You didn’t read my first post or the subs on my example video carefully.
“Add the video to the Timeline, split the video into selections/clips [Press ‘S’ at the playhead position] then add the subtitle to each clip as required.”
You can’t do this from the preview window only.
Resizing text is very easy, provided one understands that the text bounding box is initially the size of the whole screen.
As for me, I avoid as much as possible spoiling the image with embedded text: I prefer adding a MKV subtitle track with MKVToolnix.
I went to their website and they say the tool is designed to work with Matroska Files… What are those? I read their definition of them and was none the wiser. Would I have to convert my video into their format, add subtitles and then reconvert it into a youtube friendly format like mp4?
MKV is a container, not a format: it can use the same codec (eg. AVC/HEVC+nearly any format for video, ac3/aac/+nearly any format for audio). It is THE universal Open Source container, with more features than mp4. It is nearly the only one I use for my videos, which I watch on my TV from an ordinary blu-ray player or the USB reader of the TV or a mini-PC.
But Youtube does not seem to support MKV.
I wrote a small app (which is a simple FFMpeg GUI) to help my grandson to convert his MKV files for Youtube and his iPhone:
http://minhateca.com.br/Polutropos/Logiciels/MKV2MP4
The site is in Portuguese, the explanations in French, but the app is in English;) Download MKV2mp4.exe if you use Windows and don’t know which version to choose.
Copy the MKV2mp4.exe (Windows 32-bit) file to any folder, and at first launch right-click on the gearing icon at right, select “ffmpeg path”, then browse to c:\Program Files\Shotcut\ ore anywhere with Shotcut or ffmpeg inside before using. Then drop the file to convert into the listbox and click “convert”.
The first aim being a simple remuxer which would convert my grandson’s files, if you don’t change anything, it will convert any MKV to mp4 and any mp4 to MKV without overwriting. Other options have been added later for my own use (keep same container, convert to MOV. TS, FLV, convert audio to AAC, remux multichannel audio without drowning the dialogues…).
I can make an installer if needed.
Would I have to convert my video into their format, add subtitles and then reconvert it into a youtube friendly format like mp4?
If youtube is the final destination I would suggest using youtube’s built-in subtitle/caption tool. This is how I caption all my videos. I simply load a text file with the script and let youtube’s speech recognition algorithm position the text, then make edits (because it usually needs a little tweaking).
I wonder if subtitles is something that can be done with an HTML imports into Shotcut? I don’t know much about how HTML and Shotcut work, but I suspect there might be a way.
Hi Stanglow,
I thought they had scrapped that tool on one of their periodic “upgrades”
I’ll have to give that a go. I had used it for corrections occasionally, but not as my main subtitler. I had no idea it could use speech recognition technology to fit the subtitles to the text. Can it do that with sung lyrics, I wonder. Must give it a try.
Cheers,
Berni
[quote=“Berni, post:1, topic:1886”]
However, I still can’t figure out if it is possible to use Shotcut to add subtitles.
[/quote] Perhaps it is a moot point here but the term “subtitle” usually refers to a separate DVD track that can be turned on or off in the player (and Shotcut doesn’t support that function). It seems to me that people have a hard enough time understanding one another that we ought to agree on commonly accepted terminology.
In your post with the full-screen photo of your Shotcut project with the title “The Tipping Point” you should easily see the frame “markers” (and in this case I’m not sure of the terminology) in all four corners of the Player screen. Grab any one of those “markers” and drag toward the center. Once you’ve done it - it will seem more obvious.
-=Ken=-
Berni:
(Actually that was Berni’s quote, not Kenj69’s. Sorry, Ken if it looks like you said it…)
Yes, it is!! - apologies for any self-promotion here (non intended, just trying to help) but I recently made a tutorial which shows how to add text and resize/fade in/out etc. The tutorial is HERE.
In the tutorial I used over 100 subtitles. Maybe I should do a tutorial on how I made the tutorial .!!!..
which I would gladly do if I had the time 
The biggest problem I had with the subtitles is the fact that the text size changes dependent on the amount of characters in the text edit field. I and several others have posted on this forum on this topic…
Good luck with your subtitles, I am a fellow musician…
Jon
Jon, that is an outstanding tutorial! Bookmarked 
-=Ken=-
Gee, thanks Ken! It took a few (enjoyable) hours but I hope it helps someone out there… 
I concur. That excellent video showed me the potential for the programme to be able to do what I want.
However, when I tried it, the original video disappeared and despite following your instructions, when I turned opacity down to “0” it appeared to have no effect on the video as shown in the main screen. I still think I have not grasped some basic concept about how the programme works.
Incidentally, you say “Home” at one point without illustrating it. What does that refer to?
BTW, would you have to follow that procedure for every single subtitle? Also, would you have to define a new track for every single subtitle? I can see that getting unwieldy very quickly.
I suspect the developers could simplify the process by making a “Subtitle Filter” which pre-prepared a text box (that you could define - or choose from some options) as the standard for your project. So each time you needed a subtitle, you would simply click on the subtitle filter again and the settings would be the same. All you’d need to do would be to type in the new text.
Copy/Paste filter…
Type new text.
[quote=“Berni, post:18, topic:1886”]
Incidentally, you say “Home” at one point without illustrating it. What does that refer to?
[/quote] Every application has its terminology. Home means the beginning of the Timeline. Think of it as going back home, to the starting point. I had a problem with the PageUp and PageDown keys. As it turns out going UP the Timeline means heading toward Home, and going DOWN the Timeline means going away from Home. So I held my head sideways to the left… and eventually wrapped my head around that! -=Ken=-
Not too different from the river analogy of ‘UP Stream’ = Towards the source/start.
By “Home” I mean the Home key on the keyboard. It’s the keyboard shortcut (Windows) which takes the playhead to the beginning of the track.
As Steve mentioned above, I used a lot of copy/paste on each text clip!!! - actually to be precise copy and DOWN ARROW. (Using the paste icon actually acts like a “ripple paste” - ie it shunts all other clips along the track).
There must have been over 100 subtitles in that short tutorial. It was a lot of work!
To be clear, to keep adding more text subtitles:
you can use SubtitleEdit to add embedded subtitles to mkv files
Thanks for your instruction. So that means if I want same size of characters in all of subtitle boxes, I have to resize each of them, and not just the size of characters, also the subtitle box, even the positions of it either?
No, see
