[Bouke Vahl]

Very easy.
Use FFmpeg.
(Drag FFmpeg and the files into your terminal window)
ffmpeg -i input.m2ts -codec copy output.mp4

Bouke
http://www.videotoolshed.com

[Bouke Vahl]

Hi Aaron,
C’mon, lighten up. It was a joke, not intended to hurt you.
And if you know me a little, you know that I try to help others whenever I can, and definitely not only to sell my stuff.

Bouke
http://www.videotoolshed.com

[Bouke Vahl]

[Aaron Star] ” I find the YouTube CC editor to work well.”

And I find a toothbrush work well when I want to sweep the market square.

Bouke
http://www.videotoolshed.com

[Bouke Vahl]

Don,
I don’t know where you from, but if you’re not used to watch foreign movies / series with subtitles, you’ve got a lot to learn.
Beside the technical / esthetic part, you have to be very good with language, and NOT translate exactly what is spoken.
(As most of the time you have to shorten the text, or end users cannot read them. Also, you have to work on double negatives and stuff like that as it will confuse the viewer in the short time the title is on.)

Netflix has some rules (per country) on its site. I don’t agree on all of them, but it’s a start.

Then, if you have to do a lot of subtiting (A feature can have over 1000 subtitles), do get a decent dedicated subtitle editor.
You’ll will find yourself moving bits of text from one title to another, join short titles, split long ones etc.
And you want to fast preview as you go along, so you don’t want to open a title tool every title you need to edit, it’s just too slow.

My subtitle app. (look for Subbits on my site) has a bit of a learning curve, but once you get the hang of it, it’s extremely fast. (I work with it myself every week ☺
It comes with a technical manual that also describes a bit about good practice.

hth,
Bouke

Bouke
http://www.videotoolshed.com

[Bouke Vahl]

I don’t know of a way in Premiere, but I can write something that does this.
Assuming the BWF files are set to 24 fps, and there is 24 fps TC fed to the cam, things will work out if both cam and sound start at the exact same time.
This of course is never the case.
Now, if the cam writes 48 fps TC, the math is indeed simple and the BWF timestamp could be altered for the difference.
(video startime – bwf startime) / 2 to add to the BWF timestamp.
But another option would be to re-stripe the clips with 24 TC (Where thus you have identical TC for 2 frames.)

How many clips are we talking about?

Bouke
http://www.videotoolshed.com

[Bouke Vahl]

The clips DO have TC, but it’s stored in a different way than normal, so not all applications understand it.

You can use my Mp4toQT application to re-wrap to Mov, so Avid will eat them (And you have TC).
https://www.videotoolshed.com/product/mp4-to-qt/
(The free demo will show you. Don’t forget to set it to 23.976)
Note, this is a re-wrap, so it’s fast and there is no change whatsoever in quality.

hth,
Bouke

Bouke
http://www.videotoolshed.com

[Bouke Vahl]

Well, 23.98 DOES NOT EXIST.
Someone at Apple once thought it was a good idea to call it that way, causing a lot of confusion and bad math.

Your problem is a DF / NDF issue. Not sure where that happens. Do the math. The difference is 0.1% (Calculate the start time to seconds, and multiply by 0.001, you end up with your 55 secs.

Why not finish in Avid? Or, conform in Avid and take a mixdown to Premiere.

Bouke
http://www.videotoolshed.com

[Bouke Vahl]

Concidering your TC, and the 50 seconds offset, it looks very much like a DF / NDF issue.
Another givaway, your audio displays DF tc, where 23.976 is always NDF.

I have had good luck with AAF from Avid to Premiere, but only if the export / import is done on the same machine.

So, are you sure the Avid project is 23.976, as well as your Premiere settings?

Bouke
http://www.videotoolshed.com

[Bouke Vahl]

First of all, if the formatting is as you describe, it sounds more like captions than subtitles.

Next, afaik, SSA is not used by pro’s, mostly by fansubbers. If you must retain the exact looks, I would try to use a white (or green, or red) dummy movie and render the subs in using a player that allows for this. Or, if you have to, set the player to full screen, capture the output with some screen capture software. Luma or chroma key the end result in.
Stupid way of dealing with the issue, but short of having someone like me custom code something I think it’s your only option.
If you like scripting, I’m pretty sure you can work something out using Directshow or FFmpeg / AVIsynth.
(If it’s a one time thing, that would be my start.

hth,

Bouke
http://www.videotoolshed.com

[Bouke Vahl]

There is no answer.
Some broadcasters have specs, some don’t
Then their is your / the directors taste.
Then there is the concern that ‘some’ TV sets do ‘smart scaling’, detecting letterbox / pillarbox and do ‘something’ to the image to ‘make it look better’

Watch TV, see what you like. (Eg nowadays it’s common to do a blurred / mirrored version left right for vertical video from a phone (or supposedly to be phone)

For theater, I would always letterbox / pillarbox with black if it’s mixed sources. But that’s a different viewer experience.

Bouke
http://www.videotoolshed.com