I used Subtitle Workshop 2.51 years ago and seem to
remember that it was possible to load a plain text file (Windows
txt) without any time codes or anything into SW and then go over
the video and add the necessary time codes to each line in the
text file. In v6.0 this seems no longer possible. If i try to do
this I keep getting the error message "bad subtitle or unsupported
format." Is there a way to circumvent this and load all the lines
of text in batch? Any help would be appreciated!
Last edit: Andrey Spiridonov 2014-02-15
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Select File > Load subtitle...
Then, in the "Files of type" filter scroll all the way down to the bottom and select "Plain text (.txt)", then select your file and open it.
Hope that helps.
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Anonymous
Anonymous
-
2020-11-08
Post awaiting moderation.
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Anonymous
Anonymous
-
2014-03-15
While it does load plain text files, SW breaks each subtitle into its own line.
For example, this:
What's going on
with that copter?
It's the 43rd floor, Melvin.
Helicopters happen.
Well, it could be the cops.
Focus, Melvin. The gun.
ends up as this in SW:
What's going on
with that copter?
It's the 43rd floor, Melvin.
Helicopters happen.
Well, it could be the cops.
Focus, Melvin. The gun.
Now, in 2.51 that was actually avoidable by adding blank .srt timings in front of each separate line, such as "00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000", and it would load the file perfectly, with each double line intact.
SW 6 however, loads such files with the second line of each subtitle cut off, so you end up with this:
What's going on
It's the 43rd floor, Melvin.
Well, it could be the cops.
If you have a subtitle with 4 lines instead of 2 (I accidentally combined and didn't notice) importing it with blank timecode yields this result:
this:
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
What's going on
with that copter?
It's the 43rd floor, Melvin.
Helicopters happen.
becomes this:
What's going on
with that copter?
It's the 43rd floor, Melvin.
So from what I can tell, when using blank timecodes for each line, SW 6 somehow cuts off only the last line.
Sorry for the long post, and this may have been better suited to go into bug reports, but it seemed relevant here :)
--
eQuiNoX
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
You can't expect Subtitle Workshop to have consistent behavior for doing something it's not supposed to do. That's why it's also not a bug, because that's not something SW is programmed to do.
What you had in 2.51 was a workaround for your problem, and now you need another workaround when this one no longer works. Your old workaround is no longer working, because it was wrong even when it was working - SubRip files also need to have a subtitle number, not just timing and text. So you were creating an incorrect SubRip file, which, luckily for you, SW 2.51 was able to read.
Now the reading algorithm for SubRip is more strict and doesn't allow such files.
So a similar workaround to yours that would work would be to add FAB subtitle timings instead of SubRip timings in the text files, because FAB doesn't require the subtitle number. So instead of adding SubRip timings:
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
just add FAB timings:
00:00:00:00 00:00:00:00
and the file will open correctly as a FAB subtitle.
Notice that there are 2 spaces between the two numbers, not just one.
All that being said, I want to add that in future versions of Subtitle Workshop I'll be adding an option to open Plain Text files the way you want - where a single subtitle can have more than one line, and only full blank lines (two new lines in a row) will separate the subtitles, not every single new line.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
I used Subtitle Workshop 2.51 years ago and seem to
remember that it was possible to load a plain text file (Windows
txt) without any time codes or anything into SW and then go over
the video and add the necessary time codes to each line in the
text file. In v6.0 this seems no longer possible. If i try to do
this I keep getting the error message "bad subtitle or unsupported
format." Is there a way to circumvent this and load all the lines
of text in batch? Any help would be appreciated!
Last edit: Andrey Spiridonov 2014-02-15
You can still load plain text.
Select File > Load subtitle...
Then, in the "Files of type" filter scroll all the way down to the bottom and select "Plain text (.txt)", then select your file and open it.
Hope that helps.
While it does load plain text files, SW breaks each subtitle into its own line.
For example, this:
ends up as this in SW:
Now, in 2.51 that was actually avoidable by adding blank .srt timings in front of each separate line, such as "00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000", and it would load the file perfectly, with each double line intact.
SW 6 however, loads such files with the second line of each subtitle cut off, so you end up with this:
If you have a subtitle with 4 lines instead of 2 (I accidentally combined and didn't notice) importing it with blank timecode yields this result:
So from what I can tell, when using blank timecodes for each line, SW 6 somehow cuts off only the last line.
Sorry for the long post, and this may have been better suited to go into bug reports, but it seemed relevant here :)
--
eQuiNoX
You can't expect Subtitle Workshop to have consistent behavior for doing something it's not supposed to do. That's why it's also not a bug, because that's not something SW is programmed to do.
What you had in 2.51 was a workaround for your problem, and now you need another workaround when this one no longer works. Your old workaround is no longer working, because it was wrong even when it was working - SubRip files also need to have a subtitle number, not just timing and text. So you were creating an incorrect SubRip file, which, luckily for you, SW 2.51 was able to read.
Now the reading algorithm for SubRip is more strict and doesn't allow such files.
So a similar workaround to yours that would work would be to add FAB subtitle timings instead of SubRip timings in the text files, because FAB doesn't require the subtitle number. So instead of adding SubRip timings:
just add FAB timings:
and the file will open correctly as a FAB subtitle.
Notice that there are 2 spaces between the two numbers, not just one.
All that being said, I want to add that in future versions of Subtitle Workshop I'll be adding an option to open Plain Text files the way you want - where a single subtitle can have more than one line, and only full blank lines (two new lines in a row) will separate the subtitles, not every single new line.