Speaker 1: In this video, I'd like to do a quick subtitle edit review, which I consider the best free subtitling and captioning software available on Windows and Linux. Hi, my name is David. And if this is your first time watching my video tutorials, and you get value from what you watch, kindly consider subscribing. Now, this video is about me talking about the good things about subtitle edit, which if you're on a budget, and you're a translator, subtitler, or captioner, you can use to do the job that you need to do, and it will still deliver the best results that you need. And although it is a positive, I only have two issues with subtitle edit that I wish were addressed so that I can only use subtitle edit to do some of the few things that I might need to do in other applications. So you'll need to stick around to the end so that you can get to know what two things that I don't like with subtitle edit. At any time if you feel like you need to jump down the line, I'll make sure to include the timestamps for this particular video so that you can move along and check out what you need to check out. So let us begin with number one. Why do I think subtitle edit is the best subtitling and captioning software, which is free because they are paid applications. And the first reason is the simple fact that subtitle edit is a free subtitling and captioning software that is packed with a ton of features that compete with paid applications. Now I'm saying that because you'll get everything that you need to do subtitles or captions for your videos. It doesn't matter whether you're doing it for Netflix or just your own videos, but you can do everything you need inside subtitle edit. That out of the way, it's free, it's open source, and it's available for Windows and Linux. And there's also an online version. Now, sorry, Mac guys, it's not available on Mac, I don't think I've seen anything. But you can use the online version, although it's limited to what it looks like. The second thing that I love about subtitle edit is that when you come up to help, check for updates, then you'll notice that whether you're using the old version or the new version, you'll notice that it's updated frequently. If you don't have the latest updates, you'll get the latest updates from here. So for this being a free application with constant updates and contributors that contribute all the time, then that is almost a plus for me because one thing you need to look at in free applications, or even in any paid application is how often they updated. There's also another free subtitling application called igsub. But unfortunately, it's been a long time since that application was updated. So if I was comparing subtitle edit and igsub, I'd go with subtitle edit any day. So that's on the updates. The next thing is on languages. Subtitle edit supports over 30 languages. And by that I mean, its interface. If you wanted to change the language, this is in English, you'll just come to options, choose language. And then once you click on the drop down, you'll see a bunch of languages that you can choose. Let's say we go with Espanol, Hispana, okay. And there we go. Everything changes. You just come back to the options, select the languages, we go back to English. Here we go. Okay. And basically, you can use it in the supported languages, if you don't speak in English, or if you understand the languages or the language that you're going to be using better. So that's a plus for this being a free application. And that is one thing I'd always say is pretty awesome with subtitle edit. The next point is that subtitle edit supports over 280 import and export formats. And for this being a free application to support all those many formats, then that's a plus. And if you come up to the file, and check out the import options, you can see some of the import options are just import optical character recognition from VOB, InfoDVD, and all these things. These are just some of the few import options. But if you decided to say let's open and check out the subtitle files, then almost any subtitle or file that is a subtitle will be imported. That's how good subtitle edit is. And when it comes to the export options, let's say let's just open a dummy subtitle here. Let's just open this file, let's just click on open, this is already prepared. Let's say we wanted to export. Now we can either come up to file and go to export. When you use the particular option to export, this particular option is what is supported by either nonlinear editing softwares, like Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere Pro, Avid, all these are some of the formats that are supported by those particular applications. But this is not all. When you go to the service option, and then click on the drop down, there is a ton of options that come up. So you can go from the same options we just checked out in the export options to a ton of options, depending on where your file is destined. So that's why they're saying they support over 280 subtitle formats for where you need it YouTube SBV, YouTube transcript, YouTube transcript one line, it really depends on what you're looking at even web VTT, which is what is becoming very common nowadays as an alternative to SRT subtitle files. So if you're looking for an application that will support almost any subtitle and caption format on Earth, subtitle edit will do the job for you. The next thing I always like about it is the layout. Not many people will talk about the layout. Yes, you can you can adjust the layout depending on how you want it. But this is