archiving subtitles/subtitled mpg
Up one level
archiving subtitles/subtitled mpg
We have prepared for a couple hundred sessions bilingual subtitle files and produced from these about 55 DVDs with bilingual subtitles to chose from (Spanish or indigenous language). We would like to archive versions of these sessions or ideally entire DVDs.
However, LAMUS does not allow any of the file formats for DVD disc images or the like (for good reason, I believe). So we are looking at two other options:
1) We have been looking for ways to create mpg files in which the subtitles are included, without any additional files, in order to archive these. However, so far we have not been successful in this. It seems that nobody usually does that. (Anybody has a suggestion?)
2) Another option is thus to archive the *.srt files. You may object that this is a standard output from ELAN and thus not worth archiving separately. But in fact it has taken a specialist a couple of weeks to check and fine-tune these with respect to many details that can go wrong in the process. We therefore believe that the *.srt files we prepared in fact represent a substantial additional value when compared to the eaf files and we are therefore very much interested in archiving the *.srt files with our sessions (in addition to the *.eaf files which are there anyway, of course). DVDs can be burned from the mpgs and the *.srt files, or subtitles displayed on a computer.
My question is: If option 1 is in fact not viable (because it requires too much work), what are the chances to modify LAMUS to accept *.srt files? Can should/we present a formal request regarding this somewhere?
Thanks in advance.
Best wishes,
Frank
Re: archiving subtitles/subtitled mpg
Hi Frank,
thanks for creating subtitles for your corpus. You are right,
Lamus does not allow you to upload files which combine
annotations and video in one file. I agree that *.SRT is a
widespread and useful format, but I still recommend to
provide ELAN EAF files instead of SRT. When you export
from EAF to SRT, you export to a more basic file format
and some information can be lost.
Could you convert your files to EAF? I do not know whether
ELAN itself can help you with that or whether it would be
more straightforward for you to create a small tool to do
the conversion for you. EAF files add, compared to SRT,
a header with information about the date and media file.
EAF also allows you to have multiple channels (tiers) in
one file, for example one for Spanish and one for the
indigenous language. The channels can optionally also
have information about relationships between tiers. Of
course it is also fine if you just convert to EAFs with one
tier per file if that is easier for you. Note that SRT uses
hh:mm:ss,yyy time format while EAF uses msec times.
I think it would also be good to make people more aware
of the SRT export feature of ELAN, for those who want to
create DVDs for basic viewing on hardware DVD players.
Eric
Release of ELAN 4.3.0
