Original subtitles

hey there

my name is scott mcmann this is a quick

film trooper production tip

and we're actually going to go into

post-production i am starting

pre-production on my next feature film

the latch key

but i also have to finish up some loose

ends on

my last feature film called the cube and

so a lot of these digital distribution

platforms require that you have

subtitles and closed captions so um i'm

going to show you

kind of a quick tip of how to make your

own closed captions manually subtitles

manually

and i'm going to show you all the things

i learned from other blogs that didn't

quite work for me and i'll show you why

and as i drive into the street here

totally probably not the safest thing

but

yeah enjoy okay here i'm at my computer

and i'm going to show you how to

manually create some subtitles and

caption files for your movie

if you want to add it to your vimeo on

demand file or your youtube

file or if you're going to put it up

onto indy rain or indie wire

or dysterfy even if you're trying to get

ready for itunes or netflix or hulu

so i will show you

so here's my movie on vimeo and demand

it's called the cube

it's a feature film that was made for

500 with no crew

and if you click on watch the trailer

you get to hear a little bit of it of it

this little file here

what is this i'm going to pause this

real quick

this little file here sets it up so you

can add your

closed caption file and your subtitle

file so there you could actually have a

list of

different files here for your audience

to

to use there could be a spanish subtitle

french subtitle

a german subtitle what's the difference

between a closed caption and a subtitle

file is that closed caption files

usually have like indicators of if

there's creepy music

or a car drives by so you might see like

in parentheses car drives by

or if there's a loud sound off screen

like a big bang

you might hear bang or crash but

subtitles are just

primarily just used to interpret or show

uh the printed word for the dialogue

that's being spoken

in whatever you know language that you

need you need to communicate it

so here's a little sample of the closed

captioning slash

subtitle style file in vimeo i don't

know

i was hoping you might know what it is

what do you mean it was by the front

door when i got home today

it's pretty cool how interactive it is

and stuff like that so

i'm going to show you how to make this

you think it's some sort of chinese new

year's tradition

like hey there's me

some weird asian thingies okay here we

go

so what we do is

vimeo actually has this section here

and i'll leave a link in the notes um

a frequently asked question that almost

sounds like i cursed

it's faq frequently asked questions

and this one is captions and subtitles

so you can go through this link of what

they recommend

of how to create some for your

file as you can see here their example

they've got

french subtitles spanish english and

dutch and if you don't want any just hit

nut um i went through this

setup as vimeo

recommended and they do recommend that

you use a webvtt

file format the old style format that

still works is it srt srt i think stands

for like

sub ripper text file

that was it's an older format of

subtitles

and then the webvtt is supposed to be i

think more optimized for html5

anyhow i've seen some other

blogs that talk about how to make

closed captioning files and subtitle

files manually and you just sort of open

up a text file and start formatting

correctly

through the way you uh set it up and

i'll show you that in a second

but the the file the format that they

say it has to be at least saved as a

utf-8 format well i did all this stuff

just on a blank text file and it didn't

work

and i'm going to show you some other

things that vimeo

recommends is that they recommend

you go through amara this is a free

subtitling uh service so when you click

on amarra over here

um you would have to log in i'm already

logged in

either sign up or log in if you haven't

already have an account but you probably

just sign up it's a simple

you know name uh email and

password so here's a cool thing so you

what you'll do

is you have a youtube file or vimeo file

you paste the link here now

in order to get this link um

for the for the files that i need to

show i need to actually go to my back

end of my vimeo

account and this is one of the videos i

have

this is a another version of the movie

trailer that i created

and you actually just create you want to

cut copy and paste this file so we

copy this bring it over into amarra

free

captioning software and then we hit

subtitle

and it should start processing it as you

can see it

it loads it up and you're like hey

subtitle me

so let me show that again real slowly so

here's the back end of their dashboard

so i went through this process and i

said okay i'll start subtitling my

trailer to at least give um you know a

test to see how well this works so i hit

this

and we're obviously going to find the

language that you want to

