Ah RoninFox, you are too smart for me. You figured out exactly what it is I'm planning to do.
Moose, thank you for the link. I'll take a look at it when I have the chance and see if it is a useful program. In the interim, if anyone is interested, I wrote an Excel program to solve this problem for me by creating a subtitle file with the timestamp in it - basically, every second of the film, it displays a text timestamp that is equal to the current second of the film track... this way, you have the added advantage that you can also turn it off by disabling subtitles. It's a neat little trick I figured out... just get the VB script in Excel to create a timestamp entry like this:
1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:01,000
00:00:00
2
00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:02,000
00:00:01
3
00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:03,000
00:00:02
Then just copy all of that text, dump it into notepad, name the file subtitle.srt instead of .txt, and use your reauthoring software to insert it as a subtitle track (I set mine to the default track and program the DVD to play that subtitle by default, but you can also leave it off and just turn it on manually). As long as your reauthoring software supports .srt subtitles instead of the fully rendered .sub (most do), this works quite nicely.
Again, in case anyone is ineterested, here is the code you can put into Excel to accomplish this. The code assumes your worksheet name is "Sheet1," column A needs to be empty, and cell "D3" should have the number of seconds long that your movie is (for a 1 hour movie, that would be 3600 seconds). Just attach this code to a command button, click to activate once you have filled in cell D3:
Private Sub CommandButton1_Click()
ThisWorkbook.Sheets("Sheet1").Range("C8").Select
If ThisWorkbook.Sheets("Sheet1").Range("D3").Value = 0 Then Exit Sub
ans = MsgBox("Are you sure?", vbQuestion & vbYesNo, "Proceed?")
If ans <> vbYes Then Exit Sub
myTime = Timer
ThisWorkbook.Sheets("Sheet1").Range("A:A").ClearContents
ThisWorkbook.Sheets("Sheet1").Range("A1:A65000").Delete Shift:=xlUp
Application.Wait (Now + TimeValue("00:00:00"))
myMaxFrame = ThisWorkbook.Sheets("Sheet1").Range("D3").Value
myFrame = 0
myRow = 1
For cnt = 1 To myMaxFrame
myStartFrame = Evaluate("=text(" & myFrame & "/24/3600,""hh:mm:ss"")")
myStopFrame = Evaluate("=text(" & myFrame + 1 & "/24/3600,""hh:mm:ss"")")
ThisWorkbook.Sheets("Sheet1").Range("A" & myRow).Value = cnt
myRow = myRow + 1
ThisWorkbook.Sheets("Sheet1").Range("A" & myRow).Value = _
myStartFrame & ",000 --> " & myStopFrame & ",000"
myRow = myRow + 1
ThisWorkbook.Sheets("Sheet1").Range("A" & myRow).Value = myStartFrame
myRow = myRow + 2
myFrame = myFrame + 1
Next cnt
MsgBox (".SRT Text Created." & vbCr & vbCr & "The process took " & _
Round(Timer - myTime, 2) & " seconds to complete."), _
vbInformation, "Process Complete"
End Sub
I think I actually found doing this to be easier than finding a program to handle timestamps (because I looked for about 3 hours through google and couldn't find a program to add a timestamp to video, and it took me literally 5 minutes to figure out the Excel code once I figured out how .srt files worked).
This would be useful for, as RoninFox correctly guessed, keeping yourself easily synched with your movie when writing or recording riffs of your own.
Edited to fit code properly, and to add that this code will create an hour and a half worth of subtitles in about 10 seconds... pretty nice!
Topic: UNOFFICIAL Rifftrax DVD Creating Step-by-Step Guide (Now With Rifftrax Lite) (Read 210570 times)