I need to put sub titles onto a video in Danish. I have the translation of the English commentary all ready but there are characters like symbols to be placed above certain letters which apparrantly tell the reader how to emphasise certain parts of the word.
As my PC keyboard does not offer these symbols, has anyone any idea how to place these symbols in the titler programme of the editor. I use Premier 6.5 and also premier pro 2. I don't thing these editors offer means of writing titles other than by the keyboard.
The translation I have, came by email, and I was thinking of printing in out and placing it on the hard drive sentence by sentence, and then placing them on the timeline. The only problem with this is that the titles would appear on a white panel thus blocking out the picture behind the title. I suppose this wouldn't distract to much if it was a single line at the bottom of the screen. Any ideas? Roy
If you open up Word then do a search in "Help" for "international characters", you'll get a list of key combinations which produce accented letters. Whether or not these combinations work in Premiere or not, I don't know but that's probably your best bet.
The only problem with this is that the titles would appear on a white panel thus blocking out the picture behind the title. I suppose this wouldn't distract to much if it was a single line at the bottom of the screen. Any ideas? Roy
If you have photoshop you could bring in each sentence and drag it onto a new, transparent file. Click on the white background with the Magic Wand tool to select it then hit delete.
To turn the text white - Image>Adjustment>Invert.
Save as a .png file to preserve transparency.
I use Premier 6.5 and also premier pro 2. I don't thing these editors offer means of writing titles other than by the keyboard.
The translation I have, came by email, and I was thinking of printing in out and placing it on the hard drive sentence by sentence,... Any ideas? Roy
Hi Roy,
I frequently use 'Copy and paste' from emails and text documents with premiere titler.
Avoid 'word' as a source point, as this carries hidden formatting characters, such as indents, margins, spacing, colours etc, but notepad/txt files are fine.
I typically use PFE which is similar to notepad, but has a few more bells and whistles.
Sucking eggs.. if copy/paste isn't visible on software menu, use ctl c and ctl v.
This will work for all regular characters and quite possibly for the special characters.
I'm not on the edit suite at the mo' - I'll do a quick test and come back.
Thumbs up it works.
I used word as the source for special characters (as suggested by Stuart), typed in a few letters, copy/paste to PP 2.0 titler - no problem. But as mentioned, do be careful how you copy from 'word' and text editors that carry formatting as likes of 'select all' will copy page breaks, indents and other stuff you probably don't want. It will likely also work direct from email. Many applications use ASCII and EBCDIC characters which are invisible to the user, but still available for mouse copy etc.
Or have I misunderstood the question?
Glad the Word trick worked and couldn't agree more with you about copying and pasting from Word. Sometimes even copying and pasting within the application produces unexpected (and unwanted!) results! :)
Thanks for your tips gentlemen, but unfortunately none of them work for me. Maybe because I am using an old Adobe 6.5 editing programme. I just can't copy and paste from an email. I have managed to print out the email sentences with the symbols as supplied to me. I then scanned the printout to the hard drive in Documents. I have even managed to import the sentences to the timeline of Premier 6.5. But the image is all squashed together and is unreadable. Its classed as a bitmat clip,, so I don't know if that makes a different. I can't find international characters in word. In photoshop 7 I can't delete the background with the magic wand. So I guess I've had it,unless sometime can give me step by step instruction how to get from Email to timeline. Roy
Word actually is a lot easier than that. Rather than looking for international characters, just hit 'Insert' then 'Symbol' and you get a map of the entire font. Pick what you want, it's all there. I have to do this all the time to get mathematical and Greek stuff.
Thanks Alan. The method of obtaining symbols works a treat on word. But I still can't export the words from word programme to the time line of Adobe 6.5. It won't copy and paste because in the drop down list Copy and paste are greyed out. I've tried saving the page from word to docs and that works ok. But Adobe 6'5 wont import the page Doc to the timeline. Thanks for tip anyway Roy
I use Premier 6.5 and also premier pro 2. Roy
So whats wrong with your later version, which I tested OK for and you have?
Scanning will produce a bmp (bitmap) or image style rendition, not a recognisable letter, unless you use OCR, but even then to scan text when you have the email already on the pc is crazy. Both because you are performing a needless conversion and secondly because any required scaling will mean characters will lose shape and definition.
>I just can't copy and paste from an email.
What, not even into word or notepad? Surely this is a daily activity for letter writing and notes ?
Have you look at 'word' help under 'special characters' or 'international characters'?
Dave. My Premier pro 2 is on another very fast PC which I only use for HD editing. It only has this and After effects programme on it and no Email facilities. So I have to use 6.5 and the PC it is on for all other activities. Roy
Does fast pc not have web access. Are 2 pc's net networked or have a method of copying files from one to another? Internet explorer and outlook express are fitted as standard on most pc's and either can be used for mail access. So thats atleast 3 methods to get the data on your fast pc.
