Timing Guide

[getfresh]

Originally Posted by Daiz

I usually put the "fine time checking" as part of the editing/QC process as well.

The only ppl I let anywhere near timing QC are timers, stylers and typesetters for the most part. Editors should focus 100% of their attention on the dialog and not be distracted with other tasks. Most QCers these days are pretty much just a 3rd pass edit imo. To be able to QC for a certain task you gotta know wth the fuck ups look like, you need to know what guidelines/standards/style the person who did the work is using, and just like with TC you should be as good as they are if not better. You can't have a 3rd grader checking a 6th graders homework, it doesn't work like that. Sadly it is becoming more and more standard to hire ppl to QC who have next to or no experience at all with fansubbing, which I attribute to some of the decline in quality we have seen over the last few years in relationship to the actual content/display of the subtitles. Oh well, hopefully more experienced fansubbers will get sick of doing the hard part and switch to QCing since it is less demanding of time. And hopefully they will come and apply at my group so I can lazy around more~

[Daiz]

Well gee, of course the people that will actually do things need to possess abilities required for doing those things properly. Also, nobody stops anyone from being multitalented.

[getfresh]

Originally Posted by Daiz

Well gee, of course the people that will actually do things need to possess abilities required for doing those things properly. Also, nobody stops anyone from being multitalented.

ya-huh~ they still do these things is separate passes if they are experienced at least in my experience with working in groups. And in case you have never heard this before, "A jack of all trades is a master of none." Think about it.

[dj_tjerk]

Originally Posted by getfresh

And in case you have never heard this before, "A jack of all trades is a master of none." Think about it.

Not really what he meant with multi-talented.. And being able to do more doesnt necessarily mean you're bad at all those things.. (Hell, I guess most multitalented people are actually better at the things they do than the people being able to do just one of those things.)

But leaving that aside.. TPP is just something that makes timing easier, and if you take 5 minutes to study it's behaviour, you won't have any 'snapping to the wrong keyframe' problems. I usually time with it's behaviour in mind, and then apply it. Then I usually watch the episode in aegisub whilst styling/fixing overlapping lines. (I want a hotkey for changing the style of a line plz. I hate moving my mouse :P).

[getfresh]

Originally Posted by dj_tjerk

Not really what he meant with multi-talented.. And being able to do more doesnt necessarily mean you're bad at all those things.. (Hell, I guess most multitalented people are actually better at the things they do than the people being able to do just one of those things.)

But leaving that aside.. TPP is just something that makes timing easier, and if you take 5 minutes to study it's behaviour, you won't have any 'snapping to the wrong keyframe' problems. I usually time with it's behaviour in mind, and then apply it. Then I usually watch the episode in aegisub whilst styling/fixing overlapping lines. (I want a hotkey for changing the style of a line plz. I hate moving my mouse :P).

No what I was getting at is the fact that doing many different checks at once on your pass where you are doing work from scratch is a bad idea. Someone can have many talents and do many passes. But to split your attention on subs imo if asking for increased error accumulation. If an editor is a competent timer as well they should take care of checking during the QC not while they are editing. Yes some people are great multi-taskers, blah blah, I've heard the whole argument about it, and I still see the fuck ups that happen due to dividing your attention. Of course anyone is going to notice a whole sub is missing, if it starts a full second late, or it there is a 3-liner, but they shouldn't be sitting there looking for bleeds, missing periods, wrong styles, capitalization errors, etc... unless it directly pertains to their current task to be doing it. A jack of all trades never masters one because they are not directing their full attention in any one direction.

for the hotkey thing, you can get a standalone macro-program that you can record macros into for pretty much any program in windows. If you don't have windows, I don't know what they offer but I'm sure there is something, may be worth a look. Maybe set it up to use your number pad as triggers for each diff style.

[pichu]

not really. you can know all of the skills but excel at one or two skills. The word "master" is way too subjective anyways. Usually, when you get really good with one skill, you'll realize that you have much to learn, so you'll trap yourself into thinking that you still have a long way to go before becoming a master -- even though your skill level is way above millions of people who are in that very same field. The only people who can say and claim that they're masters are inexperienced and ignorant people. It's like a first-year student giving you a lecture on your expertise.

