Re: [Debconf-team] [Debconf-video] subtitling 101

moving this to debconfsubs-team ml

reply inline

On Tue, May 3, 2016 at 2:57 AM, shirish शिरीष <shirishag75@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear alberto,

Please do not take my queries as anything other than queries. I think
the subtitle team does highly valuable work.

Yes, I was only replying to your queries :)

I know about amara but
have found using subtitleeditor, aegissub or even the basic
text-editor (leafpad) better than amara as amara needs constant live
connection.

Well, you need a first connection to start the sub and another to save. Yes, these two connections are needed Im afraid. In exchange, it provides a fast workflow even if you havent sub before.

There is also tips for subbing offline on the wiki. For the transcription part, any text editor is suitable, and you can upload it to amara for the synchronization part half way through or just use other of the offline editors. All workflows are available. Choose one that suits you :)

I have made partial subtitles (not debconf) but other videos but the
biggest issue for me has been time-stamps and frequency. From the
script shared from unix.stackexchange.com, it seems this task could be
automated so for a potential off-line subber, he could have an empty
file with time-stamps and a base frequency for the subtitle (say 5-6-7
seconds) it would be more a matter of simply filling in. Does anybody
know of a script which will take the inputs of duration of video and
frequency and output an .srt file ?

I dont think such thing can be done beforehand, because you dont know whats going on in the video. You cant guess when subs are going to be needed (otherwise you wouldnt need to sync subs afterwards indeed :))

That said, such script does not seem that hard to implement if you want to try

Another query I have, either it's subtitleeditor's fault or .srt
format (or something I don't know) but if I change the time on one
subtitle, the other lines do not change.

[..]

Now in this modified version, the time-stamp of the first line changed
from what was original and if I were to play it, the first line of the
subtitle would merge with the second line when it crosses 00:00:01,488
but there doesn't seem to be a way to fix that automatically. If
somebody knows a way to automatically check and either fix or show the
user where such merging, overlapping happens it would make it also
easier. This is more for fixing subs. though, not creation so much.

If the problem is about shifting times of the whole sub any editor allows this:
http://docs.aegisub.org/manual/Shift_Times

If the problem is only about overlapping when moving one piece, amara editor moves it automatically the start of the next piece, I dont remember much about other editors, but its probably possible as well

Most of my time in subtitling I have spent in projects have been
getting time-stamps fixed aka syncing.

Thats why I dont understand why having a .srt with fixed intervals for subs would had helped you with :S

> And the final problem, looking at the numbers in the past, the volunteers
> and casuals people interested to help peek during the actual debconf and
> the week after (maybe when lwn publish the link the talks). This was
> slightly fixed last year by the hard work of people form the video-team by
> having the video available on the same day they happened... :)

That is part of the solution. I think if it is possible to have the
video on the same day, then it is also possible for volunteers to do
subtitling, but this would probably also go hand-in-hand with what
people liked/enjoyed during the talk. Sometimes the Q&A is where
subtitles are needed the most and they are not available. I am not
blaming the subtitle team, it's either something they are not aware
that people need them also there or people thinking just the
essentials (the talk) are enough when in reality, it's sometimes the
Q&A which are more revelatory than the talk itself.

This might be a blessing or might be a curse. Yes, videos are available when theres more people interest to help, but also when they have less time due to having the debconf going on. And also, as the videos were up the same day, we didnt had an big announcement about the videos being available like in previous years, that made it to the news outlets, aka, lwn, slashdot, hackernews... which caused less visibility overall

Since only a wee tiny % of people you reach gets interested, the solution is to reach out to more people... but how :)

> We are open to new ideas to improve the way we work or new hands or both :)

I don't have any concrete proposals or ideas other than the queries
and am open to spending sometime on the subtitle team as well provided
we get the video on the same day (the videos would probably have to be
down-sampled so they are easily fit in user's machines as the video
team probably shoots the videos in raw-video and then puts them in
720p or 1080p .webm which people can use them.

Looking forward to it :)