Solved Creating subtitles to be used on DVD & Blu ray.

Hi,

I have Movie Studio Platinum 12 & DVD Architect 5.0. I am looking for advice on what would be the best way of adding subtitles to a video that will be burned to dvd & blu ray. The video is 50 minutes in duration so there will be a large amount of text involved.

Would it be possible to import a text file that would have all the subtitles already written & then just adjust the timings of when they are displayed? or is this something the Pro versions of the software would be more capable of doing.

I would appreciate any advice on this.

Thanks

Only Vegas Pro has the ability to work with Closed Captions.
There is a website called Vasst that makes plugins for Sony Vegas.
They have a special program called Caption Assistant which does exactly what you want, however it only works with Vegas Pro.
vasst.com/store/caption-assistant-closed-caption-plugin-for-sony-vegas-pro-1.aspx

If you are using Movie Studio Platinum, you will have to do the whole process manually using Titles & Text and add 100's of individual Text Media events for each line of text.

Regards
Derek.

Hi Derek,

Thanks for getting back to me. Yeah I was afraid that would be the case, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't overlooking something with my existing software. I checked that information & link to the Vasst plugin you sent. It would quite expensive to upgrade to Vegas pro & then get the plugin, so that's a non runner for me but thanks for the info.

I've done some more research & found a free program called Subtitle Workshop that lets you export the titles in a text file that can be used in DVD Architect Pro once it is exported with a Sonic DVD setting (.sub)

I looked up the the price of DVD Architect Pro 6.0 (€189 ex vat) so I might chance my arm & contact Sony to see if I can get an upgrade price on DVD Architect 5.0 that might reduce that price. I will be able to use my already setup DVD Architect project file in Pro so that would be one less thing to do also.

Here is the download link for the Subtitle program if anyone else would like to use it.
( subworkshop.sourceforge.net/ )

Thanks,

Niall

Subtitles and Closed Captions are 2 different beasts...
You don't need VASST plugin for creating subtitles, you just need a text editor, but a specialized software (eg. Subtitle Workshop) would be the best choice.

Hi Altarvic

The reason I mentioned the Vasst plugin, is because that was the only Text Editor I knew of that works with text and timings.
Thanks for suggesting Subtitle Workshop, which I was not aware of.
subworkshop.sourceforge.net/
Can you explain how you would integrate that into a Movie Studio / Vegas Pro workflow ?

I will check this out myself when I find some extra time.

Hi Niall

As Altarvic pointed out, Subtitles and Closed Captions are two different things.
I was answering a lot of messages yesterday and only gave you a very brief & quick reply with something that I already knew about.
Subtitle Workshop looks good.
I have never used this product so don't understand it's workflow yet.
You may be able to use this tool and add all your subtitles inside your actual Movie Studio project, which means you don't need DVD Architect Pro at all.

When I have some time, I am going to investigate this topic further myself, because I would like to learn how to do this.

Derek.

Hi Derek,

No problem at all you're grand. I tried to import a the subtitles from Subtitle Workshop into Movie Studio as you suggested just to see, but that doesn't work as it doesn't recognise the file format. It was worth a try,

I only had short go of Subtitle Workshops but it seems to work very well. If you are going to use it with DVD Architect Pro just make sure you save the file is a Sonic DVD Creator file (.sub) as I read that it is the only setting compatible with DVD Architect.

Also, I contacted Sony regarding an upgrade price for DVD Architect Pro 6.0 from DVD Architect 5.0 but they said there was no official upgrade price but they did however give me a 20% promotional code to use on any of their software which I thought was pretty good. So it might be well worth your while contacting Sony the next time you want to upgrade your software even if there are no official deals available.

Thanks,

Niall

Hi Niall

I just spent a couple of hours mucking around with Subtitle Workshop.
Yes it works very well with DVD Architect Pro.
I will probably use this myself for some future projects I have planned.

My suggestion if you are thinking about doing any upgrades, is to go all the way and buy Vegas Pro, because DVD Architect Pro comes with Vegas Pro for free.
To get the most out of DVDA Pro, you need to have the tools that come with Vegas Pro as well.
Example = Only Vegas Pro includes Dolby Pro Encoder for making sound tracks for your DVDs.

Keep in mind that Sony Creative Software is always doing special sales via email only, so make sure you are subscribed to their Newsletter.
A few times each year, they normally offer extra special discounts for upgrading from Movie Studio Platinum to Vegas Pro.
Whatever you decide to do, make sure to buy via the upgrade links on Sony Creative Software here .

Hi Derek,

Yeah that's a good point that Vegas Pro has more tools & options that I will might need also so it would make sense to buy it as it comes with DVD Architect 6. I am going to have a think about it & see what I will do.

Thanks,

Niall