how I like the layout. You're seeing your text here. You can type inside here, your video to the right, and the waveform at the bottom. And if I add a video, go to video, open video file, just add a video that corresponds to this particular subtitle. And there we have it. It may take some time to generate if it's your first time, but since I had already opened this particular file, then it doesn't take a long time. You'll also need to generate the audio waveform and depending on the length of the video, it may take some time before it's done. But since this is already done, we can all appreciate that the layout where you see the list view. And this is where you see the start time and time duration text. If there's an issue, then you'll notice that either the text will get a coloring of sorts because I've set my configurations to be a maximum of seven seconds, this is at eight seconds. Therefore, the duration will get some coloring. You can also check out the source view. This is maybe what you'll see when you open a subtitle file or an SRT subtitle file in Notepad. And then if you wanted to change anything, you can just type in here. And in this particular text, you'll see the total length, the single line length. So it's pretty important when we can see all these right off the bat. On our right is our video. And this particular section is good so that you'll be able to understand what your subtitles will be like once you're done. You can be able to see if it's corresponding to the waveform and to the subtitles. The waveform. This is potentially one of the best places to look at, because whenever you're trying to synchronize subtitles, you'll always check out these particular sections. If you feel it's not synchronized well, you can just move it to where you want it to begin. It's really that simple. And you'll see the text is usually highlighted in the color that you select. But I believe by default, it's red. And when it's not selected, it's in a light green. And then you'll see the subtitle that corresponds to that particular waveform. And you can just double click to get to the next one. Double click to get to the next one. And now you'll start seeing your text on screen. If by any chance you're not seeing your text on screen, then that means that your configurations are slightly different from mine. So let's get into the configurations. Subtitle edit is highly customizable. And the reason why I'm saying that this is because whenever you come to the options and choose settings, you can do almost anything that you want right in here. So the general option, maybe this is what you use a lot. It's got the rules. And these are the rules that govern how your text looks, the single line length, the characters per second, maximum characters per second, and everything in between. So for example, let's say our single line max length is 43. Normally, you just work with between 32 and 42. Let's say it's 43. Then this is what it's going to it's going to look like. And this really influences the color you get here. For example, if I lower this down to 37, and then we can just click on OK. There we have it. If anything gets past that, then chances are, I'll get a notification. Let's let's just do something that's more practical 32 and just click on OK. Now once we do that, you'll notice that we get these particular notifications, the red marks because the characters exceed what we've set. So if you're working with a client, or your videos, you want them to have 32 characters per second, and this is what was used in 6 or 8 caption formats, then you have to configure here. But even before we continue further, you can also set any of these particular files that you're working with. If you're doing Netflix English, you can just select on that profile, and you'll get to see the options that they have for their particular subtitles. And this is very important. If you get a gig with Netflix, or the companies that hire for Netflix, Netflix other languages, Netflix Dutch, everything may be different, but just make sure that you set everything as you want it and then you can click on the three dots so that you can change, import, or even export a particular setting that you've prepared so that somebody else can use it so that you can make sure that your work is identical to theirs. Therefore, the general section of the settings area is the most important section. Whether you are working with videos at a different frame rate, ensure that you do all this. Also, when you come to this particular section, always ensure that you set the settings as you need them. You can do auto backups, auto save, really depends on what you're working on. If you feel that you might forget to save, always ensure that you select the auto save option. But we can just come to default and then restore default settings. Okay, we go back to that. That's okay. Once we do that, everything else goes. If we go back to the options, the settings, and the syntax color, you can see what I was saying. Color duration if too short, color duration if too long, for example, this is eight seconds and a couple of milliseconds on top, then we get a color, error color, this is the error color. And then you can set up all this everything else as it is required. We go to the video player, really depends on the video player that you choose either direct show, VLC, MPV. And for this particular tutorial, I chose the MPV. And the reason why I chose the MPV is because let me just double click on subtitle here, options settings with let's go video player, the MPV option allows me to see the