Windows media SMIL Captions

Putting subtitles/captions on your movies
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Making your first captioned/subtitled clip

After you have read the possibilities SAMI captioning can provided you with, you may get a feeling like it should be something hard or it may cost a dime. But the good news is that it is neither hard to understand nor does it cost anything. The code you need to have is available here and all you have to do is to copy it and then paste it in a notepad document. So go ahead and copy the following code:

<SAMI>
<Head>
<Title>Safis Web Captions</Title>
<SAMIParam>

Copyright {(c)2003, Safis Web}
Metrics {time:ms; duration: 424980,0055;}
Spec {MSFT:1.0;}</SAMIParam>

<STYLE TYPE="text/css">


</Style>
</Head>

<BODY>

<Sync Start=000>



</Body>
</SAMI>

Now let's discuss the code above. As you may have noticed that the above code uses CSS (Cascade Style Sheets) to give your subtitles color, font type and a background. All the CSS code is as usual written inside the HEAD tags just like in an ordinary HTML page. You can change the font color, background color, size etc and make your subtitle look the way you want. Study the CCS code for a while and experiment with it until you learn about its different parts.

After CSS code is finished the <BODY> part starts. All your subtitles are written inside the <BODY> tag. The above SAMI script has 3 parts inside the <BODY> tag:

<Sync Start=000>The exact time (in milliseconds) for the text to appear
Headline for example, the name of the movie
Here goes the translated text that is to say your subtitles

As you can see the first part <Sync Start=000> starts the text synchronization at the time you specify. Time is specified in milliseconds, for example <Sync Start=1000> would show the specified subtitle one second after the movie has started, 2000 2 seconds after and so on.

The second part is used if you want to give your content a title or heading. For example, It can be the name of the clip your are captioning.

The third part is the part where you actually write down your subtitles. This would appear according to the time you have specified in the first part.

Now to make the whole thing crystal clear to you, let’s take an example. Suppose I want this text “My first effort to put captions on my movie.” to appear 2 seconds after the movie has started e.g on the 3^rd second. It would then look like this:

<Sync Start=3000>
Captions lesson
My first effort to put captions on my movie.

That’s it. Now all you have to do is to copy the same code and paste it after two line breaks. Then you can delete the text and write down subtitle for the next part of your movie. See below:

<Sync Start=3000>
Terminator III
Directed by: Jonathan Mostow

<Sync Start=50000>

”John Connor, I have to save you”

In the above example, the next text will appear on 50^th second without any title. You can keep your title as long as you want. It’s just how you want your subtitles to appear.

That is all there is to SAMI captions. Save the file as “mymovie.sami” and put it in the same folder as your movie.

Now two things to note:

First, your SAMI file MUST have the same name as your movie and they MUST be in the same folder. That’s how your Windows Media Player will recognize the sami file and load it together with the movie.

Second, you must enable the captions on your windows media player. You do this by opening your windows media player and then View – Now playing tools – Captions.

You are all done, now repeat the same process and put subtitles on all your clips in Pashto, Spanish or whatever language you like!

----------------------
Akmal Khan Sapay
Music Editor
Safis Web

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Go On To:

Real Media Captions | QuickTime Captions

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