Subtitles Workgroup is a subtitling tool with network support. The project arose from wikisubtitles.net, a community dedicated to creating and translating subtitles for popular series. The application was designed with the idea of streamlining the subtitle creation workflow among members of the community. Sadly, wikisubtitles.net is no longer active, but the program still can be downloaded from SourceForge.
With Subtitles Workgroup you will be able to create subs and save them into several formats: .srt, .sub, .ssa, .ass, .zeg, and vsf. Likewise, you can load a subtitle file in one of these formats to edit or synchronize them using the options included. The application also includes two useful tools, a subtitle converter and a subtitle joiner.
The interface is divided into three resizable panels that you can hide or show, as you prefer. The upper panel is where you can preview video, and it has the usual player controls with buttons to locate a specific subtitle point in a movie or set the start and end times.
The panel devoted to subtitles is under the video player; you will see the subtitles lines with their timings and a box where you can actually insert text or modify existing subs. With a right-click or hotkeys, you will be able to insert a new subtitle line or delete a selected one, and set the start and end times. Similarly, you will find options to adjust subtitles duration, delay, adjust line length, that is, specify the characters per line, as well as the number of lines, etc. Optionally, you can add a panel for translating subtitles, which will appear at the side of the original subs.
As for network support, Subtitles Workgroup uses Peer2Peer technology; one user acts as the server and users connected to it can collaborate remotely on a project. The network panel includes a simple messenger so that contributors can contact each other.
Creating subtitles from scratch isn't a simple task per se, but the application helps a lot by offering a clean and organized environment. Although it looks like an unfinished project, it is an intuitive and powerful tool that subtitlers and translators can benefit from.
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