How to create subtitles
 

Does have anyone know of an easy or straightforward way to create subtitles?

Apologies if this is in the wrong section, but I've been asked to create subtitles for a 10 minute film about blind people.

Yes, I hear you say, the visually impaired can't see them, but it was a blind group who commissioned the film (it highlights the challenges faced by the visually impaired when they visit public places like shopping malls) and they are very keen to make the film accessible to all - hence the idea of creating a version with subtitles.

Short of creating a hundred or so individual titles in Premiere and editing them in manually, I was wondering if anyone had any ideas...and which would allow me to escape the edit suite this weekend!

If anyone is interested in viewing the film, (and maybe doing the subtitles for me!) I can email them a link.

Thanks, Sean

is the audio transcribed? if so, you can use the freeware MediaSubtitler from divxland.com.
You load the txt file and either a wmv or just a wav, and click the mouse to tell it when to put the sub on screen, and let go when you want it off.

There are some things you need to do with the txt file. like make it about a full line and a half so you don't lose any test, there are only so
many characters per line. (similar to the two previous lines). It saves it in a variety of formats.

I usually use a service www.ccmaker.com but when I have short vids that are completely scripted I do it myself.

Bill, thanks a million, I'll check it out now - you might have saved my weekend!

Subtitles burned on to film
 

For anyone who needs to achieve this, I completed the task over the weekend.
I created the subtitle script using MediaSubtitler.
This broke up the text document into single and double lines of captioning and then I manually hit the 'on' and 'off' buttons as the film played to indicate the 'on' and 'off' timings for each caption. I then exported a subtitle script.
You should be able to then launch VirtualDub within MediaSubtitler. I couldn't. So I independently opened VirtualDub and imported the subtitle script - and then exported the two together.
I hope that's of help in the future.
Never having done it before, it ate up my whole weekend as I tried to find a way through. I would have liked to have created an optional subtitle version using Encore, but I'm just not familiar with that programme and didn't have the time to get up to speed with it. Encore, though, is the way forward I think.
If you're interested in seeing the results, you can view it at Vimeo.
See It Our Way - with Subtitles on Vimeo

I use Subtitle Workshop, a free program that lets me type subtitles as I play back the video (also lets me work form a text file if I prefer). Then I use a DVD authoring program to include the subtitles.

What I'd like to find is a way to take a subtitle text file and importing it in Vegas or Premiere! I still haven't found an easy way to include subtitles when printing to tape.


J.

depends the final format of the movie.
if you make DVD, just add subtitles at the authoring step.
if you need to embed subtitles in the video, virtualdub is a nice way.
you just create the subtitle file and load it with the video into Virtualdub.
then render by adding the proper filter Subtitler v2.4 (open source)