Unlike my encoding tutorial, I take pride in what I do timing wise, so I can ensure you that this is approximately 95% accurate.
Step 1: Have something to time
Whenever I hear that anyone wants to time, I always ask for one of three things. The first is “Do you have Aegisub”. Aegisub is free, and it’s the best tool to work with for timing. Find it on google.
The second is “Do you have a raw”. If you don’t have a raw, you can’t time. Audio works if you’re intending to just “rough time” it, but if you’re planning on “fine timing”, you will need a video. Either a .avi video (h.264 in an avi container will fail), or a video in another format that you don’t mind running through VDubMod to make a timeraw works. For information on running it through VDubMod to make a timeraw, check the encoding tutorial.
The third is “Do you have subtitles”. This is very dependant on the type of group. Some groups like to “pre-time” (Timing without subtitles), and I’ll teach you how to do that later. But if you’re reading this, you probably want to time for Chihiro, and we time to subtitles.
For the purposes of learning, I highly suggest getting a .avi Geass 09 raw and our Geass 09 subtitles. Since so few groups release .ass files, it’d be easiest to do like this, and it’d also help you see what scene bleeds are, later on.
Step 2: Set up the working enviorment
To time, you mainly want to deal with the audio, but you need video to run in the background so you can scene time later on. To do this, first, open the subtitles in Aegisub. You should get a long list of subtitles. With Geass 09, since we already timed them, they’ll have a start and end time already. But, you are in here to learn, so those times are useless.
If you have a timed .ass file:
Go to timing->Shift times, and shift all times (Start and End) backwards by 30 minutes. This will reset all the times to 0:00:00.00.
If you have a .txt file:
Right click on the .txt file and hit “Open with”, and select Aegisub. This’ll open up up Aegisub with a “text import” screen. If you’re timing a group that works with actors, just hit “OK”. If you’re timing with a group that only does text in the .txt files, remove the actor seperator and the comment seperator, and hit “OK”. It is really a matter of group preference. Some groups like TLing like:
God: Bow down
Maria: Why?
Bob: He’ll smite you.
While others like TLing like:
Bow down
Why?
He’ll smite you.
Now that you have a set of pretty subtitles displayed, you’re ready to set up the enviornment. Go to video->open video, and select the raw you downloaded that goes with the subtitles. Next, go to Audio->Open audio from video. This’ll bring up a screen that saying “Importing into ram”. Just let it run to completion. When it’s finished, there should be a green “waveform” on the right.
To finish setting up the work station, go to View->Audio+Subs view. This’ll bring up a larger waveform, hide the video, and display the subtitles. Along the waveform, there should be little pink lines every so often. These are called “keyframes”, and for now, you should basically ignore them. If they aren’t there, or if they disappear after like 15 seconds, you’re going to need a timeraw.
Step 3: Rough timing
By far, this is the longest step of timing, unless you’re intending to learn k-timing. I won’t cover k-timing in this tutorial, so this’ll be the longest step for you.
First, I’d suggest experimenting a little bit with the keys/commands. On the screen, there should be a highlighted area with brackets surrounding it. This is the area selected to be timed. The first bracket is the start time, and the other bracked is the end time. To change the first bracket, left click on the spot you wish for the start time to be. It’ll move automatically. To change the last bracket, RIGHT click on the place you wish for the end time to be.
Play the audio, and watch the waveform along with the subtitle. To do this, hit “s”. This’ll play the area you have selected on the wave form. You’re looking for familiar words and the tone of the speaker’s voice. If you hear “Anata tai suki, atashi wa baka desu”, and the subtitle says “I love you”, you should know that “atashi wa baka desu” should not be in the timed area. Also, there should be a pause between the two statements, so that’s another hint of where to break up the line. Change the start and end times to their appropriate places.
Now, hit “s” again. Does the dialogue start immediately, or is there a little pause? If there’s a pause, get rid of it. Now, at the end, does the dialogue cut off, or is there a moment of silence? If there’s silence, cut it off. You’re looking to time these lines EXACTLY to the wave form, not with lead in or lead out. That’s for TPP to handle.
Now, you check the line. Hit “Q”. This’ll play 500 ms before the start time you selected. Naturally, of your present line, you should not hear anything. Now, hit “W”. This’ll play to 500 ms after what you selected. Again, you’re looking for silence.
When you’re sure you have what you want, hit “g”. This’ll commit the times to the first subtitle, and automatically move to the next line.
Now, for the fun part. You get to repeat this process 200-500 times, more if it’s a movie. Now, I know that it’ll take a while. For most newcomers to the timing scene, it’ll take between 3 and 6 hours to do. But, don’t worry. With practice, you will become faster at it. You cut out like 1/2 the time required to time after doing it once. Also, you learn which steps you can “skip”, and you learn what certain patterns on the waveforms mean. Eventually, you learn how to skip huge chunks of audio to just get to the subtitles. But, for now, you need to time everything and go the othodox method. If you feel like you could start skipping steps, by all means, do.
