Subler for Mac

4.0 stars

"Subler - Intuitive program for subtitling your videos!"

May 25, 2013  |   By J. Marcus

Version: Subler 0.9.8

Pros

This is a small, free, simple to use, and effective Mac OS X app created, says developer Damiano Galassi, to "mux video, audio, chapters, subtitles and closed caption tracks from mov, audio, chapters, subtitles and closed captions tracks from mov, mp4 and mkv." But Subler's greatest strength is that you don't need to know what any of the foregoing means to derive significant creative benefit from it!

Cons

Needs more, and better consolidated documentation. Targeting novices - in addition to end users who know what "Open Source Project Hosting on Google Code" actually means - would significantly boost Subler's utilization and earnings. Given the uniqueness of much that it does - and the demand for an application that does it as intuitively as Subler - might result in exponentially greater popularity.

Summary

I am fairly new to movie/video creation on the Mac or that "other" platform, although I have done a tad bit of straightforward sound file capturing/converting and simple audio editing. Most relevant here: I have a pretty steep learning curve and frankly and unabashedly mourn the days of reader-***-user-friendly hard-copy user manuals. (I think they were called "books.")

That being said, as I prepared to thrash my way through the thicket of subtitling applications - free and expensive, seductively simple and dauntingly difficult - I also prepared a psychological first-aid kit, as I thoroughly expected the process to be brutal. The first few program demos I tried just made me confused and frustrated. (Steep learning curve, remember?) Moreover, Subler itself received mixed reviews on sites comparing video-editing software.

Well, I for one found Subler elegantly simple and intuitively straightforward to use, at least from a pragmatic perspective. But whereas it's simple enough to get started with right "out of the box" (a.k.a. "download"), I suspect there might be difficulties and shortcomings for coders, developers, high-powered movie editors, and other computer-savvy users that I was simply too naive to encounter; I was simply happy to create and embed perfectly-synched subtitles in a video clip of myself reciting a poem in less than 3 hours. However, for power users, the lack of a single comprehensive user's guide (as opposed to scattered web references for understanding Subler in the context of Open Source Project Hosting on Google Code), plus a very anemic Help menu within the program itself - this "Help" feature simply links to the aforementioned minimalist web urls - might be an irritating stumbling block. This is an example of: You gotta know what you're doing, in order to know what to do.

So here's my concluding hint and summarizing recommendation:

HINT: Once you've learned to use Subler to create an .rst [reStructuredText] file - one of the subtitle file formats that movie/video/DVD applications commonly support - save & back up that file (as .rst or .txt - either way, you'll have your painstakingly created subtitle data at hand for re-use) - and then (should you so desire) you can use this initial subtitle file as a template for creating future ones. This way, if you forget what you did and how you did it, you need not reinvent the wheel!

SUMMARIZING RECOMMENDATION: Subler is a small [31.1 MB for v. 0.19], free [donation requested] Mac OS X [I'm running 10.6.8], and "simple mp4 muxer and editor, useful to add tx3g subtitles, video, audio and chapters tracks compatible with quicktime in mp4" - Damiano Galassi (Subler's designer). Now, I'll embarrassingly admit to not understanding half of Mr. Galassi's description. Nonetheless I can report that Subler has an intuitive interface and accomplishes its mission well. You can easily create subtitles for your own videos that will survive the process of conversion to most video/movie formats, and/or be imported and played from the iTunes Movies folder. Of course Subler is also used for importing, editing, and manipulating real movie subtitles and the like. It's got maximum power with minimum bells and whistles, and I like that.

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