subtitle timecode offset in dvd studio pro

Welcome to the forums, Marco.

If the MPEG2 file starts at 00:00:00:00 and your subtitle file assumes a 01:00:00:00 start, and none of the other things you tried are working offset-wise, I would say to just edit your STL so that you change the leading 01: to an 00:

The way I would do this is with Bare Bones's TextWrangler (free) and do a search and replace. You would search for "\r01:" and replace with "\r00:", then search for "\r02:" and replace with "\r01:" (assuming it's not longer than 2 hrs).

The "\r" will only search for numbers preceded by a carriage return, so it'll only change the first number in the timecode and leave any others alone.

Hi Chris,

STL subtitle format is

01:02:03:04, 01:02:05:12, my subtitle text

I think your method will only change the first timecode on each line.

I suggest following method to use in terminal app :

cat my subtitlefile.txt | sed -e "s/01\(:..:..:..\)/00\1/" | sed -e "s/02\(:..:..:..\)/01\1/" > my new_subtitlefile.txt

This leaves original subtitle file unchanged.
Caution: this only works with a raw text file. If the subtitle file is an .rtf file, you have to save it as a text file before.

Hi Pascal,

I like the look of that, I have some subtiles to convert from Pal to NTSC, any magic you could guide me with?

:0)

Hi Pierre,

If you give me some timecode examples before and after conversion from PAL to NTSC, i can try to help you.

I think it must be something like that :

00:02:25:xx -> 00:02:25:yy where yy = (xx * 30 / 25)

D'oh. Good point Pascal, forgot about the timecode-outs. If you do it my non-regex way in TextWrangler, you'd just have to do a few more similar search-replace passes, the second time searching for commas and spaces that precede the timecode-out. (Some people have spaces surrounding the comma, some just trailing).

You could also do similar regular expression searches in TextWrangler by checking the "use grep" checkbox.

Also thanks for your warning about RTF, although I would want to use a plain text file for my subtitle file anyway, not sure RTF file would work.

RTF files works great with DVDSP, especially if you have unicode encoded subtitles.

I stand corrected twice--thank you Pascal.

Hi,

Sorry I was away for a few days, then I got my head in subtitle workshop on the PC, and it truly is one piece of software I would recommand for anyone who is using subtitles, you can convert from any type of subtitles to any other types, plus you can re-ajust the lengh, the duration, delays, the lot, amazing!!!!!

Thanks anyway.