Subtitles workflow could be smoother

Suggestion
1

Dear Forum,

I think it’s great that Shotcut supports subtitles. This is incredibly important for content accessibility. As mentioned in documentation

We recommend saving subtitle editing until the timeline editing is complete because moving or cutting clips on the timeline will break the subtitle synchronization.

However, I now have to reopen a project because a scene needs to be extended by a few seconds (the “creative director” wants half a sentence extra :see_no_evil_monkey: :sweat_smile: ). All the subtitles in this project file need to be readjusted as a result :zany_face: . In two languages :roll_eyes: .

As a future workaround, I’ll create separate project files for future projects, even if only one word needs subtitles. For example, in the current project (an episode of about 30 minutes, divided into approximately 8-10 files), this would result in about 15-20 files, all of which would ultimately need to be merged into the final “master file” :neutral_face: ).

If I could have one wish, it would be for a better workflow for subtitles

  • Keep somehow subtitle synchronisation
  • Move multiple subtitles simultaneously
  • Edit subtitle length with the mouse
  • Shift+E/T behaves the same way for subtitles as “I”/“O” for clips (right now it’s different)
  • Optional ripple behavior for subtitles, similar to markers

I know this is a lot, but it might be helpful for many :innocent:

Best
Florian

2

Maybe you did not know that the subtitles support multi-select in the timeline and subtitle dock via Control + Click.

The intended workflow for your example is:

  1. Select the first subtitle you want to move
  2. Hold the Control Key and select the last subtitle you want to move (probably the last one in the project)
  3. Move all the selected subtitle at once (a few seconds in your example)
  4. Add the new sentence requested by the director

This doesn’t really seem so bad to me.

5 Likes
3

I want to change this to be consistent with multi-select in Timeline, Playlist, Files and most apps: shift for range selection, and ctrl is to toggle individual items for multi-selection.

2 Likes
4

Oh, good to know! Control + Click is helping a lot :slightly_smiling_face:

6

This is changed for the next release.

The multi-selection in the Subtitle panel works with both CONTROL and SHIFT. This is an existing QT behavior because we have configured the widget with CONTINUOUS selection mode which does not allow sparse selection. We won’t be able to remove the CONTROL button behavior without finding a way to override the QT behavior.

Multi-selection of subtitle items in the timeline is changed to use SHIFT.

3 Likes
Convert all text filters from timeline clips to soft subtitles