The beginners’ subtitling guide – Using .SRT files for subtitles

Subtitling of a movie is a simple process. You can use an automated engine like YouTube, to automatically transcribe the spoken sentences in your movie, and even translate it (via Google’s automatic translation engine within YouTube) and then download the resulting subtitles file. Watch this video to learn more.

This is a good way to prepare for the dubbing process, as long as you do not forget that these automatic features aren’t 100% correct and you need to proof the result, and manually correct Google’s mistakes.

Also, remember to specify ‘Private’ when you upload a movie to YouTube, so your movie won’t be shared by anyone (unless you want to), and delete it when you’re done using their subtitling service.

Another way to go is to download and install a simple subtitling application. There are several freeware applications, and we personally like Subtitle Edit, which works well on Windows machines (although some of it’s conversion tools aren’t perfect yet).

You can always prepare your own .SRT files manually. It’s fairly simple. Use this tutorial to guide you through the process.

Eventually, your subtitles will look like that:

1
00:00:21,000 --> 00:00:23,000
Thank You. 

2
00:00:27,000 --> 00:00:30,019
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement

3
00:00:30,019 --> 00:00:32,737
from one of the finest universities in the world.

Important: Be sure to punctuate (using commas, periods, etc.) every 8-10 words, to make the right emphasises, and to let the digital voice sound more natural.

Also, do not forget to save your subtitles file in text format with Unicode UTF-8 encoding, which supports all languages.

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