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My first (and only project so far) was quite the learning experience. I'm not doing anything tricky or advanced like video editing, special effects, or the like--I was just putting together subtitles. As with anything else, though, there was a substantial edumacational curve.
So here's what I found, and I hope this spares others from wasting time and energy:
*Jubler simply kicks ass for the creation of subtitles. Specify times, down to the millisecond, when you wanted a subtitle to start, and the corresponding video image will appear. As you type your subtitles, they appear on the still image. Adjusting the subtitle duration, start and end times is a cinch. Can export subtitles to multiple file types, including .ssa and .ass.
*I really wanted to like Avidemux. It's available on multiple platforms; it purportedly allows the addition of subtitle files; and it's friggin' free.
But there are some issues:
Avidemux 2.5.4 (the latest version) won't load .ass subtitles files. In fact, it won't load any subtitle files at all. So I used 2.5.3, which loads more basic, less customizable .srt files.
2.5.3 doesn't offer enough options for subtitle positioning. If only .ass files could be used. . . .
Also, the last line of subtitles was dropped. Solution: create one last subtitle that was blank; then the penultimate subtitles appear.
I could live with those issues. But the audio/video decoupling problems were insurmountable.
First of all, because the source file was an H.264 encoding with B-frames, the program tells you outright that there will be a loss of frame rate accuracy. OK. The program then allows you to rebuild the frames. This always resulted in a crash.
I tried rebuilding the audio VBR map. That didn't work, either.
Ultimately, every exported video file contained A/V dyssynchrony, which worsened (i.e., lengthened) as the movie progressed. By the end of the 97-minute movie, the audio and visuals were divorced by four seconds--unacceptable. And using a fixed temporal offset for the audio (e.g., 500 milliseconds) wouldn't fix the problem, because the dyssynchrony was constantly lengthening.
Avidemux, 86ed.
*Next: Submerge by Bitfield. Platform: Mac only. Limitations: couldn't specify font size by point--can only specify small, med, large, XL. Not perfect, but I can live with those options. Subtitle positioning was a bit more precise than Avidemux: one can specify percentage of screen size by which titles can be vertically offset.
Although Submerge can accept .ass files, it won't do all the neat things an .ass file specifies, such as putting some subtitles at the top of the screen, others at the bottom. Okay dokay--not ideal, but that limitation doesn't exactly constitute epic human suffering; I'll just have all my subtitles on the bottom, which ultimately might be easier for the audience.
Submerge also had trouble interpreting m-dashes. Funny strings of characters appeared instead. So I converted them to n-dashes, i.e., hyphens. Again, not ideal, but the compromise isn't exactly fatal.
Some attempts to export movie + burned-in subtitles via Submerge resulted in blank video the first 5 min, 7 seconds. You could still hear the audio, but the screen was the color of a styrofoam storm for that duration.
Finally got a decent encoding via H.264, but even at high bit rates, there was a slight loss of grain and softening of edges. Also, the exported video was a bit brighter than the source material. However, these difference are almost imperceptible; you really have to do side-by-side still image comparisons to tell the difference.
Submerge finally did the job, so I'll be sending them my $9. One bit of warning: an encoding job that should have taken just a couple of hours (I like the Handbrake rule: an mp4 encode should take about as long as the movie length; maybe a little more for H.264 jobs.) took about two days! Some of the non-H.264 encodes took about a day or so for a 97-minute movie.
Shouldn't the program have tapped the video card's H.264 capabilities to speed up the job? My guess is that the program encodes entirely independently of the video card. There is an option to attach an Elgato Turbo H.264 thingamabob to speed things up, but I have no experience with that dongle, so I can't say how much of a speed boost one can expect.
So here's what I found, and I hope this spares others from wasting time and energy:
*Jubler simply kicks ass for the creation of subtitles. Specify times, down to the millisecond, when you wanted a subtitle to start, and the corresponding video image will appear. As you type your subtitles, they appear on the still image. Adjusting the subtitle duration, start and end times is a cinch. Can export subtitles to multiple file types, including .ssa and .ass.
*I really wanted to like Avidemux. It's available on multiple platforms; it purportedly allows the addition of subtitle files; and it's friggin' free.
But there are some issues:
Avidemux 2.5.4 (the latest version) won't load .ass subtitles files. In fact, it won't load any subtitle files at all. So I used 2.5.3, which loads more basic, less customizable .srt files.
2.5.3 doesn't offer enough options for subtitle positioning. If only .ass files could be used. . . .
Also, the last line of subtitles was dropped. Solution: create one last subtitle that was blank; then the penultimate subtitles appear.
I could live with those issues. But the audio/video decoupling problems were insurmountable.
First of all, because the source file was an H.264 encoding with B-frames, the program tells you outright that there will be a loss of frame rate accuracy. OK. The program then allows you to rebuild the frames. This always resulted in a crash.
I tried rebuilding the audio VBR map. That didn't work, either.
Ultimately, every exported video file contained A/V dyssynchrony, which worsened (i.e., lengthened) as the movie progressed. By the end of the 97-minute movie, the audio and visuals were divorced by four seconds--unacceptable. And using a fixed temporal offset for the audio (e.g., 500 milliseconds) wouldn't fix the problem, because the dyssynchrony was constantly lengthening.
Avidemux, 86ed.
*Next: Submerge by Bitfield. Platform: Mac only. Limitations: couldn't specify font size by point--can only specify small, med, large, XL. Not perfect, but I can live with those options. Subtitle positioning was a bit more precise than Avidemux: one can specify percentage of screen size by which titles can be vertically offset.
Although Submerge can accept .ass files, it won't do all the neat things an .ass file specifies, such as putting some subtitles at the top of the screen, others at the bottom. Okay dokay--not ideal, but that limitation doesn't exactly constitute epic human suffering; I'll just have all my subtitles on the bottom, which ultimately might be easier for the audience.
Submerge also had trouble interpreting m-dashes. Funny strings of characters appeared instead. So I converted them to n-dashes, i.e., hyphens. Again, not ideal, but the compromise isn't exactly fatal.
Some attempts to export movie + burned-in subtitles via Submerge resulted in blank video the first 5 min, 7 seconds. You could still hear the audio, but the screen was the color of a styrofoam storm for that duration.
Finally got a decent encoding via H.264, but even at high bit rates, there was a slight loss of grain and softening of edges. Also, the exported video was a bit brighter than the source material. However, these difference are almost imperceptible; you really have to do side-by-side still image comparisons to tell the difference.
Submerge finally did the job, so I'll be sending them my $9. One bit of warning: an encoding job that should have taken just a couple of hours (I like the Handbrake rule: an mp4 encode should take about as long as the movie length; maybe a little more for H.264 jobs.) took about two days! Some of the non-H.264 encodes took about a day or so for a 97-minute movie.
Shouldn't the program have tapped the video card's H.264 capabilities to speed up the job? My guess is that the program encodes entirely independently of the video card. There is an option to attach an Elgato Turbo H.264 thingamabob to speed things up, but I have no experience with that dongle, so I can't say how much of a speed boost one can expect.