Digital Workshop

Hi. Can SAMI .smi files be made to work in Opus? I have about 70 minutes of video as .WMV which the client wants in 9 languages, but she hasn't budgeted for professional subtitling. A SAMI file of text with timecodes, which Windows Media Player reads/displays simultaneously with the WMV, could be a low cost solution. Anybody have any ideas on this? Hopefully, Adrian

There is nothing built in to Opus but SAMI is a mark up language, with limited CSS subset so there is no reason why you couldn't code this into your publication.

Whether this is a viable alternative to professional subtitling would depend on the time / costs involved and how often this feature was to be used.

Mack

P.S Add a signature.

Hi Mack
Thanks for that. I'm out of my depth here, since coding is not my thing - I'm a wordsmith.
PS. I thought I had provided a signature; the box is checked.
Cheers
Adrian

If coding isn't your thing, then I'd avoid trying to write this in Opus. Out if interest, how much does 70mins of professional subtitling cost?

SAMI, or other systems, seems like quite a sensible solution for accessibility and multi-linguistic publications. I've always assumed that somebody sat there adding these titles until I discovered an application for converting Windows TV (DVR-MS) which handled this method. Together, with a prototype Interaktiv built previously, that synchronised a time coded presentation to a video over, I concluded that you could do the same thing to solve this.

It would be interesting to see working, but then if I had a penny for every possible idea...

Regards,

Mack

Thanks anyway.
For 70 minutes subtitled in 6 or 8 languages, it was working out around £8000
Cheers
Adrian

Hi Adrian,

Thanks for that titbit of information. That's a lot more reasonable than I was expecting. Scripting a solution would probably work out cheaper, more practical if the client was producing / supplying their own subtitle files for inclusion.

On a another learning note, how does the multi-language aspect work with video files, Do you have to create a hard coded copy of for each language or is it an overlay that can be switched like DVDs?

Mack

Hi Mack

They way we hope to do it, there will be a common set of WMV files with English dialogue.

Each country will have its own disk with the appropriate SAMI file. For the translator, it's a cut and paste job replacing English with ?Language text in the SAMI as the timecodes etc remain constant.

Cheers
Adrian