avidemux, free and cross-platform. I find it pretty easy to work with. Theres an article/blog post on the interwebs on how to rip subs from dvds

I searched and found this just now http://www.my-guides.net/en/content/view/167/26/ after nonpoint's post. Doesn't look too difficult. Although I don't know how it will handle Japanese subs (with the whole "type in every character from the subs file so that it can OCR it"...that might take a while)

blackmacros wrote:

I searched and found this just now http://www.my-guides.net/en/content/view/167/26/ after nonpoint's post. Doesn't look too difficult. Although I don't know how it will handle Japanese subs (with the whole "type in every character from the subs file so that it can OCR it"...that might take a while)

If you are doing a drama you can use dramanote to cut and paste. I'd hope theres some sort of transcript for whatever it is you want to OCR

Timing extraction is another way to go, but I prefer having the program do some of the work and then do QA on the subs.

Last edited by nonpoint (2009 August 13, 6:43 pm)

blackmacros wrote:

ghinzdra wrote:

what s the point of extracting the subtitles ? japanese never transcript faithfully anyway

I guess it might be useful to extract the English subs to get the correct timing. Then you could run that in subs2rs to get a deck sans Japanese subs, that you can work through and translate yourself. Or you could then edit the subs with something like Aegisub and replace the English with Japanese subs you find online.

OMG I didn t realize....
if you can t get the timing this way I guess I ll be able to mine my japanese dubbed DVD....dark knight , sin city ,matrix  , evolution  , snatch , MIB , die hard....it s gonna be great.

I just hate timing.

I didn't mean films dubbed into Japanese, films that were made in Japanese. (Though, while it would be a bit of effort, the non-accurate subs could be edited into exact ones.)

Great thread with good information. Thanks Nonpoint and Blackmacros for the links and hints.  I'm going to try this on Last Christmas and Byakuyakou at some point.

Out of interest, not wanting to start a group project, but if people have finished .srt files they're willing to share I'm sure we'll all be happy. Plenty of sites to post finished files, although d-addicts seems the most obvious choice.

Also, is it useful to share glyph information, or does that change every DVD?

blackmacros wrote:

I searched and found this just now http://www.my-guides.net/en/content/view/167/26/ after nonpoint's post. Doesn't look too difficult. Although I don't know how it will handle Japanese subs (with the whole "type in every character from the subs file so that it can OCR it"...that might take a while)

I've done this before. With Final Fantasy Advent Children it took me about 4-5 hours to OCR the subs.

ghinzdra wrote:

does anyone know where to find a kanji character matrix ?
it seems like there are some hanzi/chinese character matrix out there but I m looking for japanese . (And I don t even find the chinese one ... it could be of some use as I bet the guys who wrote these must have an idea about where to find a japanese one)

Mh.. This might be faster. Is there a way to save a matrix / make one? If just one of use makes one, someone can upload it and hopefully this will be much faster.

blackmacros wrote:

bombpersons wrote:

blackmacros wrote:

I searched and found this just now http://www.my-guides.net/en/content/view/167/26/ after nonpoint's post. Doesn't look too difficult. Although I don't know how it will handle Japanese subs (with the whole "type in every character from the subs file so that it can OCR it"...that might take a while)

I've done this before. With Final Fantasy Advent Children it took me about 4-5 hours to OCR the subs.

But wouldn't you have to know the readings of all the kanji used, in order to be able to type them, in order to feed them into the OCR? So I guess you'd have to have a dictionary standing by to search for readings?

I used the drawing pad in the windows IME, so I didn't need to know the readings, just how to draw them Together with a drawing tablet it's much faster.

Last edited by bombpersons (2009 August 19, 5:00 am)

bombpersons wrote:

blackmacros wrote:

I searched and found this just now http://www.my-guides.net/en/content/view/167/26/ after nonpoint's post. Doesn't look too difficult. Although I don't know how it will handle Japanese subs (with the whole "type in every character from the subs file so that it can OCR it"...that might take a while)

I've done this before. With Final Fantasy Advent Children it took me about 4-5 hours to OCR the subs.

ghinzdra wrote:

does anyone know where to find a kanji character matrix ?
it seems like there are some hanzi/chinese character matrix out there but I m looking for japanese . (And I don t even find the chinese one ... it could be of some use as I bet the guys who wrote these must have an idea about where to find a japanese one)

Mh.. This might be faster. Is there a way to save a matrix / make one? If just one of use makes one, someone can upload it and hopefully this will be much faster.

as I said it s not THAT easy.
first you must be aware what is exactly a kanji matrix :  something like 8000 characters .
through KO and others we all know with about 1200 character you have a 85 percent coverage  but for a 99 percent it s  about 4000 . On top of that you ve got to include italic  and other style ... which is why you can easily double the 4000 figure  hence  8000   Obviously the most intelligent solution would be to write a matrix for the most frequent  and after that typing in the missing characters in the subtitles . We re still in for typing 3000 characters
What s more as kanjis are combination of different part  , the OCR can have some trouble to identify the character and just select a part of it . That s why subrip include a new feature to enlarge the grid if needed. It still slow down the process though

Now the best part :
do you think that every company use the same character set/style ?
do you think that the OCR software is particularly clever ?
You must have easily figured out where I m going  There is a very  high risk that we need several matrix....in the best case one by company ... in the worst one by DVD....

so yes you can save the matrix  but if we need one matrix by dvd  we re screwed

anyway as I said earlier none of my dubbed dvd have faithful subtitles... so it s just in case  the native dvd  have exact subtittle  otherwise it s both excruciating and useless
that s why I said it s very likely it s a dead end . I just want to check out every possibilities before posting a tutorial .

Last edited by ghinzdra (2009 August 19, 6:46 am)

blackmacros wrote:

What sort of format is this 'matrix' thing in? I'm sure there is a spreadsheet somewhere on this forum for something like the Kanji Kentei (is that it? the exam that tests kanji knowledge, for native speakers), which would have like 6000+ kanji in it right? Is something like that exportable into this matrix you're talking about?

EDIT: I was thinking of this spreadsheet. http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key= … &hl=en

~6500 kanji (as well as keywords) in a spreadsheet.

completely unrelated
a matrix is the equivalence table that a OCR software use to recognize an image and transform it in a symbol . As you probably already know subtitles on DVD are not stored as text  file (srt,ass,ssa   etc....) but as image file  (sub vob)
the function of the OCR software is to transform those images into text through the identification of letter  . Now imagine a prodigy child that is able to learn the calligraphy of thousands of kanji in the blink of an eye ....no matter how good he is you still have to teach him what each kanji means , the order of the strokes ,etc.... well the OCR software is infinitely more efficient than you to copy the subtitles but he still needs to be teached .... for every and each symbol he doesn t recognize you must type in his text-based counterpart . And he s especially dumb :he s unable to recognize the same character displayed in italic , bold , underlined style.... you ve got to teach him everything .

It s not much of a problem with western alphabet .... but with kanji.....see above

Last edited by ghinzdra (2009 August 19, 8:56 am)