C. Time captions or subtitles

After transcribing and formatting text, you must assign each caption or subtitle a specific time to appear on the screen.

C1. Position the cursor anywhere in the first row of the editing grid.

C2. Press <F6> to play the media.

C3. When it is time for the first caption or subtitle to appear, press <F9>. MAGpie will automatically read the timecode, insert it into the first Timecode cell and move the cursor to the next row in the editing grid. With the media still playing, press <F9> again when it is time for the next block of text to appear. Generally, you can anticipate the timing of the next caption or subtitle by pressing <F9> when the last word of the current caption or subtitle is being spoken.

C4. If there is a long pause in the audio (say, more than one or two seconds), press <F10> to insert a blank caption row and timecode which will erase the text display. Press <F9> again when it is time for the next caption or subtitle to appear.

C5. If you make a mistake in timing, press <F5> to pause the media. Move the cursor to the appropriate cell, move the media back to the corresponding point in the timeline, press <F6> to start playing the media and press <F9> to retime the text. You can automatically synchronize the player to any point in the stream file by pressing <F4> or by choosing PLAYER, Sync Player to Stream. Conversely, you can synchronize the caption stream to the media position by pressing <Shift+F4>, or choose PLAYER, Sync Stream to Player. In either case, press <F6> again to start the player.

Since the timecode also appears visually at the bottom of the media window, you can also make timecode adjustments by hand. Simply delete the appropriate numbers and type in the new ones. Be sure to follow the timing convention HH:MM:SS.FF (hours:minutes:seconds.frames), paying attention to the use of two colons and one period in the timecode notation.

(Next Step)

Contents | Previous | Next