Surtitle software

[andy_s]

After a slightly painful experience in Italy with locally provided surtitles for our show performed in English, I've been asked to suggest how to make improvements, as they are keen to invite more English Language theatre out there.

 

Just wondered what recommendations people might have for suitable software? I'm aware of Glypheo, which seems to be pretty simple and straightforward, but my googling hasn't produced much for PC use, (Glypheo is Mac-only), apart from some suggestions to use Powerpoint. Somehow, I don't think that can be the best way....

[beware]

Never tried it, but Qstit seems to come up often in googles.

 

http://subtitles.nova-cinema.org/download_v3.en.php

[IRW]

How do your surtitles arrive with you? A plain text file? One of the Opera Festival's that I'm involved with just uses Powerpoint, and like you, I've always thought this a rather poor (and not to mention time consuming) way of going about it.

 

Given a brief, I could probably write something basic and cross platform in a matter of minutes (or hours for something a little more user friendly...!)

 

 

 

 

[andy_s]

Never tried it, but Qstit seems to come up often in googles.

 

http://subtitles.nova-cinema.org/download_v3.en.php

thanks, I'll have a look. I've also found something called Subtivals, which seems to be available for Linux, OSX or Windows, but on first glance it doesn't seem anywhere near as user-friendly as Glypheo

[IRW]

50 minutes later... Something along these lines?

http://www.irwdesign.com/SuitsYouSurtitler/Suits_You_Surtitler_v0-5.zip

Unzip the directory somewhere sensible, and run the main file.

Ian

 

[andy_s]

Never tried it, but Qstit seems to come up often in googles.

 

http://subtitles.nova-cinema.org/download_v3.en.php

Hi Ian,

The man who was doing the shows in Milan (a local academic / writer / translator, but not, I think, a surtitler) was using a pdf. We were part of a two-show package, and the script for our show was pretty fixed, but the other show that followed us had made some text changes since the version that had been sent through for translation, and this seemed to cause enormous problems, as the pdf couldn't be ediited on site (?). Even I (as a non-speaker of Italian) could tell there were lots of discrepancies between what I was hearing in English and what I would be reading in Italian, (if I had the ability so to do). At least with PPT, I suppose you could edit text or cut slides as needed.

 

I haven't played with it very much, but with the Glypheo software, I can import a word document (I think it will bring in .txt as well) and it will break it up into individual captions, which can be edited within the programme, copied and pasted to amalgamate lines, etc. You can also type directly into the caption box as well. You can format the size of the screen, the point size, choose a font etc as well, and it looks like like you can have text running in two or more parallel "tracks", and you can make these parallel texts visible or not, so I suppose you could use this for dialogue, for example by having character 1's words appear in track one, formatted to be top left, and character 2's words in track two, words appearing bottom right, or in a different colour, and so on, or alternatively have the original running alongside the translation, with only the translation visible, or possible more than one translation - for example an Italian opera playing in Aberystwyth with surtitles simultaneously in Welsh and English... I think, thought I haven't tried sending it to a projector, that you can shrink or enlarge the image with some kind of zoom effect. This would have been really useful in Milan: we projected onto our pale-coloured backdrop (I made sure the stage lighting didn't spill too far up the cloth), but the captions were very wide - which meant in the horseshoe-shaped "opera house" style auditorium a lot of people on the sides couldn't see the ends of the lines. There didn't seem to be an easy way of re-sizing the image.

 

50 minutes later... Something along these lines?

http://www.irwdesign.com/SuitsYouSurtitler/Suits_You_Surtitler_v0-5.zip

Unzip the directory somewhere sensible, and run the main file.

Ian

How speedy! sadly, I don't have access to a PC at home, but will have a look when I can...

[strand600X]

Hi

A lot of our performances in our main house have assisted performances including captioning.

We used a company called vocaleyes who supplied us with the software which runs on windows and we import word docs into it. Very easy to use and can do make changes as you go along. Worth a look I think.

 

Baz

[J Pearce]

I've used Glypheo several times, including outputting via syphon over a network back into a QLab mac for integration into the video design. (Surtitler with DSM, QLab with sound op). Very good bit of software with lots of flexibility built in - like the basic projection mapping mentioned above.

 

Not aware of much in the windows world, the only windows machines I've used for surtitling have sent serial ASCII out to a LED screen, rather than use a projector.

[andy_s]

Hi

A lot of our performances in our main house have assisted performances including captioning.

We used a company called vocaleyes who supplied us with the software which runs on windows and we import word docs into it. Very easy to use and can do make changes as you go along. Worth a look I think.

 

Baz

I'm aware of Vocaleyes, but in the area of audio description. I didn't know they did captioning, will look into it. thanks.

 

I've used Glypheo several times, including outputting via syphon over a network back into a QLab mac for integration into the video design. (Surtitler with DSM, QLab with sound op). Very good bit of software with lots of flexibility built in - like the basic projection mapping mentioned above.

 

Not aware of much in the windows world, the only windows machines I've used for surtitling have sent serial ASCII out to a LED screen, rather than use a projector.

So I've had a very quick play around with Qstit and Subtivels, which both seem to offer something apparently similar to Glypheo on non-mac platforms. They both seemed very clunky compered to Glypheo, but that could be because I'm very rusty on PCs, and don't fully understand their logic, and I was looking at their mac version, which may also be not so good if they weren't initially deigned for a mac platform.

 

I think I will probably recommend to my friends in Milan that they look at Glypheo - I think they could probably find a Mac to run it on if needed.

 

Thanks to all for the replies.

[Marko G.]

Hello,

My company has developed a software tool for subtitling/surtitling at film and theater festivals called EasySubtitler.
It's simple, pretty intuitive and you don't have to "add" empty "slides" at points where dialogue isn't being spoken.
You can also subtitle/surtitle a performance in several languages at the same time.
We have been working with it for twenty years and it's been running in 15 countries.

All the best,

Marko
Ministry Of Subtitles
info @ ministry-of-subtitles.com