subtitles inside here. Now, if you choose any of this direct show VLC, for some strange reason, I couldn't get them to show inside the subtitle, you always push up the video up and have a black section down here that I can work with. So that's something else that I really, really appreciate. If you have anything else that you want to add here, let's say dictionaries, or any other research resource, you can always add here. We can also check out the waveform. The waveform is what is down here. And the waveform is one of the best things. And as I've mentioned, it can help you synchronize your files to almost the exact position where you need the subtitle to get to, which is very important in subtitling. People need to see what is being said, when it is being said, and without any delay, or even being too fast, it needs to just be at the right time. And the waveform helps in ensuring that subtitles are accurately synchronized. Now, you can decide to have whatever color you want. These are just the most important thing so that you differentiate what is going on. Then as for the text color, we can maybe even decide to go with a white. Let's click white. Okay, and if we click on OK, it changes to white. Now, the reason why you might need to change that is because let's go back to the waveform. You may want to see what is going on here. Since this is a black background, it makes it more legible than the gray that was there. So you can choose that. And you can choose to show the grid lines, show characters per second, show words per minute, really depends on what you want, and how much information you want to see. Personally, I just leave it as it is. We can check also check out some of the tools for visual sync, spell checking, and also things like music symbols, all these options that are easily available for you. And therefore, this makes it a really good option when you're subtitling videos. And also, you can also add API keys for Google Translate or Microsoft Translator. Automatic translation isn't really not the best thing that we can use, but it's really a good option. We can also go back to the toolbar, check out the toolbar. And the toolbar is this particular section up here. What happens here is that it gives you the option to see what is available for you. And you can see the option to add a new, open, save, save as, find, replace, fix errors, everything is included here. So if you feel that you need to remove some of the few things, you can just click on it and remove. You can also show the frame rate in a video. Now, frame rate can affect synchronization, especially if you work or create subtitles in a lower or higher frame rate than what the video has. So it's important to know that. And also we can check out the fonts, what they use by default on subtitle edit is the Homer and the subtitle color, and the background, etc. So this is important. If you want to work with a different subtitle font, then you can do that. Finally, I'd like us to look at the ASS or SSC style in the settings options, because this is part of the configuration. Now, advanced substation alpha subtitles, or substation alpha subtitle style helps you configure this particular subtitle that you see on screen to have a background, to have different positioning, and all that. So the reason why I like this particular option is that if I click on the opaque box, then we get a particular color, depending on the color that we have for the particular text. So if you're working with subtitles that require backgrounds, then this is very, very good. And also, whenever you want to add permanent subtitles to a video, having backgrounds to your subtitles does some trick for that. So that's just a basic overview on the customizations that are available, which is a big plus to subtitle edit, especially for it being a free application that you can be able to do all these types of configurations. Now, I'd like to talk about something else and this is encoding. It may not be a really popular issue, but the right encoding can make sure your file is either visible or not visible. So a subtitle edit comes back with a bunch of encoding formats because different languages have different encoding formats. So for example, here we have a bunch of encoding formats. And you can always look up what these formats mean, depending on the language that you're working on. So for example, for us, we use UTF with BOM, there's also UTF without BOM, you can just check that up during your free time. So this is important to know when you're working in different languages, the type of encoding you need to select. So we just select UTF with BOM, since that's what we're working with. Now, the next thing that I'd like to talk about is something called right to left, let's just open a new option, I don't want to save now. And right to left languages, for example, Arabic. These are languages that are read from the right side to the left, normally we read from left to right. But with Arabic, Hebrew, etc, you can check out right to left languages, you'll notice that these languages, if you're working with such languages, and I'll open an Arabic subtitle file. Here we go. If I open it up, and then I'll just click on video, let's just open a video, open video double click, let's just double click here. If you're working with such a file, then one of the things that you need to notice is that the full stop is on the right at this time. But in real sense, it should be the other way around, the full stop should be towards this direction. Therefore, what do you need to do? To enable right to