Closed Captioning Part II, Synching SAMI files using MS Producer
Synching Sami files using MS Producer:
I received the MS Producer resources disk in the mail, and it contained one example of a template that has a captioning window below the video area.
To use it, you need to create a “SAMI” file, which is a text file with HTML-style tags to describe the captioning styles and timing for each line of caption text.
Lacking anything better at the moment, I use Producer to do the synching: Play your video in Producer for the length of one phrase, stop it, note the timing, and use “control-tab” to switch to a text editor where the SAMI file is being edited.
I found this procedure a bit slow, and had some problems with getting the exact timing right, but it does work. Complete instructions for captioning with Producer are available as a (Windows-only .exe file !) download HERE
A non .exe resource for understanding SAMI files is HERE
Sami files work with Windows Media Player, but Quicktime has good support for captioning also, using text files that are somewhat similar to SAMI files. A nice outline of the process of captioning a Quicktime file is HERE It also describes captioning with Windows Media Player.
NOTE:Since writing this, I’ve discovered Subtitle Workshop, which makes the captioning process much easier. See A quick start to captioning with Subtitle Workshop
To see all captioning posts, click here