Subtitle Edit Review - The Best Free Subtitling and Captioning Software

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 i'll 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 capturing 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 capturing 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 is 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 is also another free app subtitling application called ig sub but unfortunately it's been a long time since that application was updated so if i was comparing subtitle edit and ig sub 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 espana 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 i just import optical character recognition from vob info dvd 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 see 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 non-linear 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 servers 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 uh 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 youtube sbv youtube transcript youtube transcript one line it really depends on what you're uh looking at even webvtt which is uh what 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 encryption format or not subtitle edit will do the job for you the next thing i always like about it is the layout and 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 uh 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 is 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 7 seconds this is at 8 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 uh 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 see the text it's 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 screen 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 uh our single line max length is a 43 normally 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 uh 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 uh 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 608 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 up 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 how to save really depends on what you're working on if you feel that you might forget to save always ensure that you select the autosave option but you 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 sync syntax color uh you can see what i was saying color duration if too short color duration is too long for example this is eight seconds and a couple of milliseconds on top then we get a color era color this is the era 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 direction or 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 uh 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 things so that you differentiate what is going on then as for the text color we can maybe even decide to go with the white let's click white okay and if we click on ok it changes to white now the reason why we 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 uh information you want to see uh 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 is 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 uh to see uh what is available for you and you can see the option of 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 tick on it uh and remove you can also show the frame rate in a video now frame rate can affect uh 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 uh and also we can check out the fonts uh what they use are by default on subtitle edit is the homer and the subtitle color and the background atc 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 the basic uh 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 like to talk about something else and this is encoding uh it may not be really uh popular issue but the writing coding can make sure your file is either visible or not feasible so a subtitle edit comes packed with a bunch of uh 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 uh 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 you'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 no 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 uh you're working with such a file then one of the things that you'll 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'll 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 atc so if you're working with right to left languages then subtitle edit is the subtitling and captioning software that i 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 uh that's just some of the few basic things that i'd say subtitle edit really wins that uh 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 uh well 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 time code 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 you can just say module lines and break lines so that you uh just do that and 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 uh 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 uh 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 uh alignment the srt subtitle format doesn't allow uh 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 phones any styling that you do so you'll notice that it gets the ans aan8 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 um 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 just are these few options available top left uh 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 uh let's see we go to this styles this is for now what 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 ban them with the 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 uh 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 ban your subtitle to the video let's say you're working with a webvtt or an srt file and you just want to ban it as it is not many applications will support right to left languages which is unfortunate therefore if subtitle edit will just add the option to ban 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 ban 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 software's 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 uh 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

Channel: David Mbugua

Views: 45,575

Keywords: Subtitle Edit Review, best free subtitling and captioning software, free subtitling software review, free captioning software review, Subtitle edit, best subtitling software, subtitle edit online, srt subtitles, ass subtitle, ssa subtitle, edit subtitles with subtitle edit, create subtitles with subtitle edit, convert subtitles with subtitle edit, free closed captioning software, closed captioning software, permanently add subtitles to video, free subtitle editor

Id: RRGRgZn7Nog

Length: 26min 36sec (1596 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 22 2020