left, which is something that's used by a lot of people, then you need to come to edit, right to left mode or press Ctrl Alt Shift R. That's too much, just click on right to left, and everything will move to the other direction. You'll notice here the full stops are in the other direction. It's just changed to the other direction. The name will be in the right way, it doesn't change since it's a name, etc. So if you're working with right to left languages, then subtitle edit is the subtitling and captioning software that I'd tell you to select. It's simple, because you can do this inside subtitle edit. And as I've also mentioned, is that it supports a ton of languages, that is the interface itself. So that's really, really important. That's just some of the few basic things that I'd say, subtitle edit really wins that. And if you want to do, let's say, open a second subtitle. If you wanted to even change the format of the subtitle, right from here, let's just press S. Let's say we go to SRT, it just changes. And once you go to save, you'll notice that the source view has changed. The only option remaining is just to save. So really depends on what you're working with. If you want to just create subtitles, then you can do that easily. If you want to convert subtitles from one format to the other, if you want to strip the timecode from the subtitle to just plain text, you can just come here file, export, export custom text or even plain text, it's just there. Just unbreak lines, I can just say merge all lines, unbreak lines, so that you just do that. And there's the option to do this remove styling and anything else that you want in there. Now, let's just look at file, let's just open, let's go to the English, back to the English. And then go back to the edit option, remove the right to left. And then let's now look at something that is important. Now, what is important here is that you can also do something called alignment. So let's say this particular text or subtitle is covering an important section here, then all I can do is just right click it, alignment, and then click top center, and the subtitle moves to the top center. Please know that not all subtitle formats support alignment, the SRT subtitle format doesn't allow alignment of text. But you can use something like ASS advanced substation alpha, this particular format, you can save this particular file as an ASS. And this will easily retain the alignment, the fonts, any other styling that you do. So you'll notice that it gets the AN8 into this. So that shows the new positioning. And you can do that for a bunch of things. But let's say we also wanted to do, let's say, color. Let's give it a yellow. Okay, we can just double click on this. And this has turned yellow. So with the ASS subtitle format, then we can see that there is a difference in all that they can change the color, you can change the positioning and all that. But now, the only thing I have with this is that the problem with subtitle edit, and this is now just wrapping up this video, is that whenever you want to do the positioning or the alignment, they're just these few options available. Top left, if you just go back, here we go, alignment, top right, is just limited alignment. I wish the alignment had the option to either configure in terms of x and y axis, where you can just either add a number for the x and y coordinates in here. So that's something that I'd like to see. Let's see, we go to the styles. This is for now what I mentioned initially, creating this particular advanced substation alpha, where it supports the background, a font, a font size, etc. And it's very, very good, especially now that Handbrake supports import of ASS and SSA subtitles, you can easily create advanced substation alpha subtitles in subtitle edit, and bind them with a styling. For example, this one with the text being up here with this particular styling inside Handbrake. And I already have a tutorial on that. So you can check it out when you feel you have the time. So that's out of the way. Let's we go back to the Arabic file, new, no, it's just open. Let's just open the Arabic file. And then file edit, go to right to left, video. Let's open the video. Here we go. The final issue I have with subtitle edit is because whenever you work with right to left languages, chances are most applications that can permanently burn your subtitle to the video. Let's say you're working with a web VTT or an SRT file, and you just want to burn it as it is. Not many applications will support right to left languages, which is unfortunate. Therefore, if subtitle edit would just add the option to burn the video as it is, that would be a game changer. If they just added that, then this would ensure that we we can do all the work we needed inside subtitle edit. And that includes having the alignment options streamlined into x and y axis, and also having the options to permanently burn subtitles using subtitle edit, it would be really awesome to have that feature inside subtitle edits. And although it's a free application, I've mentioned, it's doing what paid subtitling and captioning softwares can do just a few limitations, but I'm sure with time, they'll catch up to that. So basically, that is a quick in depth review. And I'm sorry if it took so long for you. But it's a review that I think will benefit somebody who's interested in learning and either who is on a budget and wants to subtitle and caption videos. Thank you so much for watching. Until next time, stay safe and never stop learning. Thank you so much for watching this video.