SubtitleTuner - a Subtitle Editor with special features
Subtitle Timing
Have you ever been annoyed by badly created subtitles that disappear before you were able to read them?
It is completely wrong when subtitles are a full transcript of all spoken dialogs in a movie.
The eye is by far slower in reading a text than the ear is in listening the same text.
Therefore correctly created subtitles should always be a shortened version of the spoken dialogs.
It is absolute nonsense to write all the words that the actors speak into the subtitles.
The longer the subtitles the more they distract from watching the movie image.
This software helps in creating subtitles of higher quality.
It calculates automatically the display length of each subtitle and corrects it.
Obviously longer texts must be displayed a longer time than shorter texts.
Minimum time per character:
You can configure the average time that the movie viewer needs to read one character. The default is 90 milliseconds.
This time is then multipled with the count of characters.
So a text with 20 characters should be displayed for 1800 ms.
But with this alone very short subtitles like for example the text "Yes" with 3 letters would pop up too short.
Minimum total time:
Therefore a second time can be configured that defines the minimum time for all subtitles independent of the text length.
This total display time has a default value of 1500 milliseconds (1,5 seconds).
So each subtitle should be displayed at least 1,5 seconds, no matter how short it is.
But this is only possible if the next subtitle does not follow immediately.
Background colors:
In the above screenshot the third column "Time" shows the display time of the subtitle from the SRT file.
The next column "T/C" is the calculated Time per Character in milliseconds.
A white background means the timing is OK.
Yellow means the subtitle is displayed between 80% and 100% of the calculated minimum display time.
Orange means between 60% and 80% of the minimum time.
Red means less than 60% of the minimum time.
So when you see yellow, organge or red the subtitle text should be shortened.
A Red background in the column 'Text' indicates an error: when a subtitle has more than 2 lines.
Buttons
Button "Calc End Time"
This button calculates the display time of all subtitles and corrects them.
It tries to set the display time = 90 ms multipled with the character count.
It tries to set a minimum length of at least 1500 ms for all subtitles.
But the display time is limited if the next subtitle comes too early.
Button "Reset Timing"
This button resets the Start and End times to the times that were loaded from the SRT file.
In case you have changed the timing and clicked "Save" this button resets to the last timings that you have saved.
Button "Delete Italic, Bold"
This button removes all <i>....</i> and <b>....</b> tags, so all subtitles are displayed with regular text.
Button "Delete Lyrics"
This button removes all subtitles that contain the note symbol ♪ which is used in subtitles with song lyrics.
I find it a big nonsese to translate the text of a movie background music in the subtitles.
Button "Delete Deaf"
This button deletes all comments for deaf people, like [Phone ringing] or [Applause].
Button "To ANSI"
Normally you don't need this button.
But I made the error to buy a TV from LG Electronics. (Never do that!)
This
stupid shit is not able to display UTF-8 subtitles, so I need this button to convert the subtitles to ANSI (
Codepage 1252).
The ANSI charset can display special characters of European languages, like ñ ß à á â ã ä å æ ç è é ê ë ø ù ú û ü ý þ ÿ.
But all characters that have an ASCII code above 255 like the Euro € or music ♪ symbol are removed.
Buttons "Search First" and "Search Next"
These buttons allow to search all subtitles that contain the given text.
Keyboard Shortcuts
Key "F2"
This key starts editing the selected cell in the grid, the same does a double click on the cell.
Only the columns 'Start' and 'Text' can be edited. The other cells are calculated automatically.
The 'End' time is calculated when you click the button 'Calc End Time'.
Key "DEL"
This key deletes the subtitle in the selected row.
Keys "CTRL + M"
This key combination merges the subtitle in the selected row with the next.
The new subtitle gets the 'Start' time from the first and the 'End' time from the second subtitle.
The text of the second subtitle is appended to the first as a new line.
Resynchronizing Subtitles
You need the button "Resync" when you have downloaded subtitles that do not match your video file.
In this case you must watch a scene at the begin of the movie and notice the time difference between spoken text and subtitle.
Then you must watch a scene at the end of the movie. Is the offset the same?
There are two modes of re-synchronisation:
Constant Offset
Are all subtitles shifted by the same amount of time?
For example all subtitles come 2 seconds too late.
In this case you have a simple steady offset.
Make a double click in the column "Start" of any subtitle and edit the time.
Subtract 2 seconds from the "Start" time and then click the button "Resync".
SubtitleTuner will re-calculate all the subtitles.
Varying Offset
If the time offset is increasing or decreasing during the movie the subtitles were probably made for another frame rate.
In this case you must enter two new Start times: One at the begin of the movie and one at the end.
It is not necessary to modify the very first and the very last subtitle, but they should be quite far from each other.
Editing
Watch the video for example in VLC Player and in the moment when the spoken text "Mira, bicho" comes you note the time.
For example at 5 minutes and 39 seconds.
Then you double click the column "Start" of the subtitle "Mira, bicho" and enter the new time:
Then click the button "Resync" and the subtitles will be synchronized with your video file.
Download
SubtitleTuner is freeware.
It runs on Windows XP, 7, 8, 10 and 11.
If you have Windows XP or Windows 7 you may have to install the .NET framework 4.
Feedback
You can send any reports or suggestions in english, spanish or german to:
