Master Subtitle Timing with Aegisub: A Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners
Learn how to efficiently time subtitles using Aegisub, a free and lightweight subtitle editor. Follow this tutorial for easy and accurate subtitle creation.
File
TIME Your SUBTITLES ezpz aegisub
Added on 10/01/2024
Speakers
add Add new speaker

Speaker 1: Have you ever wondered if there was an easier way to time your subtitles? Dragging and splicing and playing your video again and again in video editors can get tiring. This video will show you how with free software. We will be using a free subtitle editor called Aegisub. If you haven't heard of or have never used it before, don't worry. I will go through the basics here. Compared to Adobe Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve, this is a very lightweight application if you're just creating subtitles. It uses about 70% less electricity than the video editors or NLE. Go green. If you don't have Aegisub yet, download it from somewhere called The Internet. Send $5 and I will send you the link. Just kidding. For this tutorial, we only need to look at the video section, the subtitle grid, and the subtitle edit box. Let's open a video in Aegisub. Get and copy your script, click on a row in the subtitle grid, and paste. If what you have is a blob of text, you'll have to separate them with line breaks. You can also skip Aegisub and use YouTube's subtitle feature and just let it work the magic of timing it. Okay, thanks, bye. To start, press Ctrl P to play the video. And when you hear the line, press Ctrl 3 to set the start of the subtitle to this current frame. At the end of the spoken line, press Ctrl 4 to set the end of it. Don't worry about the points being late or that you're not hitting the hotkeys before the line is spoken. We'll take care of that later. Also, if you need to split a line of text, go to the subtitle edit box, put your cursor where you want the split, right-click, select Split at Cursor. The three different types are going to matter only if you've already set the time. For now, any of these will do. A lot of spoken lines usually have the start of the next line right at the end of the current line. So if you're keying your subtitles while your video is playing, it's really difficult to press Ctrl 4 right after Ctrl 3. So here's a quick tip. Play the video, then every time you hear a line, press Ctrl 3, then Enter to go to the next line. Do this for the next five lines or so. You can also use the down arrow key, but I personally go for the Enter key because it's bigger. Less mistakes. Now, what about the end of the subtitle line? After about five lines, you can check your subtitles by double-clicking your first line to go back to it. Play the video. You won't see any output since the subtitles have no endpoints. So what we do is select these five lines, right-click, then select Make x Continuous Change End. This will automatically set the endpoints of each line. This will automatically set the endpoints of each of the selected lines to the start of the line next to them. Note that the endpoint of the last line won't get updated because it doesn't know where the next line is. Play the video back again and the subtitles will appear now. You can press the up and down arrow keys on the subtitle grid to go to the previous and next lines respectively. You can use the right and left arrow keys to go to the next or previous frames to make adjustments to the accuracy of the start and endpoints and press Ctrl 3 or Ctrl 4 to set your changes. If you're going to use the arrow keys for this purpose, make sure that you're on the subtitle grid because these keys have different functions in different sections of the software. Also, Ctrl 1 sends you back to the time of the subtitle's starting point. If you don't need exact frame or millisecond timing on your subtitles, then you're all good. But if you do, we'll discuss it in the later portions of this video. Now, here's how it will look like once you get the hang of it. Play the video, Ctrl 3 every time you hear the line, press Enter, and repeat this for every line. Once you're done, select all the lines of text, right-click, set the endpoints by selecting Make x Continuous. Remember when I said not to worry about late timing some 4 million words ago? Select all your lines, go to Timing, then select Shift x or just press Ctrl I. You can set how long you want everything to go back by putting something in time. Let's say 200 milliseconds, which will be equivalent to 0.20. You don't need to select the numbers and delete them. Just type away. Try to be as consistent as possible to minimize the variance of this 200 millisecond number. Make sure that you select backward since we're fixing late timings. In the Effects section, we'll choose Selected Rows. If you're confident about committing this change to your whole file, you can select All Rows. And I hope Selection Onward is self-explanatory. For this example, we'll select Start and End Times, but you can experiment with this and see what they do. This action is undoable as one whole action, so it's easy to shift time, undo, try another time shift, undo, and so on. So, as a review, this is what I usually do. Play the video. Ctrl 3 when I hear a line. Enter. Ctrl 3 again. Enter. Ctrl 3. Enter. Ctrl 3. Enter. Ctrl 3. Enter. Select the lines. Right click. Make times continuous. Ctrl I. Set the shift distance. Set it to backward. Done. You can save the file as its default file type called ASS or Advanced Substation Alpha, whatever that means. Or, to save it as the popular SRT format, go to Export Subtitles. Leave everything as default. Click Export. Set the file name. Save. Done. I would advise saving your file as an ASS file if you're not yet done, and only export as SRT when you're done. Anyway, the difference between these two is that styles are retained in ASS files. Styles? Yeah, styles like these which are usually seen in anime music videos. Speaking of which, I have a few in my Now Dead Karaoke Dojo channel if you want to see some samples. Every one of those videos are of course copyright claim. So, yeah. Feel free to check out my other tutorial videos on OBS, streaming, Twitch redeems, overlays, and so on. If you like what you see, please consider subscribing to my channel and or hitting the like and share buttons. Alright, if you have any questions, please let me know in the comments, or in my Discord, or anywhere you know how to reach me. See you in the next video. Thanks for watching.

ai AI Insights
Summary

Generate a brief summary highlighting the main points of the transcript.

Generate
Title

Generate a concise and relevant title for the transcript based on the main themes and content discussed.

Generate
Keywords

Identify and highlight the key words or phrases most relevant to the content of the transcript.

Generate
Enter your query
Sentiments

Analyze the emotional tone of the transcript to determine whether the sentiment is positive, negative, or neutral.

Generate
Quizzes

Create interactive quizzes based on the content of the transcript to test comprehension or engage users.

Generate
{{ secondsToHumanTime(time) }}
Back
Forward
{{ Math.round(speed * 100) / 100 }}x
{{ secondsToHumanTime(duration) }}
close
New speaker
Add speaker
close
Edit speaker
Save changes
close
Share Transcript