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sandflow / ttconv

Subtitle conversion. Converts STL, SRT, TTML and SCC into TTML, WebVTT and SRT.
BSD 2-Clause "Simplified" License
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Any plans for substation alpha SSA subtitle support for input? output? #426

Open groovybits opened 5 months ago

groovybits commented 5 months ago

Hi I was wondering if you or anyone had plans of adding the Substation Alpha subtitle format?

The specs are here: http://www.tcax.org/docs/ass-specs.htm

It is a very precise format and used for Anime, the most popular Anime site still uses it for a reason :).

I would possibly want to try in the future if no interest in doing it. I am not sure how much it would be necessary or something useful for people most now days. Yet it is a wonderful spec and can do graphics technically and many other things that no other format can do (like bouncing ball karaoke).

palemieux commented 5 months ago

Are you thinking about ASS as output and/or input format? Output format would be an easier first step since the internal model might not (today) support all the ASS animation capabilities.

palemieux commented 5 months ago

… and not current plans for me :)

groovybits commented 5 months ago

Are you thinking about ASS as output and/or input format? Output format would be an easier first step since the internal model might not (today) support all the ASS animation capabilities.

I was thinking both. I know from experience that input is the gold that big companies need possibly ;) Yet can't say specifics, it would be a big win for some Anime giants out there.

Yet I can see it's harder for input and output is nice but more niche since the format isn't hot / being used by anyone new now days.

I may investigate it sometime to see but suspect hard for me to add it. It's more of a thing some big Anime players might want to look at since for them it sounds like gold to get out of the legacy ASS subtitles for old content.

palemieux commented 5 months ago

Yes, let me know if/how I can help/collaborate.

groovybits commented 5 months ago

Any pointers to know for when I have some time, about how the input is architected. I looked at the SRT one, it seems like going SRT and basic ASS support initially would be potentially possible for me in the future to look at. I will keep it in the back of my mind at least, the format is amazing to me at least and I think many others. Yet the people who need it and could fund it probably would never do that, and quality it allows is more of a fansub / fans thing vs. anyone who actually owns the Anime now days :(

This is a conversion to VTT which does the styles somewhat that I know of: https://github.com/crunchyroll/nginx-vod-module/blob/916df12dee9ab8e27945af19350c124f551e31ed/vod/subtitle/ass_format.c

The style conversion and basic support I believe is done there in C at least, so would help someone do the work too if others were interested and needed guidance. This also shows the demand for the feature, as the biggest Anime company uses it there to serve dynamically converting it obviously ;) not that I know anything about that :P

palemieux commented 5 months ago

I think the place to start is to map the ASS model to/from the internal model, which is very close to HTML. If someone (you 😊?) could do this, then someone else could write the code.