Spoken movie subtitles?

[Gale Andrews]

I really do not have to use a text editor other than Microsoft Notepad (Version 5.1 ... ) which is part of my Windows XP SP2. And I do not remember that I installed anything special to upgrade it. This is part of its Save As window...

I agree that following your instructions to the letter (File > Save As in Notepad, and choosing UTF-8 encoding), Audacity opens the .txt file OK. As I had no reason to change the file name I just did File > Save, but unfortunately (on Windows 7, anyway) Notepad saves as ANSI using File > Save and this setting is not configurable. Therefore with the .xls you supplied with an ellipsis character, Audacity Unicode would not then open the resultant .txt file. Given Save As is somewhat unintuitive I think the instructions should clearly point out the issue.

I do not own any digital signature. It is really not necessary to do anything with it. Just follow instrunctions in Excel what to do if you do not want to allow macros anytime a document XLS with macros is opened.

I don't think creating a Trusted Certificate for the VBA macro is that difficult - there is some help here. Opening the .xls at the default security level in both Excel and OpenOffice.org will not allow the macro to run, so again I think this would have to be documented for a user.

Is there any reason for not implementing import/export of SRT file type as a relative to labels' TXT in Audacity soon? Then a Wiki page for external convertor would not make any sense. Just tell users on Audacity web pages about the new feature, about subtitles in Audacity and I am sure that users will use it and bring some new ideas how to improve it.

Creating a Wiki page would be the way of "telling users on Audacity web pages" (and letting James know about it) - that was the point of the idea. I can write the page but it is not a priority for me.

It's possible James will be interested in supporting .srt files before considering the other related items on Proposal Transcription Editor, but bug fixing so we can release Audacity 2.0 is the greater priority. Equally, someone may be interested in writing say an alternative .php script to convert between .txt and .srt, or possibly a patch for Audacity to support or convert .srt.

Thanks! By the way .srt support only has one vote here (Mederi's) so unless someone else supports it here, it will only have the one vote for now on the Wiki Feature Requests page. Having a "movie window" is a popular request, though.



Gale

[mederi]

Hello
Thanks for ideas about adding a digital signature and instructions. I have really never paid much attention to this. You are right that it can help other users to simly mark the document as "TRUSTED" (3-rd option) at the first opening of the XLS document with macros, so it does not bother them next time the document is opened and other security settings remain unchanged. And perhaps I will try to create some Wiki page, too.

Next, I would like to discuss my some ideas about improvement of Auto Duck effect by Markus Meyer as I am not fully satisfied with it yet. Should I do it under a new forum topic?
Thanks.

[steve]

I would like to discuss my some ideas about improvement of Auto Duck effect by Markus Meyer as I am not fully satisfied with it yet. Should I do it under a new forum topic?

Yes, please start a new forum topic.

[mederi]

http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Movie ... es_(*.SRT)

[mederi]

All right, Gale, you win Thank you for editing of the Wiki page I created and adding all details.
I have some remarks you could consider:
Current Audacity Beta 1.3.12 does not handle Unicode charset properly. "Eastern European" characters (it is enhanced Latin, Latin-2) really have problem to write or display in Label Track whereas unofficial 1.3.13-alpha is already all right with Unicode support.
Then opening the convertor should point at security warning popup rather than trusted locations. By default macro security is set to "Disable all macros with notification" (or Medium level in older versions of Excel (2003 and below)). Then users are prompted to enable or disable macros (executables) when a document is opened. If the document contains a signature then the 3-rd option should be available: To trust all documents from this publisher (or something like this as I do not have the original English environment).

