WAV Timing in Linux

If you don't know what WAV timing is, see here.

What this page is

This web page documents my method for timing spoken dialogue from WAV files in Linux. It is meant to complement my fansubbing guide.

This procedure is not for the faint of heart! It requires patching and recompiling software and installing a database. You will probably not get very far with this setup if you aren't fluent with manipulating Linux software. Even then, you probably need to know SQL for best results, since I haven't gotten around to writing any pretty interfaces yet.

Installation instructions

At the moment these instructions assume that you use some version of Red Hat Linux, since that's what I use. The same formula probably works everywhere, but you're on your own regarding the details. You need:

glame (homepage), either version 1.0.1 with this patch or version 2.0.1 with this patch
- The only platforms I have ever used for wav timing are Redhat 7.3 and Redhat Enterprise 4AS. I have made my glame rpm packages for these platforms available here in case you find them useful. These rpms already have the wav timing patch applied -- actually, they have a slightly modified version of the patch, in order to remain compatible with GTK 2.4, but if you really care about such things you can just download the source rpms to see what the difference is.
mysql client and server (included with redhat)
This perl script for converting database dumps to Subrip scripts.

Install all the rpms. Start up mysql by typing mysql in a terminal. Enter (or cut and paste) the following text into mysql to set up the script database:

create database script;
use script;

create table times (
id int unsigned not null auto_increment,
start float,
end float,
dialogue mediumblob,
primary key (id)
);

exit;

Now you're ready to go.

Usage instructions

Start up glame. You'll get a rather sparse looking program window:

glame main screen

Click on Project and select Import... to get the file selection window:

glame file selector

Locate the WAV file you want to use for timing. Load it into the program with the Import button. Then go back to the main program window and double click the WAV file you just loaded. This will bring up the timing window. You'll want to do two things immediately. First, click the "Select none" button in the middle, just in case something is selected when you first start up:

glame selection

Then, zoom out several times using the "Zoom Out" button:

glame zoom out

From here you can start work. Scroll the WAV file using the arrow keys or the scrollbar on the bottom. To select an interval, use the left and right mouse buttons, as follows:

Use the left mouse button to mark the start of the interval you want to capture.
Use the right mouse button to mark the end of the interval you want to capture.
You can drag the endpoints of the interval with the middle mouse button.

There are three buttons on the screen that you need to use when timing. The "Play" button, shown below, will play back the time interval that you have selected:

glame play button

The "Last" button plays the final half second of the selected interval. This is very useful if you need to tweak the endpoint of the time interval.

glame last button

The "Add" button will save the timings of the selected interval into the mysql database:

glame add button

The Add button produces no visible feedback when pressed! I know this is bad interface design, but I am too lazy to spend any more effort on my subtitling patch than I have to. To check that the times actually got entered into the database, run the following mysql command from a terminal:

mysql command in terminal

When you're done saving all your timings, then download the txt-to-script.pl script and run the command

echo "select * from times order by start" | mysql script | txt-to-script.pl > file.srt

from the terminal to save the times from the script in the file file.srt. The output script file.srt is in SubRip format, and you can edit it with any text editor to add the lines of dialogue. If you are fansubbing with Linux, then you can use this script file directly after editing, since mplayer understands Subrip files natively.

Problems & rough edges

This setup has a great many rough edges right now. If you screw up and enter in the wrong timings there is no easy way to recover the situation unless you know SQL. Eventually, I will get around to writing a nice graphical interface for editing the timings in the database. For now, I can only recommend learning SQL.

Happy timing!