You can step thru the imported titles also for spell checking as gtext uses the spell checker of the Mac OS X.

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1 gtext Subtitles are always annoying, disturbing the picture. So they have to be as good as possible, which means some rules need to be followed. gtext is thought to modify or check Final Cut Pro XML files for subtitles. It allows to work with co-workers or translators to change your subtitles with ease. gtext (at current release) doesn't take care of timing in a way that that you can modify in and out -- it's more about text only. You can import a Final Cut Pro XML and gtext will search the XML for all text generators which do have one text entry. This means that generators like 'Lower Third' or many of the Motion templates will be ignored. Also generators like Boris which do have a custom encoding will be ignored. Though you can import a whole project it is highly recommend to use a sequence XML only. Within the found generators gtext will only allow to change the text entry and will keep all other settings from your original sequence or project. gtext will calculate the line width for each paragraph of every subtitle based upon a user selected length. This length can be different for different types of target formats. Film for example often prefers 40 characters per line, with EBU files there might be 50 or 52, others prefer different counts of characters per line. The character count does include spaces. Also the amount of paragraphs will be listed for each title, as these might be important for your release. gtext will also retrieve the duration of each of those subtitles and calculate a suggested duration based on a user selected minimum and maximum duration. Sometimes subtitles might be too short, other times they might be too long -- but latter might be slates. With burned in titles most of this it not a problem at all, if you use either use a good software or a good subtitle generator within FCP. But it can be a problem if you want to interchange your subtitles with another company for release of the movie. You can step thru the imported titles also for spell checking as gtext uses the spell checker of the Mac OS X. In any case gtext will give you a good survey. Finally gtext can't make any decision for logical line breaks. It's left to the user to control the subtitles. This might be time consuming, but gtext will give you a good start to save a lot of time on this job -- especially if you got multiple language releases. To communicate with co-workers you can use gtext with any application which supports tab delimited text style export and import. To fine tune the import of XML generators you might need to have TitleExchange installed -- regardless of Lite or Pro. gtext help page 1

2 Here in rough how it works: Keep in mind: the actual version of gtext is beta. It shows up like below when you open the application. The left side give you some control options, the right side shows your current titles with title ID,the track, the count of characters for the longest line in title, the count of paragraphs plus the saved and changed text. Before you open a Final Cut Pro XML you should setup the control values in the 'Preferences'. Use the standard menu or press 'cmd-comma'. Within the upper 'Line break calculation' box you can setup the warning for line breaks and amount of paragraphs. The 'Reading' box allows to set up the speed you think is adequate how fast people can read -- you can add a kind of tolerance as well. The last 'Timing' box allows to set a minimum and a maximum time for a subtitle in seconds. This does not influence the 'suggested speed'. In the current version you can't change these settings while a XML is open -- you have to reload the XML. gtext help page 2

3 After the setup is done open the Final Cut Pro XML. The process might take quite a long time depending on the amount of subtitles. When it is done the window might look like below. Navigation and Changes The 'Global Statistics' box on the upper right will show some basic analysis of your subtitles. The actual title in the upper left 'Current title' box may show you some spelling corrections based upon the Mac OSX spelling service. The 'Statistics for title' may give you an idea of what could be done better. The 'Current Title' will tell you whether you view an already modified title or the saved (or source) title. The 'ID' is pretty obvious just a number which identifies the current subtitle. The 'Max characters per line' displays the count of characters of the longest paragraph within a subtitle. The 'All characters' do show the amount of all characters within a subtitle. gtext help page 3

