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Annotation Edit

Annotation Edit 1.3.6 is available now.
Download Page of Annotation Edit 1.3.6
This update still remains free.

zeitAnker Annotation Edit gives you a sophisticated interface to attribute and subtitle video or audio in very short time. Therefore we developed techniques hardly found elsewhere and took the chance to build a clean and extensible product from scratch.

Annotation Edit
Refine your Quick Spotting right in the waveform time-line.
Drag ends while listening to the audio track. Redraw, add or delete spottings.
The example is taken from an historic noisy movie, printed to tape with black right border.
If you want ro see the whole movie with German subtitles here it is. The complete video for download can be found at archive.org Pedestrian Crossing. We will be happy to add your translations or closed caprions.

Now on iTunes a great tutorial about Closed captioning HD podcasts with Annotation Edit by Israel Melendez (tecnocato)

Annotation Edit 1.2.1 introduced a new feature "Quick Spotting".
Let us call it "instant spotting". In most of cases this feature will save you vast amounts of spotting time.
Just have a look here at this movie. No tricks, all takes are done in real-time, showing instant spottings from several mixed-down sources, including a full-length feature film.

Latest new features:

  • Annotation Edit Version 1.3 focusses on transcripts and file exchange with external translators.
  • Now included are MS Excel XML import and export. RTF with time-code import and export. MS Excel XML may include time-code offset information, as well as some logging notes.
  • Plain text, Plain RTF, MS Word doc, html can be imported with automatic duration calculation.
  • A new fast logging mode has been added to quickly assign time-code to transcripts. No arenaline based live spotting, relax hit fast logging when the subtitle should disappear. Annotation Edit will try to set the corresponding start - by words per minute calculation.
  • If just need to feed in translations, you can feed in plain text documents and let Annotation Edit apply the time-code and styles from your spotted master track. Or apply Instant spotting to transcripts, just prepare the transcript with corresponding line delimiters.
  • New snap functions to reposition the start or end of a subtitle to the current time.
  • If you need to bring in frame-based time-code, the new time-remapping functions will help you.
  • DVD Studio Pro and EBU STL can write the native time-code to STL. No need for offsetting by hand before export.
  • Multiple illegal time-code values, overlaps, duration and text length errors can be found and often even fixed with one click.
  • Hard wrap long lines to apply to the technical specification of captions.
  • All proceesing features are greatly enhanced.
  • A free test-drive of our new Blu-ray plugin is included.
  • Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard) approved.
  • Besides compatibility enhancements this version includes several additions and refinements.
  • Redesigned waveform view.
  • Added waveform overdrive preference for significant representation of fine details in movies with hgh dynamic range.
  • High performance overlay, faster hardware gets faster.
  • Freshly organized preferences.
  • Quick Spotting preferences with 2 presets and immediate testing option..
  • Added import preference for Windows latin 1 (Spruce STL and ASCII text) as latin 1 is not automatically detected.
  • Added caption export to Google Video.
  • FCP sequence marker import and export now includes marker duration.
  • Enhanced SCC import and export, you can now assign Roll-Up mode to selected captions.
  • For better SCC decoder compliance a new SCC export setting is added.
  • QuickTime closed captions can be instantly previewed with the closed caption importer component by Apple.(standard character set only).
  • Menu to add music symbols with cmd-3 in both windows.
  • Added SubStation ssa export plugin for use with Perian or Windows/Linux type-setting applications. Supported are style, basic position and unicode. Centered italic style and top-position can be applied to each subtitle.
  • Many refinements all over the application.
  • Annotation Edit supports Motion templates with Final Cut Studio 2.
    Use your cool lower third or title templates and feed in text without a glitch.
  • Annotation Edit supports QuickTime closed captions with Compressor 3.
    Just export to SCC (Sonic Closed Caption) and feed your file into Compressor.
  • Every QuickTime 7.2 player including QuickTime closed caption compatible devices will display your captions fine.
  • Added export to GoogleVideo timed text in both applications.

Features included:
SCC import and export, transcript import, DVD Studio Pro track item description import. Italic style, alignment and position can be imported from and exported to SCC, FCP XML, DVD Studio Pro STL and EBU STL. RTF export. FCP XML export with fades.
Reads native time-code offset. Support for Apple Remote Control.
Audio scrubbing, keypad shortcuts.
Lots of refinements.

annotation edit, spotting
The waveform is automatically normalized.
Here we use waveform overdrive leverage the waveform rendering.
Quick spotting will detect even the finest details.

Your work in Annotation Edit is:

  • Media independent
  • Resolution independent
  • Hardware independent
  • Location independent
  • Language independent

Concentrate on your work, share, distribute and refine your work at any time and any place. Circumvent costly production environments.
Create teleprompter files for use with Apple Logic or Digidesign ProTools on the fly.

When it comes to video annoation and subtitling, two interface models are common.
The use of a timeline shows obvious caveats. Typical use leads often to repetitive zoom in and out tasks. At second text readability is obscured. We dismissed the timeline concept in favour of easy searchable lists:

Even thousands of annotation entries are managed in a very convenient way and more important almost instantly.

More Information here.