Why are you people so serious? Fansubbing is meant to be funsubbing; let's have some fun!

[Kristen]

Originally Posted by getfresh

one annoying thing with TPP is it does not notice when it creates a collision for some reason. So you end up with .02 time overlaps from time to time causing collision detection to shift the line up in avoidance of the first line which looks nasty. It should have a setting for overlapping times that you can set it to use the start time of the second line if the threshold is lower than a certain value.

What annoys me is not the fact that it makes these mistakes, but that they are really hard to fix when doing your second pass. Usually, when it makes those overlaps, it means that there was a keyframe that was within the ends after threshold, but outside of the starts before threshold for the two lines. And since line linking is applied first, it will line up the lines and then snap.

The issue is that you can either move the start time, which usually will make the text of the line start after the character starts speaking, or you can move the end time, which make a particularly nasty inverse bleed.

[False Dawn]

Originally Posted by Kristen

The issue is that you can either move the start time, which usually will make the text of the line start after the character starts speaking, or you can move the end time, which make a particularly nasty inverse bleed.

In my experience as a timer, that's actually generally down to a dodgy raw encode or workraw (audio/video desync mostly) because the idea of having a scene change fractionally after someone starts speaking is visually disarming to the viewer, so I can't think why any series would have it. It's distracting. I've timed several episodes like it, all of which I've brought to the attention of the encoder, and they've usually been able to shift the audio to make it more in time with the video.

Of course, this is just with episodes I've timed - there are probably some series where there are odd scene changes in relation to audio changes, but they're few and far between. They'd be like one per episode, if that - if they're substantially more, I'd suggest it's a raw/workraw encode issue.

[Kristen]

Originally Posted by False Dawn

In my experience as a timer, that's actually generally down to a dodgy raw encode or workraw (audio/video desync mostly) because the idea of having a scene change fractionally after someone starts speaking is visually disarming to the viewer, so I can't think why any series would have it. It's distracting. I've timed several episodes like it, all of which I've brought to the attention of the encoder, and they've usually been able to shift the audio to make it more in time with the video.

Of course, this is just with episodes I've timed - there are probably some series where there are odd scene changes in relation to audio changes, but they're few and far between. They'd be like one per episode, if that - if they're substantially more, I'd suggest it's a raw/workraw encode issue.

It's usually 1 or 2 per episode, nothing more. When there's multiple weird scene changes, it normally means that the audio isn't shifted correctly. But there'll be 1 case every 2-3 episodes where someone starts talking right before the scene change, and that's what drive me insane.

[getfresh]

Originally Posted by Kristen

It's usually 1 or 2 per episode, nothing more. When there's multiple weird scene changes, it normally means that the audio isn't shifted correctly. But there'll be 1 case every 2-3 episodes where someone starts talking right before the scene change, and that's what drive me insane.

try subbing older anime, and you will run into it all the time.

[guest0815]

I'm just trying to get a little into timing and I've got some questions regarding this post about using the tpp:

Spoiler:

Originally Posted by TheFluff

Yes, and one solution is to set the "ends after" threshold to at least greater than (leadout+link_threshold*0.5)/(1000/framerate) assuming you have the bias slider in the exact center; I prefer to have the bias slider around 3/4ths to the right though so I'd use 0.75 instead of 0.5. Another solution is to account for what the TPP will do when rough timing and simply place the line end marker a bit before the keyframe and let the TPP's lineout plus keyframe snapping take care of extending it to the keyframe.

I know, it's because I'm lazy.
I dunno what exactly amz had in mind when designing it but the larger the thresholds are the harder it is to avoid mistakes.

@ChrissieXD: your thresholds are way too high.

