In yesterday's post 'Was Mahatma an African', the subtitles didn't work very well (in fact not at all) in the 'Akbar's father' YouTube video. I had tried to hand code the subtitles, and after struggling without any great success for almost 2 hours, I let it go - and forgot to upload the file to boot - that was yesterday.
Today, I did what I should have done first - used the DivXLand Media Subtitler, a free and fantastic tool to subtitle. I'd always admired the people who subtitled in Satellite TV channels like Star Movies, PIX & others (in India) and thought that it was hard work, but with this tool, I've changed my mind. Just took me 20 minutes to download, install the tool and subtitle the video. The result is not bad - for a first attempt - even if I say so myself. Mind you, you still have to upload the resultant 'subtitle' file to the YouTube account as a 'caption' file.
Some points to ponder:
The subtitle file should have same name as the video file (which the DivXLand Media Subtitler does on its own), so make sure you name the video 'as you want it', *before* you subtitle. Else, you'll have to take care to rename the subtitle file again.
YouTube allows multiple language subtitles - you can upload separate language files and the subtitles in appropriate languages can be chosen by selecting it from the 'cc' button appearing on the video. I've uploaded the 'Tamil' subtitle file and the 'Spanish' subtitle file - Have fun
PS1: The Tamil translation was done by me using the Google Transliteration Input Method Editor (Google IME). It is a far better tool than Baraha (which I was using earlier) because of the word prediction options available but the con is that you need a separate IME for each language - one for Tamil, one for Sanskrit, one for Hindi etc. versus Baraha which supports 10 scripts
PS 2: The Spanish translation through Google Translate. I don't know how good it is until someone who knows Spanish can tell me how good the translation is ;-)
PS 3: When you save the subtitle file (from Notepad), especially files with non-Latin characters like Tamil, make sure that it is saved with 'encoding' as 'UTF-8', the 'type' as 'all files' and the 'file name' doesn't end with 'txt' extension. If you mess these up, the subtitles will display as '????????? ????????'
Check out the original video now
Today, I did what I should have done first - used the DivXLand Media Subtitler, a free and fantastic tool to subtitle. I'd always admired the people who subtitled in Satellite TV channels like Star Movies, PIX & others (in India) and thought that it was hard work, but with this tool, I've changed my mind. Just took me 20 minutes to download, install the tool and subtitle the video. The result is not bad - for a first attempt - even if I say so myself. Mind you, you still have to upload the resultant 'subtitle' file to the YouTube account as a 'caption' file.
Some points to ponder:
The subtitle file should have same name as the video file (which the DivXLand Media Subtitler does on its own), so make sure you name the video 'as you want it', *before* you subtitle. Else, you'll have to take care to rename the subtitle file again.
YouTube allows multiple language subtitles - you can upload separate language files and the subtitles in appropriate languages can be chosen by selecting it from the 'cc' button appearing on the video. I've uploaded the 'Tamil' subtitle file and the 'Spanish' subtitle file - Have fun
PS1: The Tamil translation was done by me using the Google Transliteration Input Method Editor (Google IME). It is a far better tool than Baraha (which I was using earlier) because of the word prediction options available but the con is that you need a separate IME for each language - one for Tamil, one for Sanskrit, one for Hindi etc. versus Baraha which supports 10 scripts
PS 2: The Spanish translation through Google Translate. I don't know how good it is until someone who knows Spanish can tell me how good the translation is ;-)
PS 3: When you save the subtitle file (from Notepad), especially files with non-Latin characters like Tamil, make sure that it is saved with 'encoding' as 'UTF-8', the 'type' as 'all files' and the 'file name' doesn't end with 'txt' extension. If you mess these up, the subtitles will display as '????????? ????????'
Check out the original video now
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