Creating new subtitles for a film?

[ben_uk]

Does anyone have experience with creating subtitles? The ones for a few films I have look dreadful. I was wondering if anyone knew how to create new ones?

[dcoke22]

Most subtitle formats are pictures (e.g. PGS) not text. However, SRT format subtitles are text based. So, if your player supports srt subtitles, you could try downloading some .srt format subtitles for the movie in question and see how they look with your player. Some players let you change the font used to display text based subtitles. https://www.vlchelp.com/change-subtitle ... ize-color/

[Radiocomms237]

The best subtitle editor I've found is "Subtitle Edit".

Download here: https://github.com/SubtitleEdit/subtitleedit/releases

It will OCR pictographic subtitles to text allowing you to edit, resync, etc.

And it will also create pictographic subs from text files, or even allow you to compile them from images.

[ben_uk]

So when you buy a Blu Ray or a 4K disc, what format are those subtitles natively or does it vary depending on the disc?

[Nucleus]

So when you buy a Blu Ray or a 4K disc, what format are those subtitles natively or does it vary depending on the disc?

PGS, a timed sequence of images.

Presentation Grapic Stream Subtitle Format
Consists in bitmaps (and the timeframes on which they have to be displayed). It's by far the most commonly used by Blu-ray discs. That’s not surprising you see a lot of MakeMKV Blu-ray rips with PGS subtitles. Tools exist to extract that stream to .sup files.

It's common practice to demux them to a .sup file and run them through OCR in SubtileEdit and save as an .srt file (text), and spellcheck to fix a few common errors. I've no idea which is the most widely supported by various streaming players whatever.

The Green Mile UHD rip, subs in each format.
.srt (Text) = 130KB (Also stripped out the SDH in SubtitleEdit. "A phone rings." "A door knocks." etc)
.sup (PGS) = 35MB



PGS in MPC-BE Player:


SRT in MPC-BE Player:


Both screens above as standard in MPC-BE, didn't change any subs options, size, colour etc.

SubtitleEdit - Great program, there's also a portable version so you don't necessarily have to install it.

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https://www.nikse.dk/subtitleedit

[ben_uk]

Thanks for the replies guys.

I have downloaded Subtitle Edit and trying to work it all out.

I also just downloaded some subtitle tracks from opensubtitles website. Some are actually pretty good and look a bit better than what was provided by the studio.

Does anyone know how to adjust the height of the subtitles? The ones I downloaded (and can also open in SE) have the subs in the black bar at the bottom and as its a scope film they should be within the image frame (so slightly above). Is there a way to move them up a bit?

Thanks so much!

[Nucleus]

The ones I downloaded (and can also open in SE) have the subs in the black bar at the bottom...

SRT subs,I believe there are some alignment tags, waste of time IMO as it's hit and miss which players support the tags.

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{\an1}Bottom-left 
{\an2}Bottom-Center 
{\an3}Bottom-right

{\an4}Middle-left
{\an5}Middle-center
{\an6}Middle-right

{\an7}Top-left
{\an8}Top-center
{\an9}Top-right

Also seen colour tags used before, but again that seemed hit and miss in different players. To use/access the alignment tags in SubtitleEdit right click on a line and choose "Alignment", a popup appears allowing you to choose a tag, as said IMO it's a waste of time in SRT. Maybe look into some other format for styling/formatting, ASS or whatever, I don't know, also don't know how widely supported ASS is, the program ppl use to style/format ASS subs is AegiSub. That seems a lot of work though. All I ever do is convert .sup to .srt and strip out any SDH stuff if present (Tools/Remove text for hearing impaired... in SubtitleEdit).

SubtitleEdit SRT alignment tags (right-click a line and choose Alignment).

[Radiocomms237]

I don't think I've ever downloaded a subtitle that didn't need at least some correction or resyncing, but it's a heck of a lot easier than starting from scratch (IE. transcribing an entire movie or TV series). Obviously it's difficult to find a subtitle that was created on the exact same file as you have, so there's always something that needs to be fixed.

SubtitleEdit does do ASS, or "SSA" as it's been renamed (damn political correctness... we wouldn't want to offend all the asses out there), and it's a lot more versatile than SRT (you can have the text on a solid background color, for example), but as mentioned, a lot of players, including some of my Plex clients, don't recognize the ASS/SSA format.

The positioning options mentioned for SRT above are only rudimentary. Depending on the player, you may have some positioning options at the end user level as well, but they're more of a global setting that applies to everything you play, so usually it's not viable to adjust the subtitle position for each and every title you watch.

I usually do all my correction and resyncing in text format (SRT) and then, within SubtitleEdit, use "File > Export > Blu-ray sup..."

This will create image-based subtitles (in the .sup format as typically found on Blu-ray discs), but it allows for MUCH more precise positioning.