put this

subtitling capturing in so i want

english

this video is in english subtitle into

english and say continue

anyway so they have a really

straightforward how to uh

use their interface it's step one step

two step three

and um press tab to start

so this will do so we see this

is this so i'm supposed to start typing

in like oh

what is this and then keep going

and then press enter to save to the next

title so boom next title

i don't know something you might know

what it is what do you mean

so i don't know

whoops i don't know

i was

hoping you

knew what it was

anyhow the way they had this design is

that you would just listen and type

so we'll back up here a little quick

i don't know i was hoping you might know

what it is what do you mean

no there's nothing on it do you think

it's some sort of

chinese new year's trip anyhow so as you

can see

the timing is completely off they what

they want you to do is sort of

go through this and just write it up

just get um

all the trans scribing done through this

system right

so then the next step you want to go to

is uh

step number two

okay so now we're going to start syncing

what so as you can see the way they

built this is like

these little tabs are set up so that you

can start

to fine-tune the timing

so here i say

what what is this so you can kind of

scroll back

here

what is this and then you can fine-tune

it here

and then the next file

you click down here

i don't know see i don't know she says i

know she butted up again there

what is this i don't know i was hoping

you might know what it

is obviously i didn't correctly type

that in so i had to go back in here

i don't know i was hoping you i don't

know what what did she say

i wrote the script i don't even know

what she said oh something you might

know what it is

i was hoping you

might know

what it

it is all right so then you see

as you can see this takes a while you

gotta you know use their system

they even have more controls you can

start to start the subtitle and the

subtitle

this actually is a new interface in the

one that i used but

um you can say save and then

what we can do is download the subtitles

and so you hit download and it downloads

your uh

subtitle as an srt file in english

so what happens is when you go back up

to

your vimeo file and you go into the

settings

or it's under advanced under advanced

you can add captions

subtitles so i'm going to add choose a

subtitle

file to upload use this file

upload it

we're going to call this a subtitle file

not a closed caption file

so as you can see it's in english um

this is the back end of vimeo again so

you can change

like if you have a french subtitle

german subtitle but this one's in

english

and you could you know leave it blank

or in this case we're going to say it's

a subtitle and of course you say

save now if we go back to our

file and we start

we want to play with what i just made uh

it's not an english closed caption fog

this is something i've already created

this is the english subtitle file so i'm

going to click that

and you can see kind of how messed up

the timing is but you get an idea

what is this i don't know that's

something you might know what it is

what do you mean it was by the front

door when i got home today

so that's pretty good right there again

you can always go back to the file

in amara and you can go into

improve these subtitles which will take

you back to the editor

so it loads it and then you can go back

in here and start

editing the different stages

so if you want to start doing your yes i

want to start syncing

a section here then you can start

playing through all this and trying to

make sure

you've got everything squared away

and actually it's funny this is a it

looks like they've updated their uh

interface and it's gotten a lot cleaner

and a lot more accurate when i

originally used amara i was all my

subtitles were off by a second

which prompted me to do it manually so i

will show you

how to do that manually right now so

what you need

is i use text wrangler i'm on the mac

i think notepad is what you would use on

the pc i also use

mpeg stream clip which is a free

video player converter that's online

and and then i created this little

text file under text edit in the mac

that converts

it gives you sort of a table of what

each frame equals a millisecond so 24

frames per second

convert to milliseconds so one frame

would equal

0.041

milliseconds on all the way down to 23

frames

why that's important is that the cool

thing here is i've got

my movie file of for my film

and in here it shows you know we're at

three minutes

three seconds and five frames

so that would be five frames would equal

0.208 milliseconds

now here's the format that you see

when creating a web vtt file

and this is uh the closed caption file

here

and i'm going to show you um that one

file that we just created

here i'm going to open this up open this

up in a

text wrangler as well so you can see

sort of back end so this is what

