Hi everybody,

As a not-so-good English speaker, I'm trying to add subtitles to Generals briefing videos. This is what I've seen so far, with some help from this page (in Russian, translated by Google Translate):

General's Dissection. Command & Conquer: Generals, Part 1

• INI.big - Campaign.ini contains campaign data. Briefing audio data are "BriefingVoice", which identifies briefing audio data, and "VoiceLength", which is the duration in seconds of audio file; briefing does not end if this length is reached, so it's used for making the video end when audio ends and not earlier (or it should). Example: BriefingVoice for USA 1 mission is "BriefingUSA01".
  
• The "BriefingVoice" item refers to a "DialogEvent" item in INI.big - Speech.ini; its "Filename" item contains the name of the audio file of the briefing. Example: DialogEvent BriefingUSA01 file for USA 1 mission is mu1xou01.wav.
  
• The audio file is a WAV file contained in SpeechEnglish.big.
  

Now, the problem. I've successfully managed to add subtitles to Zero Hour briefings by applying this process:

• convert from BIK to MP4 using RAD Video Tools
  
• write a SRT file by using transcripts from C&C Fandom Zero Hour Transcripts, timing added empirically by listening
  
• embed SRT to MP4 file using FFMPEG
  
• reconvert MP4 to BIK
  

For Generals videos, this does not work, because video and audio are separated, and audio starts after a delay, so writing the SRT with the correct timing is almost impossible using the BIK file only as a source for symchronizing timing in SRT. I've overcome this first problem by using mission videos from YouTube (after cutting to the briefing start) as a source for the SRT timing, but there's another problem: the VoiceLength values seem to be too short for making the video end when audio ends; video ends earlier if loading is enough fast. This can be easily seen for GLA 1 mission, whose briefing audio is the longest: even in YouTube, I can see that the audio track continues after the briefing video has faded away, so subtitling by burning SRT into BIK looks impossible.

I suspect VoiceLength values do not include the (somewhat long) initial delay, so I'm thinking of adding the delay also in the SRT file as a solution, but it's somewhat a guess. Is there a better known alternative for subtitling Generals briefings, even by using a custom DLL or similar?

Edited by user Sunday, September 22, 2024 7:55:54 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified