Overview -
These instructions create a Quicktime file with video and timed text tracks for subtitles in multiple languages. We were especially interested in creating timed text tracks in two-byte scripts such as Japanese and Chinese while using equipment on English operating systems. The captionsing software Magpie2 will not create extended character text tracks, but can be used to time roman script, which can then be replaced in a few steps with Japanese or Chinese or other extended character set scripts. For Quicktime Pro version 6 see Subtitling Video for GloPAD - Quicktime Pro 6

The resulting Quicktime video is intended to be used on the Global Performing Arts Database (GloPAD, www.glopad.org), and to be easily playable by general users. For upload to GloPAD the subtitled video is linked to a hosting HTML page and the various files are loaded into GloPAD as a complex media object (CMO). The result is a record on GloPAD that is a basic Web page with a still image of the video and some basic info (title, performance date and place), and which calls up the Quicktime player on a viewer's computer to play the subtitled video. Instructions for authoring the various parts of the HTML page for hosting videos are given in the separate tutorial "Authoring a GloPAD video page."

Contents

1. Subtitles with Magpie2: set up and process
2. Making a timed text template with Magpie2:
3. Using TeXML to replace roman script with non-roman script text:
   

Subtitles with Magpie 2

Magpie 2 is a free software developed by the National Center for Accessible Media for captioning of video in the mainstream Web video formats (Quicktime, Real Media, and Windows Media).

Follow the installation instructions at NCAM's Magpie 2 site or at the University of Wisconsin Streaming Media Captioning with Magpie 2 site.

Once you have Magpie 2 working, either make a simple text file transcript of the subtitles you wish to use, or type your subtitles directly into the Magpie 2 caption fields. It is probably easier to make your transcript as a separate text file, which can then be imported into Magpie 2 and can be saved in its .txt file form as a transcript for later use with the video on GloPAD (see Authoring a GloPAD Video Page for suggestions on using this transcript). However, you can also export your transcript as plain text from the Magpie 2 program, then using that exported text file as a transcript linked to your video.

Set up: suggested formatting specifications for using Magpie to create a subtitle track for GloPAD videos.
(These specifications create a light blue box with black, centered text) When starting a new Magpie project, one sets the overall captions properties, including font, font size, font color, justification, caption box size, and background color. To get the look of the examples included here, set the font to MS Gothic, font size to 14, justify center, font color black, and caption size the same width as your base video and height 30 pixels. To get the light blue background color, select "custom" on the Magpie background color menu and go to the "RGB" tab. Set the R (red) to 188, the G (green) to 222, and the B (blue) to 255. (in XML this RGB reads as 74%, 87%, 100%, and in the Quicktime text descriptors this value reads as 48933, 57379, 65535).

Follow the NCAM or UWisconsin sites' instructions to time your subtitle lines to your video. Using the F9 short cut key to set start times makes cuing easy. You can either just enter the start times, which makes each line of subtitles run into the next with a one-second pause, or you can set end times to make a given line disappear at the point you choose.

Depending on the audio language and the nature of your subtitles, it may be easier to start with your English text or with your Japanese, Chinese, or other language text. Timing text to the audio is of course most straight-forward when working in the same language.

For roman-script languages you will just use Magpie to make the text track. For Japanese, Chinese, and other scripts with extended character sets, you will have to first use roman-script markers or romanized transliteration to time the text and then insert the actual script into the text track. Have your non-roman-script transcript written out and broken visually into reasonable line lengths for the video size, and then make a romanized version of that transcript for cuing to the video.

You can create multiple tracks in the same Magpie project, so once you have made one of your subtitle tracks, create another track for your other language and use the same start time codes for the lines. You may have to edit these start times for the other language.

Once you have your English and romanized other language transcripts timed in Magpie 2, export the text track as Quicktime text. Magpie 2 will export the track files to the same folder where you saved the Magpie project, appending a file suffice of ".en_US.qt.txt" Don't worry about this extension as you can rename the file later if needed.

Although these exported text track files look to be just text files, they include the descriptors to let Quicktime read them as tracks. Therefore you should check the look and timing of the track by opening the exported file(s) in your Quicktime player. To check the timing of the track, run both it and your base video in two side-by-side Quicktime players. If you see something wrong, you can edit in the Magpie program and simply export once again. This will overwrite your previously exported file.

Using a simple text editor to modify your text track formatting

If you have set up Magpie 2 with the right text track formatting parameters (see "set up" above), your text track should look fine in the Quicktime player. If something looks wrong, such as the track box is too tall or the text is not centered, sometimes it is easier to just change the Quicktime text descriptors at the beginning of the file rather than going back to Magpie and trying to make the formatting changes. To change the text descriptors, open the file with a simple text editor such as Notepad and look at the descriptors in the curly brackets ({}). If you have followed the specifications here, your descriptors should read as follows and look in the Quicktime player like the text tracks shown in any of the screen shots below:
{QTtext}{timescale:100}{font:MS Gothic}{size:14}{backColor:48128,56832,65535}
{textColor:0,0,0}{width:480}{height:30}{justify:center}
(* your width should be the same pixel value as the width of your base video)

Once you have timed your subtitle transcripts using Magpie 2, you can then import them into Quicktime Pro to make a video with several subtitle text tracks.

For the English subtitle track, follow the instructions given in Subtitling Video for GloPAD, Adding the text track to the movie. Open the exported subtitle track in Quicktime Pro, check that it displays and plays correctly, and then add to your movie video file.

Substituting your Japanese, Chinese, or Russian to make a new text track

Because the "updated" Quicktime 7 does not properly import two-byte character scripts and unicode encoding, for the other language versions you will first open with Quicktime Pro the timed transcript exported from Magpie, check its appearance and timing, and then export it in the TeXML format in order to have a Unicode file into which you can paste your other language script. Here are the steps to do so:

1. open your romanized, timed transcript (yourmovie_sub_roman.txt) in Quicktime Pro. It should display as the light blue box with your subtitles.
2. play the track to make sure all your subtitles appear and are timed properly. You can check the timing by playing your video and the track side by side in two QT players at once.
3. go to File>Export on the QT menu and select "Movie to Quicktime TeXML" from the pop-up menu. Your file name should change only the file extension to .xml, and it will save a separate file called "yourmovie_sub_roman.xml".
   
4. open this TeXML file in a basic text editor (on Windows Notepad works best for encoding). With Notepad make sure that on the open menu the encoding is set at UTF-8. You will see a great amount of XML code surrounding each of your lines of actual subtitle text.
5. open your actual other language script transcript in another window of the same text editor.
   
6. copy and paste your Japanese or Chinese characters or other language script lines into the corresponding romanized lines of the yourmovie_sub_roman.xml file.
7. once you have replaced all the romanized lines with their actual language script lines, Save As the file making sure that you save it with the encoding set at UTF-8 and giving it the file name of yourmovie_sub_ja (or _zh for Chinese or _ru for Russian).

Open your yourmovie_sub_ja.xml file in Quicktime Pro and check to see how it displays.

If the script is garbled in the Quicktime player, most likely the encoding of the .xml files was knocked out of Unicode in one of the steps. Try going back to earlier versions and resaving (Save As...) in UTF-8 encoding.

Once you have a working subtitle track in your language script, add it to your movie following the istructions in Subtitling Video for GloPAD, Adding the text track to the movie. Name this track with the appropriate language name on the Quicktime "Movies properties" menu.