srt file looks like so as you can see it

just says

your first subtitle will be at this time

frame which is uh you know two seconds

and forty uh 490 milliseconds and ago

that starts there and it ends at three

seconds

880 milliseconds and this is what it

needs to say

and then this is how simple the file

looks right

like i said if you try to at least for

me when i try to create something from

scratch by just creating a new text file

and i try to do this format vimeo

wouldn't accept it for some reason

so there's something else in the code

of this simple text file um

that i needed to extract from the amarra

download

anyhow so the difference between like a

srt file is they use like commas

so if you go here and you look at what

an i'm sorry a webvtt file

format is it uses um the decimal

so there is no comma

and they also give you um an option to

align the middle line so it's like 85

84 85 percent of um you know

high because if you don't put anything

down on there

the subtitle file sometimes will just be

at the very very bottom

and it looks a little off where you want

to add just a little bit of

you know alignment where it's going to

be

so you can even put 50 50 means the

subtitle will be right in the middle of

the screen right here

in order to get a webvtt file for some

reason

again it wasn't just as simple as just

start creating a simple text file this

is the stuff that they showed

on other blogs but when i tried to apply

it

it didn't work so here's a little funny

little trick

is there's another service called

3playmedia.com that offers a free

caption format converter so

here you simply put in like

what format you want to have your file

converted to

so if you went from amarra the free

captioning software and you had

downloaded

the srt file that they give you

you can actually have it converted to a

web vtt

file using 3playmedia.com

uh caption format converter and so you

just put your email in this

and then you would uh paste in the file

your srt

file in here the entire file and they

would convert it

and as they convert it let's see

we'll just do it right now

you go to textwrangler here's a simple

srt file let's copy

and paste and say convert my file

you successfully convert your file

please check your email for the

converted version so

if we go back to my email so go back to

my email and they have

given me a caption file vtt

as you can see it sets it up with the

header and then it converted it to

um you know the decimal point solid

decimal point and it shows the alignment

of where it needs to be so that's how i

was able to figure out like if i was

going to do this manually

this is i'm sorry this is the srt file

from amara

sent it to 3play media for the free

conversion

to create the webvtt file that vimeo

requests

or recommends and what i did was because

i was unable to create

a standard

document on my own looking at this very

basic format for some reason it just

would not accept it

i did a little trick which is simply

said okay well

if this particular file works file

format works

let's just get rid of all this junk

now i have a blank slate webvtt

file that i can start creating my own

manual

version of it and so this is what this

looks like

so all i did was take this file format

from 3play media

and then now i can start editing it

using the same format that they

recommend for webvtt format

so to do it manually now using

mpeg stream clip and

and this millisecond frames per second

conversion

chart that i created i just take

my time and start going through my movie

and i did the first seven minutes of the

movie so far

but as you can see it's a lot of work

manually

but it can be done if you just do it in

chunks so the next one i'm going to be

doing

is line number seven

i'm sorry line number 97

so if the last um

subtitle or capturing this is this is a

captioning file because i've

put in soft crunchy and crackly sound if

it ends at seven minutes

two seconds and no milliseconds

uh then the next file is going to be

let's check it out

so we scroll over to about seven minutes

the first seven minutes okay

so the flower starts crunching

and then here we go we hit play

okay so from right here at seven minutes

12 seconds and nine um

nine frames nine frames would eek

equal 0.374 milliseconds so i'm going to

have to write in here

that it is at um one thing i do is just

like to copy and paste this

stuff like this to the next one

makes it easier and then now i can just

change the time so it's going to be

seven

seconds

semicolon i'm sorry 7 minutes

12 seconds

period and again if it's 9

frames it's going to equal 0.374

milliseconds so

milliseconds and um

and this audio is gonna end

then i'm just going to say here that it

ends at 7

2006 so 7 minutes

20 seconds 6 frames over here equals

249.249 milliseconds so

249 milliseconds and

this is a i'm just going to say

whether person

newscast

on tv that's

because i don't need to go through

everything that she says

it just needs to say that there's some

sound effects in the background

