Currently I am using subresync, which is fine but it has some disadvantages:
1: no format tags
2: no character matrix, I have to enter everything all over again.
3. no spell check of any kind.
4: no batch mode, every subtitle stream has to be selected manually.

I used to use subrip, but I have problems ripping sub/idx files with it. Often the subpictures are greyish/fuzzy/mutilated and therefore cannot be processed correctly.

Do you guys know a software (preferably freeware) that is any good?

Oh, and is there an easy way to get rid of all the hearing impaired stuff in a sub?
Right now, I am using macros in a text editor, but there must be something better....
(like remove everything in [] and (), and all the persons: WOMAN 1: etc)  


No long descriptions necessary (although welcome :-)), just give me a file name please, I'll check it out. Thanks in advance

rogard

hm... in my experience Subrip is the best, have you tried to modify the OCR settings in order to increase the contrast and help the program detect the subs better?
you're right about subresynch, it's more sensitive than Subrip, but indeed the lack of a matrix is annoying. but for the spellcheck you can use Subtitleworkshop.

as regards the hearing impaired stuff, i think your macro is the best option. but after that you should also resynch the subs because when there's a noise before someone speaks, for example, the subs for the HI start earlier than the dialogue. therefore as regards me i find it faster to input them in SW, search for ( and [ and synch them at the same time. but i'm a bit crazy as everyone knows :)

@Lilia

Yeah I guess you're right (crazy :-)
I was thinking more in the line of a faster and more convenient one-click solution and you suggest...doing it by hand, line by line! Wow. While I appreciate the loving care you seem to put in your subtitles, that's not for me. I'm afraid I am the impatient kinda guy. Thanks anyway, at least you made me smile again.

As to the subrip problem, I already fiddled around with the options but nothing really improved. As I said, I am impatient...

Any other marvelous programs around that could help me (saving precious time)?

rogard

Likely the best OCR software is tesseract-ocr ( http://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/w/list ), which is developed for Google Books and can be trained. OCRopus ( http://code.google.com/p/ocropus/ ) would be the program to deploy it with for subtitles, although:

"We'll start integrating more modules in earnest in about Q3 2007 (after the alpha release)."

But that should be the program to look out for. There might, of course, already exist subtitle tools that use, or allow to use, the tesseract engine, but then you'd have to search ^^ .

UEStudio can store macros, but that's probably the 2-step solution you use now (step 1 being to open UE).

538733, thx for the answer, although I can't say I get it with the tesseract thing. Is there an existing aplication out yet? I think the OCR part is necessary, but it does not have to be as advanced/powerful with subs as with handwriting or scanned pages. All I need is a good enough OCR that saves a database for future use AND is able to recognize sub/idx pictures that are obviously somehow different than most of the internal subs inside the vobs.
So comfort, features & handling like subrip, and ocr like subresync.

UEStudio seems great, but there has to be a specific solution for subtitles around, or not? I will continue to believe that for a while, and I am hoping someone knows something.  

UES, formerly UltraEdit, is great. Use it for hex editing, html (and the rest) as well as subs. Complex search and replace is powerful ( http://www.ultraedit.com/index.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=4591 ) and very fast, making large ebook edits a breeze. When installed with UltraCompare it's easy enough to open two files in UES, hit 'compare' and tinker.

It uses Aspell as spell checker.

So it could do 1, 3 and 4 (and sync.), but you'd still need better OCR software. I agree, SubRip isn't very good, if there's an app that converts sub/idx to an image format you could use tesseract, probably flawless, and UES for everything else.

But I think you're more interested in easy solutions. Some you may want to try (haven't checked any of them, so let us know how they measure up . . . please ^^ ):

http://www.videohelp.com/tools/AviDemux
http://www.videohelp.com/tools/SubToSup
http://sourceforge.net/projects/subtitles/

Oh, one thing; for SubRip you may want to install the current developer's matrix file, if you haven't already:

http://foxyshadis.slightlydark.com/random/CharMatrix.rar

Thx for the answer.

I tried avidemux. The program might be nice, but the idx 2 srt OCR is abysmal. That thing failed after 5 characters, no options to remedy that. Horrible.
Apart from that it does not seem to be able to generate format tags like italic, bold etc.

Overall, there are not too many *good* sub OCR softwares around, or so it seems.
I don't have the time to hunt 'em down and try them out, so I guess I will stop looking for the time being. Nonetheless, if somebody knows of a software that can process sub/idx files into srt or sub with a good OCR and format tags, please tell me...