#28 Pipe, text selected automatically

[Rick Hunter]

Imagine that you have this text in the pipe:

---

Da miedo de solo pensarlo.

Cuando nos escuche,
pensará que estamos locos.

Inténtelo. Por favor,
desde el principio.

---

As you can see, this example has 3 subtitles separated by a blank line.
Subtitles number 2 and 3 have 2 lines separated by a line break (but this would not be necessary).

The current procedure is to select a piece of the waveform, then manually select the text in the pipe, and then select "Add subtitle from pipe" or its shortcut.

MY SUGGESTION:
Why not having the text selected automatically? When the shortcut is pressed, VSS could select the text in the pipe FROM the first valid character (ignoring spaces and blank lines) UP TO the following line break; then the subtitle is created and the text could be deleted from the pipe ("Auto delete all text before" mode).
Maybe if there IS text selected in the pipe, that text could be used, but if there is nothing selected, VSS could use the first "detected subtitle."

Of course for this to work, the pipe text would have to be properly formatted as in my example.

This would save from 4 to 8 seconds of work for each subtitle, depending on how fast you are in selecting the text in the pipe. For a 1200-subtitle film, we could be saving from 80 to 160 minutes in the timing process.

I'd be happy to hear other people's and the programmers thoughts.

Many thanks and kind regards...

[Christophe PARIS]

If you have some already formatted text, you would suggest to start from an empty project and then use "Edit>Insert file..." menu to import all your text as subtitles.

Subtitles timing will be set after the end of the video (99:00:00).

Then you push the "Normal" button mode to go to the "Timing" mode.
Start the playback and keep the space bar pushed down for the duration of each subtitle.

[Rick Hunter]

OK, but the "Insert text" function does not insert the text correctly. In my example, It would insert blank lines and break two-line subtitles into two subtitles. Of course that function works with "single lines."

Regarding the "space bar" timing method you suggest, it's not even as fast as the SSA-timing method (using left and right mouse buttons) together with the pipe. And it's also much less precise.
That's why I suggested improving the pipe method with the automatic text selection (if the user activates it). The method is VERY good right now, and very well explained in your tutorial. I just think it can get even better.

Of course I'm not asking the change to suit my needs. I was thinking it like this, so that each user decides-- Maybe adding in the Preferences one checkbox and two radiobuttons:

(checkbox) Select text pipe automatically
----- (radiobutton) Subtitles in pipe separated by a blank line
----- (radiobutton) Subtitles in pipe separated by a line break

That's my idea basically. Thanks for answering.