Kristopher Brame wrote:
Hi Marlene,
"Keyframe" is a video editing term. They mark a change in position, scale, opacity, etc. in a given thing in a video. They're used a lot for animations. So keyframes aren't really something you use as a translator. Maybe English isn't the native language of whoever made those guidelines?
They surely meant to say "shot changes". Typically the rule is to stop 2 or 3 frames before a shot change, and if the audio starts within half a second (or in your case 7 frames) after the shot change, then you start the in-time at the shot change. Really, the idea is just to avoid running a subtitle through a shot change. But sometimes you really need to go through it, so it shouldn't always be taken as an absolute rule to do every single time.
If you're using free software, I would use Subtitle Edit for this, personally. You can generate the shot changes on the timeline: Video > Generate/import shot changes. Then, you'll be asked for the "sensitivity". I personally like to set it at 0.2. But you can play around with that. I just find that if you go too far above or below 0.2, you'll either get tons of fake shot changes or you'll be missing a lot of shot changes. Anyway, with the shot changes indicated on the timeline, it makes it super easy to find them.
Then for the frames, go to Options > Settings. There's a spot that says time code mode to frames. That will make it a bit easier to pick out the frames. But you can set a hotkey for "move end 1 frame back". Then put the out time on the shot change, and use the hot key to move it 2 or 3 frames back.
I think it would be a real pain to do all this in Aegisub. The shot change detection is pretty bad last time I used (which was a long time ago), and I don't think there's any way to set it to frames.
By the way, does the client really care about it being frame-accurate, or is it ok if it's timed to the millisecond? In my experience, they only really care about it being timed exactly to the frame if it's a movie/show/documentary or something for broadcast (and sometimes they still don't care).
Hope that helps
Kris