4 The 'Current Duration' shows the time of your subtitle in frames, the 'Suggested duration' does show an estimation of how long it should be based on your 'Read Speed' setting. The 'Ratio' shows whether it might be too slow or too fast -- values below 1 may be too fast, higher ones may be too slow. Again this doesn't mean there is something wrong, it's just a note that there is a chance to make a subtitle less distracting. Going thru the titles there are many ways to do it. As long as the table view on the right is selected you can use the 'arrow up' and 'arrow down' keys. If you have selected the 'Current Title' text view the arrow-up and arrow-down keys will scroll thru text as usual. To go to the next or previous title press 'ctrl-arrow down' or 'ctrl-arrow up'. But there are more options. In the 'Navigation' box there is a pop up button for 'Use Track'. If an 'N' track is listed the subtitle is within a nested sequence. There is second popup for the type You can use one of of the menu titles to walk thru the titles selective. So if you just want to search for 'Too many characters' select this option. To jump from one title with 'Too many characters' to another of this kind press 'ctrl-page up' or 'ctrl-page down'. If 'All' is selected the 'ctrl-page up' or 'ctrl-page down' jump to changed text entries. The 'Go to title #' field allows to address a title by number. You can just enter a number and hit return. gtext help page 4

5 Now you can just check the text or change it. In the above example the first line is way longer than the second line (beside the 'too many chars') -- so visually more of the actual important content of the underlying picture is destroyed. You can now use the 'Suggest New Line Breaks' button or press 'cmd-l". This will recalculate the line breaks starting at the end of the text based upon the maximum characters which are set before import -- just making lower paragraphs longer than higher. As said above there is no way to make real logical breaks, but it mostly gives you a good start. A better line break might be like below. gtext help page 5

6 The modified title will be saved to the 'Changed Text' column of the table view on the right. You can leave it there for later review or text export or you can save it directly to the XML pressing "cmdarrow right'. Latter will update the info for character and paragraph count. You can also hit the "Save Current Change' button. To undo a change or change suggest there are two options. You either can delete the 'Changed Text' or go back to the text which basically was imported. Use 'ctrl-left arrow' to delete the changed text or press 'ctrlcmd-z' to go back to the source version. gtext help page 6

7 Export and Import Export If you export a text list the source XML will be saved without notification. Text export does have three options: either you you export the source text, the text changes or all text based upon the 'Navigation' settings. All export types will create tab delimited text files. Depending on the XML version the exported text will look different.!! XML versions below 4 will look like: 15! NA! 39! Write that down. With XML version 4 and above it will look like: 15! 7D4EDF4D-281E-424E-AECD-4B385F936B36! 39! Write that down. The reason for that is that XML versions 4 and higher (version 4 export is starting with Final Cut Pro 6) are supporting UUIDs for generators and other items. The UUID will allow to find a text in a sequence or anywhere in the project even if you moved them or added other generators. With no UUID you have to keep the order of the titles in your sequence. These text files can be opened in any text editor. But often it makes more sense to open them in a spread sheet application like Excel, FileMaker or Numbers. Text can be changed within any of these applications, but UUID and generator ID must be kept. Also be aware that line breaks inside a subtitle must be created by pressing 'ctrl-return'. Import Import of text only works if you have an XML imported before -- which should be the matching XML obviously. The file to import should be a tab delimited file, but 'Comma Separated Value' do work fine in most cases as well. The text should have the format: UUID, title ID, title text. During the import gtext will search either the UUID or for the title ID and will compare the saved text to the new text. If there is a difference the imported subtitle will be added to the 'Changed Text' column. Now you can decide whether you want to add the changes to your XML or not. gtext help page 7

8 Versions: 1.0 first release 1.01 More statistics added, work around for line breaks which Final Cut Pro doesn't accept. Preferences window added UUIDs added Interface changes, new export options. Known issues: Some of the interface buttons or menus are not connected. Currently traditional Chinese is not really handled because there are no spaces for word breaks, also very long words like web links will cause errors. As always there might be other unknown issues. Fine print: As always use the app on your own risk. I'm not responsible for any damages that might happen. Support is based on a 'I've spare time this moment', so you may have to wait for a few days to get a response. But I'll do my best. Download gtext for OS Even though the app is free you might think about a donation. Make donation System Requirements: Apple PPC/Intel (the faster the better) MB RAM (more = better), enough space for virtual memory MacOS X For further information contact: Andreas Kiel Nelkenstr. 25, D Karlsruhe phone: kiel at spherico.com gtext help page 8