is to make regions in the timeline (and name them with the actual subtitle-text) and export these regions as subtitles in to a notepad.doc with the timecode etc. – But how can I import these ‘back’ into Vegas, so subtitles are generated automaticly? (or from a similar notepad.doc)
I don’t have any other programs (dvd-architect or speciel scripts), but I was loocking for a more easy way, than adding text for each actual region (generated medie).
Morten
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10 Replies
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There are scripts available to export and import sub-titles to/from regions and text files. But I’m not exactly following what you’re trying to do. Scripts can export regions to a text file (subtitle file) that can be read by DVDA.
Edward Troxel
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The problem is that he doesn’t have DVDA. This isn’t all that hard to do in DVDa but it sounds like he’s opting to burn subtitles into the video itself. A kind of faux subtitles that can’t be turned off.
This has been asked before and I don’t think that the scripting API actually allows you to put text into generated media. Ed, you would know far better than I if this is true.
There are other ways to skin this cat. One way would be to make subtitle images in Photoshop, one slide per subtitle. It’s not terribly automated but it could be done. You might find it easier to automate in Flash and as long as you save the swf file as a version 5 swf or less, it should import into Vegas.
There might be some sort of usable utility over at Doom9.org…In fact there is. Look at https://www.virtualdub.org/virtualdub_filters. It would require a bit of fussing to get all of this done but the idea would be to render your project, open it in SubStation Alpha, create your subtitles, save them, and then use Virtualdub and the Subtitle filter to burn them into a new file.
To add a little spice to the project, you could probably frame serve out of Vegas to vdub and burn the subtitles in that way. All in all, the complexity here may kill you, but if you get through it you’ll have learned a lot.
Good luck,
Rob Mack
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If it’s subtitles permanaently on screen that you’re after, I’ve done this for many projects using Vegas.
Firstly, I have several templates in Generated Media / Text set up with appropriate looking and bottom centred text. I drag one of these to the timeline then type or paste the new text.
Having created one, it’s Ctrl/Drag to create a new title alongside the first one, then replace the old text with the new, and so on to the end of the timeline. I’m only a two finger typist but I can do a half hour program in a day. A well known “not for profit” captioning service in Australia would charge well over $1000 for this, so I’m well in.Peter Wright
Perth, Western Oz
http://www.allroundvision.com.au -
Thanks guys so far…
Being lazy I would avoid doing the way you suggest, Peter – but I probably end up doing it that way. Being lazy it will also cause me tears to go through the proces with VirtualDub etc. as Rob suggest, but if I end up finding an easier to produce/generate subtitles, it’s worth – IF the easier way exist! (without DVDa etc. I’ll find out now) – that’s why I posted this in the first place.
And it’s correct. I want to make permenant subtitles on a short movie which will be rendered as wmv.
Morten
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Good luck Morten!
The thing about using Regions to create subtitles which can be switched on/off on the DVD is that, as far as I’ve understood, you get very little control over font, size, colour, position, outline colour etc., whereas in Vegas you have full control.
As an example – I’ve just been sub-titling a piece of drama where there was overlapping dialogue, where two people were talking at once. In Vegas I was able to move one caption up a little and have it on screen whilst another different colour caption came up for the second person’s speech …
Peter Wright
Perth, Western Oz
http://www.allroundvision.com.au -
You might try the “Quick Labels” tool in Excalibur 4.6.2. It will take the text from regions and create titles that appear for the length of the region. The titles should be relatively short, though, and the tool can be expanded to better handle your needs.
Edward Troxel
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That sounds like what he’s looking for.
I authored a DVD piece that called for a subtitle track last year. I had a hell of a time fooling around with Vegas and it turned out that subtitles weren’t nearly so hard to deal with in DVDA – I just didn’t know how to do it when I started the edit project so I tried things in Vegas first. It was actually kind of murderous to import a text file into Vegas, lay it out, and then export it as a subtitle file. The problem was that DVDa couldn’t import the output from Vegas. It was easier to deal with directly in DVDA.
But this isn’t what you’re doing anyway.
The truth of the matter is that you’re going to have to do some shoveling no matter how you approach it. The goal is to import a transcript and convert it to consecutive text media events on the timeline. If you find a good tool to automate it in Vegas (like Ed’s tool in Excaliber, perhaps) then you’d still need to break the transcript down to reasonable sized blocks of text so that they fit comfortably on screen and still read smoothly. And of course you have to get the transcript made in the first place.
You’re already looking at a shortcut. You’ll play a region and then type the text into the region. That covers the transcription and layout all at once. You won’t have a spell checker, though, which is too bad.
If Ed’s script can convert all these regions to text events, and allow you some control of the formatting before you run it, you’re in good shape. However, you might want to get familiar with some alternatives, like the virtualdub process. One thing I think I ran up against was that the vegas script available at the time would convert either markers or regions to a subtitle file. I forget which type it was but it wasn’t both and, unfortunately, I had already typed in all my titles as the wrong type of marker. It was a dead end because the script wouldn’t export what I’d typed in.
You generally don’t want subtitles to be too long, so “Quick Labels” might be perfect. If you have too much text in a subtitle I think it’s too tiring. People are also watching the movie so they have to be able to take in the text at a glance. They’ll get worn out if they are glancing back and forth to read the whole title as they watch the image. You may find yourself going back later to try to break up your titles differently, especially because as you get tired you’ll make longer subtitles.
ROb Mack
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[rob mack] “If Ed’s script can convert all these regions to text events, and allow you some control of the formatting before you run it, you’re in good shape.”
It actually creates a series of PNGs. Unfortunately, scripts cannot control the text in text generated media. There will be a LOT more control in the next version of Excalibur.
Edward Troxel
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[rob mack] ” I had already typed in all my titles as the wrong type of marker. It was a dead end because the script wouldn’t export what I’d typed in.”
I wish you’d have asked. It’s very likely that fairly simple change chould have worked for you. (I’m guessing you used Markers instead of Regions? – Markers makes “length” more difficult to determine)
Edward Troxel
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I don’t remember what script I used. It was a year ago january. In my case I actually needed real subtitles on a DVD and I had a transcript file. Trying to lay them out in Vegas was just simply the wrong way to do it but because I really didn’t know my way around DVDA Vegas was the first thing I tried.
I did make a little forum noise while I was trying to figure it out but I doubt that I asked the right questions. In the end, the biggest thing I struggled with was the fact that DVDA outputs unicode subtitle files but my favorite notepad replacement didn’t support unicode. The text looked a little garbled and it took me a long time to figure out why. It was forum feedback that eventually solved that. Yay forums!
Ed, it’s interesting that you’re creating PNGs from regions or markers. What would be even cooler is if you could make PSD files with the text created as a text layer. In the end it’s more flexible if you can get into the file and edit the text. The newer CS versions of photoshop have some sort of scriptability, perhaps this is actually possible.
Rob Mack
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