Edit subtitle dialogues

You can download SubDialog here

SubDialog lets you change the appearance of all dialogues in movie subtitles. Currently it works with the most used subtitle format - MicroDVD (.sub or .txt). Support for SubRip is on the way. If your subtitle file is in some other format, it isn't very hard to get it converted given the myriad of free tools available from various sites.

The purpose of SubDialog

Grammar specifically requires that dialogues in all media be distinguished with a symbol at the beginning. In light of this we are going to use the term 'Regular' for such dialogues and 'Irregular' for the cases where only one of two lines has the distinguishing symbol. In books it is actually quotation marks; one such wrapping will be offered in some later version.

Two different dialog styles

Case 'Regular':                                                         Case 'Irregular':
- Ten years ago.                                                           Ten years ago.
- Ten? That's impossible.                                              - Ten? That's impossible.

The choice of how the two cases are named shouldn't be considered any kind of implication whatsoever. It is just plain easier to name the different cases differently enough for them to make sense. We prefer the regular style but since personal taste and professionalism don't mix well, the tool was made capable of converting in both directions.

SubDialog can handle subtitles with tags. Also, sometimes the empty space between the dialogue symbol and the beginning of the line is missing. SubDialog takes care of that as well. Please let us know if you encounter any strange behavior.

Using SubDialog

The operating is simple, first a suitable subtitle file needs to be loaded. The process of loading is pretty flexible. You can start the program and navigate to the file through the Load button, you can use the Windows context menu (right click on the file & Open With), you can simply drag the file and drop it onto the SubDialog.exe itself or if the program is already running, drop it inside. The file gets analyzed and some statistics are presented to you. These are:

1. The actual format which sometimes can be different than the one suggested by the file extension.

2. The dialogue style. Usually it is either regular or irregular, sometimes however it can be 'Mixed' meaning that there are instances of both styles. Most often the latter is due to human error like inadvertently missed dialogue symbols during translating or transcribing.

3. The net number of subtitle lines. In other words how many times some text is being shown to the viewer throughout the movie.

4. The number of dialogues in the movie: how many conversations are there.

After loading a file and provided it is indeed a subtitle file and has dialogues in it, you convert it by pressing either the Regular or Irregular button. The reason why both of them are clickable at all times is based on the fact that the style can be mixed as explained above. It is up to you to make the dialogues regular or irregular.

You can compare the resulting dialogue version against the original in their own display portions (Input Dialogues and Edited Dialogues respectively). It should be noted that no actual conversion takes place in the original file unless you save the result under the same name. You can reuse SubDialog to revert back to the original style (mixed not counting).

You can download SubDialog here.

The program needs the .NET Framework 1.1 in order to run properly. Before you install it, try running SubDialog since it is possible that you already have the framework. A framework-free version of SubDialog is available for the price of US $10 if you don't want to install the framework. Write to nofram@otvox.com for details.

This program has been extensively tested but should you have any problems with it, please contact the authors here.