and so you just keep going so i know my

movie so i don't really there's not a

lot of dialogue

until i think she uh

my character laughs at her

and she says shut up so i've got to

figure out where that code is

so she says and you can frame it ding

ding ding

back so she probably starts around here

so as you can see it's 7 minutes 42

seconds 4 frames 4 frames equals 0.166

milliseconds so again we're just going

to copy and paste all this

to the next line let's see if i can't

get this up better for you to take a

look at here we go so i copy and paste

this paste the next

line down it's going to be number 98 it

starts at 7 minutes

42 seconds 4 frames

4 frames equals 0.166 milliseconds

and then she's going to say shut up

so how long does that take boom

ends at 7 43

and 7 frames 7 frames equals 0.291

milliseconds

milliseconds boom

save the file often and this is how i

build

a manual closed caption file and

subtitle files so what i'll do is for

the subtitle file

is i will make a another copy of this

vtt file and just

eliminate anything that has

the indicator of sound effects

or music and all that kind of stuff and

it will just become a subtitle file so

and here's a cool thing so say like if

you want to do

a poor man sort of foreign language

translation

right so you can grab something like

this you can grab

your file here say shut up say you know

copy that use google's translate

feature which is translate.google.com

um first

we want to put in shut up this of course

let's

shut up but what does spanish look like

say translate so you want us english

to spanish translate

so then here it says i'm going to

butcher this

caletti oh my god i'm sorry about my

spanish friends

so you can just copy and paste this

copy and then go back to your text

wrangler

and just paste that in and then you can

start having a sort of poor man's

version

of translation very slow process

of adding manual closed caption

subtitle files to your movie but it

works

and like i said i've tried some of the

free services that they use

online with amarra and i had

difficulty um timing it up like even

though

it was perfect time here when i had

exported the file and brought it into

vimeo in the back end

in the back end of the video stuff here

um and i uploaded it it

it just was off like about one second

each time so

amara may have gotten better so you can

decide to use this free service amara

but if not you know there's an

out because you can take the downloaded

srt file they give you

bring it back into 3playmedia.com

they have a free caption format

converter and they can convert it to the

web

vtt file you bring that into

wrangler which is free online if you're

on a mac

mpeg stream clip for your movie so you

can see

a frame count and then i will give you

this free

frames per second conversion to

milliseconds so you can have this to use

so i hope that helps a little bit gives

a little bit more detail about

different options of creating closed

captions and subtitle files

and like as you can see i'm only in the

seven minute mark this is an hour and a

half movie hour

20 minute movie so there's a lot that

i've got to go through

there are some other interesting um

tricks i've seen online some people take

their

literally their script and then just

start cutting pacing pasting

their dialogue into these file format

here

but obviously even though i wrote a

script

what's actually on screen is sometimes

different it's worded differently than

what was actually in the final script

so i have to still do this manually this

way anyway i hope this is helpful to

anybody out there

trying to do closed captioning and

subtitles on their own and like i said

i've read other blog posts

and tried to apply what they taught but

this is sort of the real world situation

i found myself in which is something as

dumb as a simple

text file that you think would be

formatted correctly wasn't formatted

correctly it just wasn't

being accepted by vimeo and youtube

so i had to find a workaround in the

workaround again

is to take the files given to you by

these free services like amarra.org

and then take it through the conversion

process of that's offered free by

3playmedia.com

and then you know create a workaround

and then here again here's a poor man's

version of a workaround

of uh spanish and french

translation and other languages as well

so you can

do this on your own without paying a

service or purchasing a software

so but it's just time so you just have

to put the time in to make it happen so

i just do it in chunks

and eventually i'll get the files done

again if you go to filmtrooper.com

you'll be able to hey there i am so you

can

go down here and click on to get

yourself a free gift

which is a free gear guide it's an

equipment list of everything i use to

make the

the film the cube and it's just a

helpful kind of like um

reference guide of what equipment's out

there that you can be used

inexpensively thanks again for tuning in

and watching

this film trooper production tip