How to view all subtitle lines in a separate window while editing video?

[QWE]

Hello everyone!

First of all, I’d like to thank the developers and maintainers for creating such a great program. I’m currently exploring Kdenlive, and I believe it has a lot of potential!

I have a question regarding subtitle management. While subtitles can be added and work well, I noticed there isn’t an option to view all subtitles in one window, as seen in programs like Subtitle Edit, where subtitles are listed in rows. The closest thing I found is the „Manage Subtitles — Layers and Content“ window, but I’m unsure how to integrate it into the active interface (or maybe I just don’t know how to do it).

Is there a way to add this window (or something similar) directly to layout to have a better overview of all subtitles?

I’ve created a mockup concept combining the program’s screenshot with the „Manage Subtitles“ window to visualize what I am looking for.

[Ron]

Hi!

Subtitle support in kdenlive is still very much a work in progress, so expect a few nits right now (and if you search this forum you’ll get a sense of what’s already known and being worked on) - but that said, if you’re actively using it, and especially if you have prior experience and good workflows picked up from other tools, your feedback is especially welcome.

There are lots of ways to work with this, and I can only advocate for my habits if we don’t have other voices speaking up for theirs.

@QWE

The closest thing I found is the „Manage Subtitles — Layers and Content“ window, but I’m unsure how to integrate it into the active interface

The short answer is “you can’t” - it’s a modal dialog that lets you look at most things and modify a few, but it runs separate to the normal editing workflow and was not designed to be a normal part of it. When you need something only it has an interface for, you open it, do that thing, then close it and go back to editing in the timeline.

But the good news (I hope!) is that I have some changes to this already in progress that should make it more like what you’re imagining here.

I wasn’t planning to make that a widget that was part of the normal editing layout either - but it is a non-modal dialog window with a live view of the project, so if you make changes in it they are immediately reflected in the timeline and monitor and vice versa, even before you commit to making those ‘permanent’ changes to the project (ie. push them on to its main undo stack).

So I am curious to hear more about exactly what you want to be able to see and do in this that you can’t in the normal timeline?

You can already see an overview of “all the subtitiles” just by zooming in and out of the timeline - so I’m assuming there’s something specific you want that’s a bit more than that. And the more I know about what you want, the more likely it is you’ll be able to do that by the time I’m finished with these changes.

My own initial list of nits is here: 24.12.0 subtitle editing

And that’s probably a good place to detail any you’d like to add to that, because that’s the checklist I’m working to for the initial set of Next Revisions toward having a fully fledged subtitle editor integrated with other timeline editing.

For now, if it’s any help for some tasks, you should be able to round trip ass files between kdenlive and Other Tools. You can’t do that while kdenlive is running, but if you reopen your project with externally modified ass file, they should work just fine if they don’t do anything that’s not well or widely supported.

[Ron]

Here’s a quick teaser to the current state of the front end interface as it stands today, it’s not ready for other users just yet, but it’s getting close.

That’s looking at a very simple test project, but it has multiple sequences with multiple subtitle tracks on each sequence. The tree in the left pane shows the structure and contents of all subtitle data in the project, and the right pane lets you edit the editable parts of the selected item.

If you make changes to the style or content of the event currently shown in the monitor, you’ll see the effect of those changes even before you ‘apply’ or ‘ok’ them as a ‘permanent’ (but still undo-able) change to the project files.

[QWE]

A sincere thank you for such a detailed reply and your interest! I’m truly impressed by all the progress made!

A bit about myself: I’m a video editor with over 6 years of experience and an amateur voice actor with 5 years of experience. I’ve been a dedicated supporter of free open-source software for almost a year now. I used other programs for my projects in the past, but I found Kdenlive to be very interesting and promising.

While I don’t plan on doing video editing in the near future, I do plan to voice videos in my native language (movies for example). And Kdenlive, in my opinion, is the best program (out of all I’ve found) where I can do this.

Being able to see all the subtitle lines in the active interface would be very convenient during voice acting. That way, I could see all the upcoming lines. Well, this can be done on the timeline, but as I see it, viewing a horizontal table within the interface would be much easier and more ergonomic (it would also be great if the line highlighted when the playhead reaches that subtitle on the timeline). I believe others would also find this useful for different purposes.

I understand that Kdenlive is probably not specifically designed for voice acting, but it’s just my current use case. If I were doing video editing, I would be voicing it directly in Kdenlive based on my subtitles — and still, I believe it would be more convenient to see all the subtitles in a separate part of the interface, as I’ve described.

