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Working with Subtitles in Amped FIVE

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Law enforcement officials have been sending out recordings of interviews to transcription services (or in-house transcribers) for decades. A complete and accurate text file of statements made in suspect / witness interviews has been a valuable aid to Detectives and Attorneys alike. Now that agencies have implemented new recording technologies (Body Worn Cameras, In-Car Video, & Interview Room recorders as examples), LEOs are looking to have the recordings made by these devices transcribed as well.

There are many services out there offering transcription for law enforcement. When choosing a service (when sending sensitive information outside of the LE agency), important considerations come into play. Not the least of these considerations are information security (CJIS) and standards compliance. There are plenty of services out there offering security and speed – both of which come at a cost. The most important consideration, however, is the format of the deliverable file. If the text is going to be used as subtitles for a video, it has to be formatted in a specific way. To be used as a subtitle file, It has to be formatted as a subtitle file. Not all transcription services offer this service. So it’s vitally important to choose a vendor that supports transcription that includes timing information and can produce a subtitle file. Without the timing information, synchronization of the text to the video becomes a manual (time consuming) process. With the timing information (see below), it’s fast and easy.

Screen Shot 2016-08-27 at 9.28.28 AM

The good news is, we’ve got you covered. In fact, we’ve been supporting the insertion of subtitles for years. Let’s take a look at how this is done.

Once you’ve received the subtitle file back from your transcription service, you’re just a few minutes away from having subtitled video. Remember, Amped FIVE makes even the most complex tasks fast and easy.

load time stamp

In the “Presentation” filter group, you’ll find “Load Timestamp”. The good news is that this filter can load a custom timestamp or a subtitle file.

The “Load Timestamp Filter Settings” looks like this.

load time stamp before

Below are the file types supported by the “Load Timestamp” filter. Again, you’ll want to make sure that your transcriptionist can deliver a file in one of these formats. My preference is for .srt files as they tend to be the easiest to work with across a wide variety of video players.

supported time stamp subtitle file types

Find the appropriate file.

srt file

You can also adjust the font, font color/size, and placement of the resulting overlay text.

set font

With the file loaded and the font / placement chosen, press the “Apply” button in the Filter Settings box. Your video is now subtitled with your transcript.

The hardest part of this process is finding a standards compliant and secure transcription service provider that can deliver files with the timing information included in a subtitle format. The easy part is getting that information into Amped FIVE.

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