Subtitling, Workshopping

April 27, 2009 2:48 PM

Can anyone recommend subtitle software that can import files? For Windows, or preferably, for Mac. Alternately, can you find a workaround for Subtitle Workshop?

As far as I can tell, Subtitle Workshop doesn't support importing external files; It only lets you type within the app itself. I'd like to create my translation in a different app and import.
I even considered using Subtitle Workshop just for timing the subs, then copy and paste the titles one by one. I tried this process once and it worked, despite being very tiresome, obviously. This time, however, it's not an option, since the subtitles are in Hebrew and pasting into the app turns everything into question marks.
Thanks in advance.

posted by Silky Slim to computers & internet (7 comments total)

There's a Mac program called Miyu that can import subtitle files, although I'm not sure if it would work for what you have in mind.
posted by fearthehat at 2:56 PM on April 27

"File -> Load subtitle" doesn't work in Subtitle Workshop? Admittedly, its UI once you get past that point is on the sucky side.

"... the subtitles are in Hebrew ..."

You might be running into the usual Windows app crap handling of non-native character sets. SW's particular workaround for that is in Q4 here.

Alternately, what format are the files you're trying to import? AFAIK SW only handles text-based formats, so if you're trying to load a bitmap subtitle file then you'll have to convert that to text using one of the subtitle OCR programs. I won't even try to recommend one that'll handle Hebrew...
posted by Pinback at 3:36 PM on April 27

fearthehat: Thanks for the tip about Miyu! I'd never heard of it before. It doesn't seem to do what I need yet, but it might save me from having to use Windows, so thanks!
Pinback: "File -> Load subtitle" won't work because the file I want to import is a text file I typed myself in a word processor, not a subtitles file. I suppose a solution would be to convert the text file to an SRT or similar format so I could time it in SW or Miyu. Does anyone know a way of doing that?
posted by Silky Slim at 1:57 AM on April 28

Hmmm... I don't use SW much myself, except for converting between odd subtitle formats. I do know that it will import plain ASCII text, formatted as 1 subtitle per line. Somewhere in the copious mess that is SW's file dialogues is a "plain text" option.

It is just plain text, UTF-8 or UTF-16, saved in a .txt file, right? 'Cos if it's in something like a Word .doc file, or some other non-plain-text format, I don't think any subtitle editor/timer is going to help you without using whatever program you created it in to re-save it as plain text.

I dunno for sure if SW can handle UTF-16 (i.e. double byte non-roman-ASCII text), though I'd find it odd if it didn't.
posted by Pinback at 4:25 AM on April 28

Sure, it's plain text... but "1 subtitle per line" is a problem, since most subs consist of two lines. But I couldn't even find a text option that works. Apparently, SW won't recognize it if there are no time codes. I'd be grateful if you could give it a go and see if you can get it to work... As far as I'm concerned, it just doesn't.
posted by Silky Slim at 8:06 AM on April 28

Not picking on you, but putting all the relevant info revealed in your replies - the fact that it was a text file you were trying to import (rather than just saying "as far as I can tell, Subtitle Workshop doesn't support importing external files"), and the fact that it doesn't contain any timing data - would have made it a lot easier to give helpful answers quicker...

OK, that said: I'm busy as hell right now (2 x 40% assignments due tomorrow!) and my PC is broken, but one idea that comes to mind is using Excel to add timing data. Pick a simple subtitle format (e.g. Micro DVD), past your text into Excel (1 line per row), add a few empty columns at the beginning, fill them with whatever you need to look like your chosen timing format, then export as tab-delimited text or something.

Your output, in the case of Micro DVD, would look something like...

{    1    }    {    2    }    Subtitle text here.

Then you can use your text editor search & replace to remove the extraneous tabs. If you've done it right, the result should be something like a correct Micro DVD subtitle file e.g.

{1}{2}Subtitle text here.

You'll still have to re-time everything in SW or Miyu, but you're gonna have to do that anyway.
posted by Pinback at 4:56 PM on April 29

Much tinkering has revealed the solution to be much simpler: All I have to do is use a simple find-replace operation to stick a blank line of bullshit timecode before each subtitle:

1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000

That's it! Subtitle Workshop recognizes it as an SRT file.
That allows me to time the file with simple in/out commands while watching the movie.
Unfortunately, this only works with SW, not with Miyu.
Thanks for the help, Pinback and fearthehat!
posted by Silky Slim at 10:16 AM on May 1