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 Post subject: A post about subtitles and another story that's not as good.
PostPosted: 08 Feb 2020, 20:10 
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I don't know if any of you ever download subtitles from various sources for whatever reason. If you do, you'll know it's an absolute pain in the hole to get them to sync up perfectly. And by perfectly I mean literally to the hyperultrasupermicronanosecond64.

Well today I stumbled across an awesome tool that in a couple of minutes scans your video file and subtitle file, does a little jiggery pokery, then spits out a perfectly (and I do mean perfectly) synced new, sparkly clean subtitle file!

Personally, I'm overly excited about the release of Dead Tired (aka Grosse Fatigue) on Blu Ray later this month. The Blu Ray is only available in France and will have no subtitles on it other than native French. Which sucks because the Laserdisc I got last month of the same film had burned in English subtitles!

I discovered that the French VOD service Canal+ has the movie to rent or keep. Digital only. Again, no subtitles. I got a bit naughty and found the same copy with the DRM removed (bare with me this isn't about thievery). No subtitles but it would do the job for my experiment. I then found the subtitles from the OOP US DVD release which were all over the place, even using VLC to delay them starting by -17900s meant they started on time but then were all over the place during random tests throughout the video file )more on this in a sec).

So I then found this tool on github called ALASS which not only syncs the subtitles perfectly, it does it throughout the duration of the video. It even corrects for advert breaks in TV airings, different edits of films etc.

I just tried it on my hooky copy of Dead Tired and the old DVD subs. It worked perfectly!

So now I'm confident of buying the Blu Ray version (pre order going in as soon as I hit submit on this post) knowing that the US DVD subtitles will sync perfectly with the film! :D

I'm going to use this in future with a couple of my Japanese anime discs that I have subtitle files for and sync those up once I've captured them to mkv files. Plus it will be useful for any future import discs I buy say from Korea, Japan, Europe etc with no English subtitles.

TLDR:

Check out the tool here: https://github.com/kaegi/alass

If you want to get a copy of Dead Tired on Blu Ray when it's released, it's only at Amazon France here: https://www.amazon.fr/Grosse-Fatigue-Bl ... B07ZWBMYJP

NOTE: Yes, I downloaded a hooky copy of a film to test this out but a) I own the film already and b) I'm buying the Blu Ray so whatever. I needed to test it out somehow.

EDIT:

Quote:
b) I'm buying the Blu Ray so whatever. I needed to test it out somehow.


I keep my word. Not that I need to prove myself to anyone! :lol: :oops:

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 Post subject: Re: A post about subtitles and another story that's not as g
PostPosted: 20 Aug 2020, 20:58 
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Just resurrecting this to say ALASS is still working great.

Just used it on my Italian Blu Ray of Sophie Marceau's 1980 hyperclassic superfilm, La Boum.

The fecking disc doesn't show that it only has Italian and French audio and subtitle tracks. I thought it had English on it (like Grosse Fatigue, it was pot luck it had English on it as Gaumont never listed it anywhere). Managed to find a set of English subtitles for La Boum on an older release on a different format (after analysis in ALASS they were precisely 3.565 seconds out). Grabbed those, made an MKV of the Blu disc and ran it all through ALASS.

Now it works great and I have La Boum with the original mono French audio track, and English subtitles in perfect sync! :D

It is a shame that La Boum was only released in Germany and Japan on LD. Unless maybe a SECAM disc was released in France too? It's not on LDDB anyway. No English release is available either alas (excuse semi-intended pun).

NOTE: I never knew there was a La Boum 2. Guess I need to get that now. :lol:

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Last edited by teddanson on 21 Aug 2020, 11:18, edited 1 time in total. _________________
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 Post subject: Re: A post about subtitles and another story that's not as g
PostPosted: 20 Aug 2020, 22:28 
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Nice. I was trying to find something to fix a subtitle sync issue recently. I’ll try it out and report back later on it.
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 Post subject: Re: A post about subtitles and another story that's not as g
PostPosted: 20 Aug 2020, 23:16 
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I guess I’ve never had subtitle sync issues because the only time I’ve ever subbed something was live from LD to tape and that sort of process only began once every frame of the script was manually timed. Sync issues seem inherent to what you’re doing. They had audio triggered subtitle tech in the early 90s so I’m not surprised an excellent product for this exists, I’m glad you found it.

There are as many French things I’d like to see subtitled as there are Japanese, probably more. At this point I just watch things raw. The time is saves is invaluable. Languages barriers...it obviously depends on the film, how bad you could use the subs, but I don’t go out of my way to get, for example, subtitled action movies or one shot OVAs. If you can’t figure out what’s going on in, for example, Police Story or MADOX 01 then subtitles aren’t going to be enough to explain it to you. Without the subs you also have a clear view of everything, and you don’t end up sight reading words actors haven’t actually spoken yet and spoiling the directors timing in your head.
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 Post subject: Re: A post about subtitles and another story that's not as g
PostPosted: 21 Aug 2020, 11:11 
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Yeah, I kind of did that in the early days. I recall getting a bootleg VHS with Silent Mobius 1 and 2 on it. Both looked to be LD transfers and were in Japanese with no subtitles. A printout of the script in English was provided with the tape so I could read through that to get the story details later. Ah, the good old days!

Have to say, ALASS has proven to be a great discovery. It hasn't been updated for a while, and only one of the 7 other forks of it has had a more recent commit. I hope it gets picked up again to tidy up any loose ends etc. For basic realignment though, without any fancy piping or switches, it appears to do a tremendous job.

SIDE NOTE: I didn't have the Blu Ray of Grosse Fatigue in my hands at the time of writing the post. When the disc arrived and I played it back, there were thankfully English subtitles on it. However, they've been messed about with! I ended up dumping the disc untouched to an mkv container, syncing the old DVD subtitles with the Blu Ray mkv in ALASS and then muxing the srt in to the actual MKV container. This then allowed me to retain the Blu Ray print untouched with the new revised subtitles, but also with the option of having the original (and better) subtitles available too.

I'm going to detail this in a blog post some day. Just a heads up though for anyone planning to watch this awesome film; get the old DVD subtitles and use ALASS to sync those instead if you want the original experience. The DVD subtitles are the same as the Laserdisc subtitles.
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