Amara.org Support Center

Hi Bonnie,

I am not aware of a way to do that with Amara. But maybe you could create a ticket about this? Tickets go to Amara's tech staff, and they'll be able to answer you more knowledgeably.

Best,

Claude

 

Hi Bonnie,

The editor doesn't support positioning yet. You can either add them on external subtitling software or edit the subtitle source. If you grab the subtitles in DFXP format, you can edit the file directly (not on Windows Notepad, use Notepad++, TextWrangler or Gedit depending on your OS platform) and add a layout block in the header, then edit the paragraphs as shown below:

 

        <layout>
            <region xml:id="top" 
                    tts:backgroundColor="transparent" 
                    tts:showBackground="whenActive"
                    tts:extent="100% 100%"
                    tts:origin="0% 5%"
                    tts:textAlign='center'/> 
        </layout>

...

<p begin="00:00:52.380" end="00:00:53.980" region="top">Aberdeenshire. 2010.</p>

 
Best,

Fran Ontanaya

 

Thanks a lot, Fran!

If I got it right, then we could mark with the Amara tool the subs that need to be at the top with something that will be easily retrievable with CTRL F in the DFXP file - for instance $$ - at the beginning of the subtitle, like this:

 

 

 

$$ [subtitle content]

 

 

 and then, for each marked sub, delete the $$ , and add  the attribute 

 

region="top"

 

in the paragraph definition, before the subtitle content?

And we could even have a "find and replace" rule to do that for all marked subtitles in one go, like

Find all

 

>$$ 

 

and replace them with

 

 region="top">

? 

I'm going to try that - but on a 2nd copy of the DFXP file :D

Claude

 

Yes, that's correct. I've done it myself with a search & replace before.

One has to be careful with situations where the subtitler didn't place the $$ right at the start, for example sometimes they place an asterisk for italics. Or sometimes there's a space between the dollar signs, etc.

So, after doing a search and replace, it's better to quickly search for any single dollar signs and check that they are proper part of the caption.

Alternatively, for SRT files, some players (but not all) will detect a {\an8} at the start as a top positioning cue.

Fran