If you have already generated your first subtitles in ScripMe, it is time to edit them to your liking and pleasure before exporting them in the desired format.
Subtitles are crucial for your audio and video productions to reach the widest possible audience. For both hearing impaired and non-language proficient users, it may be the only way for them to enjoy or understand your audio or video content fully.
Usually, creating subtitles is a time-consuming and frustrating task.
However, ScriptMe does most of the hard work for you.
The first thing is open the subtitle file you want to edit. Just click in See subtitles.
This will open the subtitles editor online.
Before we start, let’s get to know the editor first.
How to edit your subtitles step-by-step
1. The playback area.
This is the file playback area where you can:
- Watch the video/audio file with a preview of what the subtitles will look like.
- Play, pause and skip the video 5 seconds forwards or backward.
- By checking the Pause video while writing option, ScriptMe will immediately pause the playback as you start to type. By not having to do this manually, it helps to streamline your workflow.
- Clicking on the Preferences link opens up additional appearance settings for your subtitles. You can adjust the number of characters per line as well as the minimum duration that subtitles will show on the screen. You can also show or hide the indices for numbering the subtitle timestamps:
2. Export, share, shortcuts and language (translate) settings.
In this section, you can download your files by clicking on Export.
You can also translate the subtitles in their entirety by selecting the language and clicking on Translate.
You can share it by email or with a link through the Share button.
And finally, you can see the shortcuts that will help you to increase your productivity when correcting subtitles.
If you work in a team, you may want to collaborate on work-in-progress subtitles with others. By clicking Share you can create a shareable link that you can email to others so they can also edit the subtitles.
When you’re done editing your subtitles, you may want to export them into a different format to use in your content or projects.
By clicking the Export button, you can export your subtitles to the commonly used .SRT or .VTTF file formats.
3. Subtitle Panel
This is the subtitle panel. You can see the complete subtitles here in the text, along with their corresponding timestamps.
This is the main area where you will edit your subtitles.
As you play the clip, ScriptMe will help you follow along by highlighting the corresponding timestamp.
There are a few useful actions you can take here:
- Click anywhere on a subtitle timestamp to skip to that part of the video/audio file.
- Either click the “+” icon next to the subtitle timestamp or click anywhere within the text and press Enter to create a new timestamp.
- Click the trash icon to delete a subtitle timestamp.
- Handily, ScriptMe will also indicate the character count in red when it is close to or exceeds the maximum character limits.
4. Timeline area
Here you can find the timecode subtitle pages that are visual as grey boxes and the waveforms.
Waveforms are useful for tracking how the subtitles line up with the original audio.
You can use your mouse to drag and move the subtitle pages (grey boxes) left or right to move them backwards or forward in time.
You can also trim the length of the subtitle pages (grey boxes).
Editing subtitles Step-by-Step
Now that you know the ins and outs of the subtitle editor online, we can look at a real-world example of editing subtitles for a video file.
1. Checks subtitle timecodes and corrects errors
For example, here you can see that ScriptMe was subtitled separately. So it needs to be corrected.
To do this, click on the timecode text and edit it to make it look the right way.
Done. You should go through the process of reviewing the entire video and see if there are subtitles to correct and do so.
2. You can translate subtitles individually.
Imagine you are subtitling a movie, but they speak in different languages at different times.
Here you can translate the timecodes independently.
To do this, you must click on the Translate subtitle icon.
Now you must select the language you want to translate into. There are more than 100 of the world’s most spoken languages available. You are sure to find the one you need!
Then click on Translate to translate it.
Here it is!
3. Add more subtitles timecodes
If you need to add a subtitle, click on the “+” button to create a new timestamp.
As you will see, in the Subtitle panel, a new empty timecode will be created (I wrote Write here!), and the timeline will also show the new timecode with the written text.
And that´s all. You can create as many as you want. As long as they stay in sync with the audio, of course.
4. Style your subtitles
You will need to click on the Style tab to start styling your subtitles.
There you will be able to create the design according to your needs.
You can:
- Choose a new font
- Change the font size and colour
- Style fonts with bold and italic styles
- Align the text of the subtitles
- Style subtitle text and borders
- Style and colour the background
- Choose the position where the subtitles will be displayed
As you can see, these subtitles are now much more readable than before.
You will have to adapt it according to the needs of the video or project.
And so much for this guide.
I hope you have learned how to edit your subtitles with ScriptMe.
If you still have any doubts or you want to ask us any other questions. On the contact page, you will find all the ways to do it.