These are my thoughts.

Thank you for your time! I’m happy to continue thinking about this and would be glad to discuss it further if needed.

[Ron]

Ok, that’s an interesting use case that I wouldn’t have spontaneously imagined - but it does seem like a very valid one. Would you mind sharing a few more details about exactly how you go about this?

Where are you getting the subtitles from? Are you creating them yourself (with the speech to text?) or using something others have (officially?) created?

Is the precise timing of them important, or (kind of like karaoke) are you learning the movie to learn your timing and the subtitles are just prompts to remind you of your lines?

Are you recording the audio directly into kdenlive, or into some other tool?
And as one continuous take, or in small segments (possibly with multiple takes until you’re happy with the result)?

Are you cutting and tweaking the timing of each piece of speech after recording to perfect/correct the lip sync as best as possible?

How do you deal with other audio elements (soundtrack, foley etc.) in your overdub - do you have access to those without the voice track, or Something Else?

My first thought was “this shouldn’t be too hard” from where I am now, though having the display automatically follow the timeline was going to be “useful in some cases, unhelpful in others” and would need a bit more thought as to when/how to enable or disable that.

But I’m starting to think this might want to be a different view of the data to what I’m already working on. It’s focused on giving you access to all the data you care about if you’re editing subtitles - but most of that would just be distracting in your case - you really just want the subtitle text, with a bit of lookahead, in a nice clearly readable format … unless I’m missing something, essentially a “teleprompter mode”.

Is there some information other than just the upcoming text that you need to see for this?

I think the backend restructuring I’ve done should make this fairly easy to do, but it might be best done as a separate/different view of that data to the one I posted screenshots of …

One of the main uses for multiple subtitle tracks is native language selection, and it seems perfectly reasonable to me for kdenlive to support editing and creation of multiple audio tracks for the same reason in the same way, so it would be good to look at this in terms of “what would make it a good tool for this job” rather than just “what can we kludge to make it a bit less painful” …

[QWE]

Hello, thank you for your message! Let me start by answering your questions:

I manually translate subtitles (I’m also a translator) created by others in the original language (usually OCR from an official movie release). It’s important for me that the subtitles accurately match the speech and are not too short, so I also make manual adjustments. I do all of this using the open-source program Subtitle Edit. However, it’s convenient during the voiceover process to immediately make corrections to the subtitles (for example, if I notice a mistake or if a phrase needs to be shortened, or something else). Then I add these subtitles in Kdenlive. That’s how I’d do it in the near future. But I guess I’d try to do subtitles right in Kdenlive for the original videos.

I plan to do the voiceover directly in Kdenlive because that’s exactly the point. Kdenlive is a very convenient and pleasant program for voiceover work, even though I believe subtitles could be displayed more conveniently.

I would probably record multiple takes, since there might be over a thousand lines. If I manage to record several lines in one go — great. Otherwise, sometimes I have to re-record a few times. I can also tweak the timeline placement to make sure the dialogue matches the original better. This is for a simple voiceover. When I’m doing something like dubbing, I often have to record a single line dozens of times to ensure the acting is as good as possible and that it syncs perfectly with the lips.

If I were doing dubbing, I would leave the sound work to a sound engineer — they would likely use a different program more specifically designed for detailed audio editing. As for basic (that’s all I can do) voiceover editing, I believe I can handle it myself in Kdenlive (I haven’t looked at it yet, but I’m confident there won’t be any problems with that).

I’m really glad that you’re so interested. At the same time, I feel a bit hesitant to burden you with too many complex matters. I hope adding a window with all subtitles to the active interface won’t take up too many resources, like a separate, well-designed mode for voiceover work — which would also be useful, but that would require some time to think through.

I think it would be great if this window were universal and customizable to suit various needs. For example, if someone doesn’t need to see specific information, they could just hide that column (maybe by right-clicking, for instance). Personally, I would keep the subtitle text and a column with the time for orientation. I believe this approach would be very useful for all users. It could also have a settings button in the same window — where users could enable options like „follow the timeline“ and adjust which information should be displayed, etc.

I’m very interested in continuing to think globally about a separate, convenient mode (and overall subtitle work) and further develop it. However, I believe that using Kdenlive more will help me better formulate my ideas. I hope I’ve answered all your questions. But if I missed something or didn’t fully understand, please feel free to ask again. I’d be happy to hear your thoughts!

Thank you for your attention!