Oh, and if you have a situation where two people talk at the same time, go to subtitles->Styles manager, and add a new style to the available ones for the script. Now, change the overlapping subtitle to the second style, and then time it as normal.
Step 4: Fine Timing
Rule 1 about Fine Timing: SAVE! The first time I tried fine timing (Miname-ke Okawari 06), I didn’t save my work. So, I fine timed, and I forgot to check “add lead out” each time I tried a slightly different setting. As a result, I ended up with a 1.5 second lead out. Save your rough time, PLEASE.
Now, to fine time, you SAVE. OK, do you get how important saving is? Now, to fine time SAVE.
OK. :p. Now, let’s talk about timing post processor. Timing Post Processor (TPP) is a built in Aegisub feature to automatically and uniformly add lead in, lead out, link lines together, and snap to keyframes. However, it is buggy for groups that use higher thresholds of lead out/line linking. Though, the developers are very defensive about TPP, so we should not be expecting a better version any time soon.
First, make sure your waveform has pink lines. If it does, you can use TPP, if not, you need a timeraw and should’ve been making one while rough timing. Next, SAVE! Alright, I’ll stop with that. Go Timing->Timing Post Processor. Uncheck everything except for the styles you’re applying TPP for (Default, Alternative), and “Lead in”. Change lead in to say “140″, and hit “OK.” This’ll shift all start times backwards 0.14 seconds. Now, go back to timing->Timing Post Processor. Uncheck “Lead in”, and select everything else (Except “Apply to selection only”). Change lead out to 500, Line Linking to 510 (Preference should be at “End” here), and then change the numbers on the bottom to be 5 in the top left, 6 in the top right, 12 in the bottom left, 13 in the bottom right. Now, hit “OK”. That’s it, you’re fine timed.
Step 5: Fix the screw ups
It would be nice if TPP worked like we wanted it, but it doesn’t. So, here’s where you actually watch the episode.
Go to “Full view” in the view tab and hit “play”.
Here, you want to look for a few things. The first are what I like to call “Line bleeds”. This are any place where two lines were not supposed to appear at the same time, but they do. Like, lets say line 1 is “You want to masturbate now” and line 2 is “right?”. Well, that’s the same person talking, so “right” shouldn’t appear on top of “You want to masturbate now”. To fix this, click on the first line. Change the time for it to be the start time of the second line. This’ll make the lines linked and appear pretty, and then you can move on to the scene where Kotomi and Tomoyo have lesbian sexy time.
The second is what are called “scene bleeds”. You see those little pink lines? Watch the episode a little bit, and see what happens at those pink lines? The background will change to something else. I believe this happen when more than 50% of the scenes colors change, so there’ll be a couple of “fake” keyframes. Now, we don’t want subtitles to go over a keyframe at any time, unless the scene changes while they are still talking. So, left click on the end time and hold the mouse down. See how you can drag it around? Now, hit “Shift” while still holding the left mouse button down. Move the end time near one of those keyframes. See how it snaps to the keyframe? That’s good. Hit “g” and move on to Kotomi’s violin masturbation scene.
Step 6: Sign Timing and other naggy things
Some groups have typesetters, so timers for them don’t need to do this. But, we do on screens, so we do. Go to a line where there’s a sign. Now, you see the little tab that shows the video position on the screen? Click on it, and start hitting the left and right arrow keys. This will move the frames 1 scene at a time. You want the sign to appear the exact same frame as it does on the screen, and disappear the exact same frame as it does on the screen. So, scroll until you find that frame. See the time displayed? That’s the one you want to change the sign’s start time to. Now, do the same to find the end time, and change it to that.
Another naggy thing are repeated lines. For instance, let’s say the line is one girl cheering “Fight”, and then the girls following her also cheer “Fight”. In this case, TPP will make it so that “Fight” displays once for like 5-7 seconds. We don’t want this. So, just go to those lines and select the end time, and shift it be 0.1 seconds. This’ll allow the sub to “flash”, so you can see each individual “Fight”.
Now, you’re all done! You’ve probably worked all day on this. Now, this isn’t a usual time. Most timing is done is 1-2 hours. The key is to repeat this process a couple of times, trying to do it faster each time. I believe my times to time were 4 hours for the 1st one, 2 hours for the second, 1.5 for the third, 1 for the fourth. It gets better.
Extra: Pretiming
Some groups like pre-timing. And this is definately the easiest to do. Just seperate the wave form like before, but this time, seperate it into the smallest possible segments. Now, let’s say you hear a noise. Think that’s a word? Time it.
And don’t try to fine-time a pretime. It’s stupid.