This is a bit off-topic, but some TPP tips and related maths:
- Always set "ends after" to greater than leadout/(1000/framerate). Since keyframe snapping happens last, this allows it to undo the leadout and avoid a bleed caused by you timing the line end right at the keyframe.
- By the same logic, "starts before" should be greater than leadin/(1000/framerate).
- As mentioned above, "ends after" should also be greater than (leadout+link_threshold*0.5)/(1000/framerate).
- Remember that the maximum possible autoadded total leadout in milliseconds is leadout+ends_before*(1000/framerate), since keyframe snapping is applied after leadout.
- Likewise, the maximum possible autoadded total leadin is leadin+starts_after*(1000/framerate).
- To some extent it is possible to compensate for imperfectly calibrated settings by considering the effects of the TPP when rough timing; see above. In fact you should always consider the effects of the TPP when rough timing.

My own settings for 23.976fps are leadin 120, leadout 240, linking 320, starts before 3, starts after 3, ends before 5, ends after 8. This doesn't satisfy the line linking requirement outlined above but I try to compensate for it by timing line ends near keyframes a bit earlier.

If you used a line joining bias slider that's not completely to the right then the same calculations would apply to the starts before snapping that were used on the ends after snapping right?

For example:

Line start is snapped to keyframe during rough timing. Tpp lead In extends it 120ms beyond that. This would normally be compensated for by a starts before snapping of 3 frames (~125ms) but the start is now inside the line joining threshold of the preceding line's lead out so you'd have to add some frames to the starts before snapping if you wanted to compensate for that just like it was described in the case of lead outs getting extending by line joining in the other direction. Is that so?

So, how many people are actually using a bias that's not totally to the right since that would get rid of this source of error and do they compensate via larger keysnapping? I'm asking because the Fluff uses a 0.75 bias but no keysnapping compensation at the start beyond the 3 frames for the 120ms lead in whereas he used 2 additional frames at the end beyond the 6 frames that are needed to compensate for the lead out.

Also what is the importance of ends before and starts after?

thanks

[TheFluff]

Originally Posted by guest0815

Line start is snapped to keyframe during rough timing. Tpp lead In extends it 120ms beyond that. This would normally be compensated for by a starts before snapping of 3 frames (~125ms) but the start is now inside the line joining threshold of the preceding line's lead out so you'd have to add some frames to the starts before snapping if you wanted to compensate for that just like it was described in the case of lead outs getting extending by line joining in the other direction. Is that so?

Yes, that is correct. I set my TPP like that because I don't snap to keyframes while rough timing, I place the start time a little bit after the keyframe intentionally because of the above TPP behavior.

[Bananawaffles]

I'm interested in helping to sub anime and I'm curious if having to know Japanese is a must for timing (J->E subs). I want to try this out, but I don't want to waste my time to find out in the end that I can't do it >_<

[Tofusensei]

Bananawaffles, it is not required.

[tun]

Originally Posted by Bananawaffles

I'm interested in helping to sub anime and I'm curious if having to know Japanese is a must for timing (J->E subs). I want to try this out, but I don't want to waste my time to find out in the end that I can't do it >_<

It's not necessary, but it's helpful in making sure that you are timing the correct line to the spoken line. And in the case of long sentences that span over 2 lines, you'd know where to split them.

[False Dawn]

Originally Posted by tun

It's not necessary, but it's helpful in making sure that you are timing the correct line to the spoken line. And in the case of long sentences that span over 2 lines, you'd know where to split them.

Though most timers get by on knowing less than a hundred Japanese words in total. That's all you really need, to be honest.

[sangofe]

Originally Posted by False Dawn

Though most timers get by on knowing less than a hundred Japanese words in total. That's all you really need, to be honest.

Not with "good" old Joe, no.

[aeonsky]

Just want to point out that Substation Alpha does not work on a 64-bit OS. Thus, I had to find something else to time with.

[TheFluff]

I'm pretty sure not even the hardcore oldskool timers use SSA anymore, note that the OP of this thread is a bit over five years old

[False Dawn]

Originally Posted by TheFluff

I'm pretty sure not even the hardcore oldskool timers use SSA anymore.

You'd be amazed what some timers still use. I know a number of timers who still haven't made the leap to Aegisub