adding subtitles in Vegas?

MarcLAw wrote on 11/28/2003, 1:52 PM

Sorry, bitof a newbie here, but can someone tell me how to add subtitles to a video clip? I have a clip where someone is speaking Fr ench, and I want to add subtitles to it.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Comments

BillyBoy wrote on 11/28/2003, 2:35 PM

Probably the quickest way is to add a video track above your main video track. Next go to the Media Generator and drag and drop the default text choice. Type what you want for subtitles. The key is to positon where it belongs. Grabbing a hold of the right edge of the text event and dragging right while holding down your left mouse button will control how long it appears on screen.

To make it a bit fancier:

Go the left edge and hoover your mouse near the top left corner until you see a quarter circle. Grab ahold and drag towards the right. This will effect the opacity of the text start at zero and increaseing depending on how far you drag it. The result is the text fades in. Repeat at the right edge going the other way to make it fade out.

MarcLAw wrote on 11/28/2003, 5:30 PM

Thanks Billy,

I'll try that. Jeez, this lame xmas party video is getting really complicated - lol

Fuzzy John wrote on 11/28/2003, 7:45 PM

And keep in mind that you have another Christmas, and possibly another party, to look up to.

stormstereo wrote on 11/29/2003, 1:06 AM

I've sent in a suggestion for SONY to add subtitling tools in Vegas+DVDA. Wouldn't it be good to have a sort of automated tool to make this easy? Then you should be able to keep the sync when exporting a textfile to a format that DVDA can read and you'll then be able to turn on or off the subtitles as you would with a "normal" DVD-disc. Imagine then if Vegas came with templates for subtitling, a spell checker and maybe a translator to and from the most common languages. I know, that's a bit "up there" but it would be cool. Translators are usually not perfect so you'd have to go through all the text but it'd save a lot of typing. Yes I know it would be like making a whole new software with huge development costs but let me just sit here and fantasize for a while, ok.
Best/Tommy

johnmeyer wrote on 11/29/2003, 10:29 AM

True DVD subtitles, the kind that are done in the authoring package and that can be turned on and off by the DVD player at the time you view the movie, would be an incredibly useful feature. Obviously it needs to have a way to take a text file and easily insert timing references into the text file as to when each chunk of text should appear and disappear, and where on the screen it should be displayed, what font and color, etc. It would be a nice one week project for a junior programmer at Sony.

Spot|DSE wrote on 11/29/2003, 3:58 PM

If you are going to DVD with this project, DVD Workshop 2.0 is great for this. You can import text files as subtitles, and you can have up to 8 language tracks, and 8 subtitle tracks. All with the language labeled and formatted correctly, and separate volume control. Plus, playlists that would say, ....
Play the French audio, with English subtitles, or play the English audio with French subtitles, or play French audio with Russian subtitles, etc.

johnmeyer wrote on 11/29/2003, 11:25 PM

Spot,

How does it let you sync the text to the video?

BrianStanding wrote on 11/30/2003, 6:56 AM

I have no experience with this, but there is a VirtualDub filter (compatible with Vegas if you have Satsh's PlugIn Pac) that creates subtitles with an application called Sub Station Alpha. Here are the links:
PlugInPac: www.debugmode.com
Virtual Dub: www.virtualdub.com/virtualdub_filters
Sub Station Alpha: http://www.eswat.demon.co.uk (appears to be down or dead!)

There are a zillion subtitling shareware/freeware links at this site:
http://neuron2.net/avediting.html#Subtitling

I know nothing about any of these, but maybe some of them will be worth a shot.