It honestly seems that you are deliberately making life difficult for yourself as you don't have a basic infrastructure in place.
I tried copy/paste on titler on ye old win98 pc with premiere v5.3 as well as p.pro v2 on win xp, so I'm very surprised you can't do this on the interim premiere v6.
Dave. I'm doing nothing deliberate. It,s just my ignorance on the subject and I guess I'll have to tell the client that I can't do it. Or if he wishes I can put the Translated sub titles on to the video without the character symbols which I beleive is accepted now internationally. I did mention on the thread that the copy and paste are greyed out. thanks anyway Roy
Or if he wishes I can put the Translated sub titles on to the video without the character symbols which I beleive is accepted now internationally.
Oh, I don't think so. Well, I don't know about Denmark but France, Germany and Spain would certainly frown upon non-accented letters and I suspect most other countries which use them will be the same. Accents are like grammar and punctuation - they are there to aid comprehension and although in the UK we are constantly accepting lower standards, I think many other countries are trying harder to maintain standards.
Roy,
No, I don't think you are doing anything deliberate, but I do think you could make easier on yourself by establishing comms between your pc's and having fluid connectivity to web/email etc.
Why you stick with an old version of premiere and ignore the capabilities of your later version doesn't make sense for the long term.
If this is a seperate learning curve, then make it your mission. It will make things easier for yourself in the long run.
I would sincerely like to help more but feel I'm at an impasse without being in Durham.
If this helps, it is internationally acceptable to replace a vowel with two dots above it (umlaut) with the vowel followed by the letter "e".
To place international symbols in the Prem 6.5 titler (and other useful things like © ) use Windows' Character Map utility (in Accessories). This will certainly copy and paste into Prem.
In addition, most of the characters have a numerical equivalent. So if I hold down Alt and type 0159 I get Ÿ. There is a whole list somewhere but if you just want to get the job finished, use the Character Map.
Ray L
Thank you so much everybody for your tips which are all very valid. I have recently opened a file to contain all the advice I have received from the good people on this forum. The advice received on this matter has gone into the file. You will be glad to know that I have now solved the problem and can now copy and paste from the email to the timeline of Adobe 6.5. So can put the original translation with the symbols on the video okay. Actually it was a remark by Dave that prompted the cure. I put the necessary programmes onto my newest PC and tried to copy and paste from Email to Titler using Adobe pro 2. IT DIDN'T WORK.. That set me thinking and it came to me at 0200 hours that I wasn't stupid after all, just forgetful. I then realised I wasn't highlighting the text
to copy and on the titler I wasn't using the edit button to select paste. Once I did that everything was perfect. There is always a but isn't there. I put is down to being tired because during the panic and trying this and that I must of altered a setting somewhere and when I try to open an Email attachment it tries to open on Adobe6.5 instead of word. As yet I cannot find where I can alter it back because obviously it wont show on Adobe 6.5. I'll keep looking though. Thanks agin everyone. Roy
On waking this morning I thought..
I bet Roy hadn't pre-selected and copied text into mouse and that's why 'edit/paste' was greyed out.. or the 'Text' tool in titler wasn't selected.
.. or you had non-standard keyboard where keys had been remapped (like in Turkey).
anyway.. there in the end..
File types:
Right click start, go to explore, then tools/folder options/file types.
Here you can associate the file extension (last few letters) with it's default application.
If that doesn't work, go to bed and set your alarm for 2am.;)
If it still doesn't work, I don't want to know, I'd rather be dreaming other thoughts in the night.:D :cool:
Hi Dave. Thanks for your last instruction. It works and the PC problems are all solved without me working till 0200 hours. regards Roy
Just done european language subtitles for a few DVDs. I Googled 'accent codes' which brings up number/letter combos to replicate their symbols in my titler. Any good?
Hi Branny. Thanks for your input but Googles translations are a disaster. A qualified translater says Google translations has caused a lot of mistrust amongst people one film maker was commenting that about another film maker that with his ability he shouldn't of made the film so long. The translation came out that he was surprised that with his abilities he had lied. Roy
I don't think he was suggesting using Google translators. Nobody in their right mind would use any online translation service as they are all appalling. You need human input to translate the different nuances of a language - that's something a machine just can't cope with.
S'right! - It was the accent codes I suggested googling for. The little gizmos that add language inflections.
All our European translations are provided and verified by the client. I wouldn't dream of trying to do it. I can barely translate brummie and scouse :)
If anyone is interested. The finished video complete with subtitle translations can be seen on Nordfilm as "BEAMISH-THE LIVING PAST" Thanks everyone for their inputs. Roy