#decided to try to add subs to twitter vids occasionally

[mesemoa-translations]

Shirofuku: Thank you very much for the Twitcast!

“A Japanese idol’s reaction to the announcement of the new Smash Bros game”

Nichan: Cute🤔

[youtiaoshutiao]

heyoo ~ i've been thinking about subbing to practice my chinese, so i was wondering if you could give a lil insight to your experience with it. ie. what software you use (and whether or not you write a script of everything before putting it in said software), how you get vids from iqiyi (this one's stumping me the most lol), uploading process, etc. tysm for your time!

hihi anon, so sorry for getting to your answer late!!!

tbh I’m not that experienced with subbing + i sub at a snail’s pace, but let me try to answer with what I know!!

software:

k so when I was fansubbing ALSB with a bunch of other people, since we were doing it collaboratively we had to do it online. we used youtube (the add captions function) till we got copyright-striked, then we moved on to use dailymotion to add subtitles. in our team, we had an overall editor, and as our subs were getting stolen and uploaded onto various other websites, we would complete our subtitling as softsubs, and our editor would download them and then reformat into hardsubs so that the subs wouldn’t be stolen. this served us pretty well! but between the two, i find the youtube interface much easier to use when it comes to adding subs, as you can just click to create a subtitle and drag across the audio wave display which helps with timing, and type your line in.

moving on to me fansubbing exclusive memory now, i attempted to use youtube initally but they didn’t allow me to upload the videos, so i decided to try downloading subtitle programmes to use. currently, i use Subtitle Edit, which is free and is the easiest for me to use (i tried Aegisub which is quite popular but I just can’t really get used to the interface). My interface looks like this:

So I just click on ‘insert new subtitle at video position’ at the start of someone saying something, then drag the subtitle brackets to fit the timing on the audio wave display at the bottom of the screen, then type the line into the text box. I just translate and subtitle as I go along, line by line, rather than writing a script before that. On average it takes me about 8 to 10 hours to subtitle a 50 minute episode…. lmao……

(Lately, someone very kind on twitter has offered to help me time episodes too, so they create the file first with all the timings, and I just add the subtitles which saves much effort of adjusting the timing)

After it’s done, I save it as a .srt file, so it’s a softsub file that you can load with the video when you open it on most media players.

As I prefer to save my videos as hardsubs (meaning the subtitles are encoded into the video itself) so that it’s not as easy for people to rip the subtitles and upload them elsewhere, I then use VLC Media Player to encode the video. First I set the subtitles to a font/size/position I like so that it doesn’t block the Chinese subs and can be read easily: (the preferences will be saved so you just have to adjust once for like the first episode and it’ll work for the rest)

then click ‘Media’ > ‘Convert/Save’:

and then you can load up your video and subtitle files:

There’s a bunch of settings to fiddle with after that but I won’t elaborate because the post is getting quite long hehe you can PM me/ask me more if you do it via this method and need help! But generally after that, it takes about the video length time to process the entire vid, then viola, you have your subtitle-encoded video!

procuring videos:

*coughs awkwardly* uh… hehe, while i try to watch airing dramas on the youtube official channel/tencent/iqiyi if i can (i.e. if they don’t geo-restrict me) to contribute to viewership, I like to make the occasional gifset + i get a bit anal about the video quality of the dramas I download like they must be crystal clear 1080p (unless it’s some ancient drama from like the 20th century/the 2000s then the best video quality i can get!!) + no logos as much as possible. sooooo i don’t really download from tencent/iqiyi (anyway I don’t really know how to like it just ends up as some weird video file that can’t be watched anywhere else but on their own media player)…. you can pm me for the links i use to download stuff!

uploading videos:

i think dailymotion is a safe bet, but it’s been geo-restricting my videos for exclusive memory so I’ve just been relying on google drive… sigh. honestly the best option (imo) is if there’s an official youtube channel that has the episodes alr, like I wouldn’t mind being a little minion and helping to add subtitles on youtube, because it’s the most ‘legitimate’ and you don’t have to worry about the videos being copyright-striked/taken down haha. Sometimes I get a little anxious about the vids I uploaded…… Oh well.

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that’s about all I can think of! do pm me/drop another ask or smth if there’s anything more you’d like to ask! jiayous for your subbing endeavours!!