subtitle-editor

Basic usage:

# Works with srt files
subtitle-editor video.mp4 subtitles.srt

# Can take plaintext files as input
subtitle-editor video.mp4 subtitles.srt --input lyrics.txt

See the Tutorial for details.

Setup (Mac OS)

Install dependencies

1. Install Homebrew
2. Install system dependencies (get a coffee while this runs)

   brew install ffmpeg pyenv portaudio
   

3. Finalize your pyenv installation For zsh (standard in newer Macs) this will be:

   echo 'eval "$(pyenv init --path)"' >> ~/.zprofile
   
   echo 'eval "$(pyenv init -)"' >> ~/.zshrc
   

4. Install python 3

   pyenv install 3.7.11  # Or another python 3 version
   pyenv global 3.7.11
   

5. Update pip (don't skip this)

   pip install -U pip
   

Install subtitle-editor

pip install subtitle-editor

Tutorial: Add subtitles to a video

1. Create a plain text file that contains each subtitle on a separate line. Blank lines will be ignored. For example:

   This is the first line
   This is the second line
   
   And so on
   

2. Import this file into subtitle-editor

   cd /path/to/video/project
   subtitle-editor video.mp4 video.srt --input input.txt
   

   The subtitle-editor will pre-render the frames of your video. Note: if video.srt already exists it will be overwritten.

3. Now you will create a rough cut of the subtitles. The idea here is to get your timestamps more or less right; you'll do a second pass to clean everything up later.

   Type P to start playback, then press the spacebar to set the currently-selected timestamp and move to the next one. Keep going until you get to the end.

4. Type q to save your work and exit to the terminal. video.srt now exists with your rough cut of subtitles!

5. Run subtitle-editor again, but without passing an input. This will allow you to edit the existing subtitle file.

   subtitle-editor video.mp4 video.srt
   

6. For each subtitle, type p to play the video & audio for that subtitle. Use ↑/↓/←/→ to navigate between subtitles and start/end times. Use -/_ and =/+ to modify the times until they are correct.

7. Navigate back to the beginning and type P to play back the whole video with subtitles. If there are any issues, type p to pause and make adjustments, then press P to resume playback.

8. Type q to save your work and exit!

Command Reference

When you are using subtitle-editor, you have the following commands available.

Navigation

<tab>/←/→ Switch between start/end timestamps
↑/↓       Select a subtitle
=/+       Increase the selected timestamp by one frame / 1 sec
-/_       Decrease the selected timestamp by one frame / 1 sec

Playback

P         Enter / leave playback mode
<space>   In playback mode, set the current timestamp and move to the next one
u         In playback mode, "undo" by moving back one timestamp (does not
          actually undo the change)
p         In standard mode, play the video between the start/end timestamps
          of the current subtitle

Other

q         Save and exit
Ctrl + c  Exit without saving
?         Display help message