security alert - macro.jpg (75.6 KiB) Viewed 4238 times

This options adds the signed publisher's certificate in the list of trusted publishers and next time the document from this trusted source (document signed by the trusted publisher) is opened, macros are automatically enabled without any prompt. Of course there are other options: to change general security level or to put the document in trusted location (some choosen subfolders of Microsoft Office, or you can create own folder and add it in the list of trusted locations). I do not know how OpenOffice works but I presume that there is similar prompt to users by default, too.
So it is really a bit complicated and there are too much informations for users. The best way would be just to say: "Allow Macros at the prompt" or something like this and let users to find out the details by themselves as The Help of Excel offers "more informations" there.
Then the last remark "ANSI encoding should be fine if there are only English characters" is not correct. I really cannot agree. I would say that ANSI encoding is the preferred encoding for "srt" files used in Windows and not only English chracters. Some older applications handling with subtitles could have problems with Unicode. There is usually some setting to set the proper encoding, for example "Eastern European" or it is automatic. But these days probably all modern software also support Unicode as it gathers all characters (Latin and its enhancements, probably Cyrilice, Greek, Hebrew, ...) and is thus quite universal. So you could shorten it to "ANSI encoding should be fine."
Consider these my remarks and make changes your way if you will decide to change anything.
Thanks for cooperation.

[gasto]

Great idea.

Anyone knows how to make the exported .txt file from the label track into a sbv (Youtube format)file?

[mederi]

Anyone knows how to make the exported .txt file from the label track into a sbv (Youtube format)file?

.sbv is very similar to .srt so I have edited macro in my .txt vs .srt convertor for you. Try it and tell me whether it works correctly, please. You can use your own multiline separator/connector. I predefined two slashes "//" as it is easy to write (division sign in numeric keypad of keyboard).

Audacity Labels (TXT) to Youtube Subtitles (SBV) Convertor.xls

(54 KiB) Downloaded 232 times

[Gale Andrews]

All right, Gale, you win Thank you for editing of the Wiki page I created and adding all details.

Everyone on the Wiki is subject to "merciless editing" , but I just thought your page should be as simple as possible and assume the user has minimal knowledge to begin with.

I have some remarks you could consider:

OK. I see you've already made changes like you suggest to the Wiki page so I'm replying from that standpoint.

Current Audacity Beta 1.3.12 does not handle Unicode charset properly. "Eastern European" characters (it is enhanced Latin, Latin-2) really have problem to write or display in Label Track whereas unofficial 1.3.13-alpha is already all right with Unicode support.

OK. I just generalised that comment a bit because it is only Windows that is affected and not all characters are affected (you can I think paste in any character, but not type any character).

Then opening the convertor should point at security warning popup rather than trusted locations. By default macro security is set to "Disable all macros with notification" (or Medium level in older versions of Excel (2003 and below)). Then users are prompted to enable or disable macros (executables) when a document is opened. If the document contains a signature then the 3-rd option should be available: To trust all documents from this publisher (or something like this as I do not have the original English environment). This options adds the signed publisher's certificate in the list of trusted publishers and next time the document from this trusted source (document signed by the trusted publisher) is opened, macros are automatically enabled without any prompt. Of course there are other options: to change general security level or to put the document in trusted location (some choosen subfolders of Microsoft Office, or you can create own folder and add it in the list of trusted locations). I do not know how OpenOffice works but I presume that there is similar prompt to users by default, too.
So it is really a bit complicated and there are too much informations for users. The best way would be just to say: "Allow Macros at the prompt" or something like this and let users to find out the details by themselves as The Help of Excel offers "more informations" there.

Well, you say on the Wiki page "You can just enable macros at the security prompt (menu bar or popup window)" but I don't think that works on latest OpenOffice.org or in older Excel unless the document has a trusted signature - you have to reduce the security level or add to a trusted location (which of course is safer)..

Even in Excel 2010 although there is a security warning pop up like you show, your signature is shown as invalid/untrusted so the options to "enable this content" and "trust all documents from this publisher" are not available. So the only options are to install the certificate to make it trusted, add the source as a trusted location, or reduce the security level.

I agree it's complicated (and best to make clear that reducing the security level is least desirable) but as it reads now, you can't seem to simply enable at a security prompt in OpenOffice.org or old Excel, and because there is a signature problem you can't do it in latest Excel either. If the "invalid signature" is expected then it seems the first recommendation should be to add the source location to a trusted source because that will work in all/most programs.

Then the last remark "ANSI encoding should be fine if there are only English characters" is not correct. I really cannot agree. I would say that ANSI encoding is the preferred encoding for "srt" files used in Windows and not only English chracters. Some older applications handling with subtitles could have problems with Unicode. There is usually some setting to set the proper encoding, for example "Eastern European" or it is automatic. But these days probably all modern software also support Unicode as it gathers all characters (Latin and its enhancements, probably Cyrilice, Greek, Hebrew, ...) and is thus quite universal. So you could shorten it to "ANSI encoding should be fine."

You are in a better position to know than I am. All I would like to ask is if for example the subtitles are in an East Asian language, would it really work to save the .srt file in ANSI?



Thanks


Gale

[mederi]

I have experience with Excel 2007 which I currently use. There is a "Security warning" displayed as a menu bar with a single button. By pressing the button you will get window with options like on the picture in one of my previous posts. I also tried the signed convertor on older computer with Excel 2000 which actually belongs to a group up to Excell 2003. There was straight window popup with option to enable macros and a checkbox to trust the signed publisher. I saved the document with XLS file extension (Excel 97-2003) instead of new XLSM because of compatibility reasons with older versions. I do not have experience with Excel 2010 and OpenOffice. So it is really a bit different in various applications how to enable macros. But usually application asks what to do.

ANSI character set consists of 256 possible characters (1 character = 1 Byte = 8 bits = 256 possible values). Basic Latin alphabet and signs are located in first 127 characters. I suppose that the rest characters are used to encode Latin extensions (Central European or East European if you want) and probably all other extensions like East Asian, too. Once I saw Japanese Windows. It really looks the same but with Japanese signs of course. Then if I want to see my native characters in subtitles instead of weird signs I have to set my movie player to proper encoding. VLC's default encoding is set to Automatic and it works so all Latin-2 characters are displayed correctly. I think that there is some "smart" algorithm to recognize proper encoding from the text or it simply gets information from the operating system environment. If automatic was not working for me, I would probably use Windows-1250 or Latin-2 (ISO-8859-2) encoding and there is nothing about ANSI in the list. Please check VLC settings (my v1.0.1: CTRL+P > Subtitles&OSD > Subtitle language > Predefined encoding) and you will see. And that is how it works not only in movie players, but also other tools using text. Usually there is some List and you have to choose one option for example Western, Central European, Greek, Cyrilic, Hebrew, Turkish, Thai, Chinese, ... Then you can write your native characters and then the simple text document is saved in ASCII (DOS), ANSI(Windows) or now modern Unicode (UTF-8). So if Audacity uses Unicode encoding then it is universal without necessity of settings for different foreign languages.

[mederi]

Hello,
I am bringing some suggestions how to improve Label Track and make it universal and probably the best Subtitle Editor with its graphic timeline interface - easy to use and user friendly.

Each subtitle editor should support at least these 3 functions:
1.) Editing of subtitle text (Add New, Edit, Delete) - Audacity already does it in its Label Track.
2.) Time shifting of subtitles - to select group of subtitles or all of them and to perform their time shift.
3.) Frame rate conversion - using a free user factor, for example 25 / 23.976 = 1.042709376 stretches positions of subtitles in time line.
Functions 2 and 3 could be performed in Label track following way:

(1)Shifting of Selected Labels (2)Fixed Point (3)Stretching or Contracting.png (11.64 KiB) Viewed 4125 times

(1) To select and to shift Labels using for example Time Shift Tool (bidirectional arrow icon);
(2) To choose one Label (the aligned one with the appropriate sound in Audio Track or with sound/scene in possible movie player) and to mark it as Fixed (for example CTRL+mouse click, or right click and context menu with "Fixed on/off" function), so its position does not move.
(3) To drag a free distant Label to a desired position - the bigger distance of Labels from fixed one, the bigger shift of Labels in time line.

All subtitle editors works with List of subtitles, so Audacity could have some functions in its list of Labels (Tracks > Edit Labels):
[Time field] [+ button to shift selected subtitles to the right in time line][- button to shift them to the left]
[number field]/[number field]=[number field for calculated result or straight input of user factor] [+ button][- button]

Some inspirations: Jubler, Subtitle Workshop

Audacity really can become universal tool for subtitling, too. Subtitling in terms of voice to text (describing function of Label Track) and text to voice (recording function of Audio Track). I really like the graphic interface in Label Track with labels in time line. It really can be unique and the best subtitle editor.
Thanks.