There are not many subtitle editors out there in Linux world, those are available, for some of the development is already stopped and became obsolete. This article will show how to install and use four subtitle editors in Linux.



Gaupol Subtitle Editor

Gaupol is a subtitle editor for text-based files. It helps to create subtitles, editing texts, timing the subtitles to match the video. The simple UI is based on GTK+ toolkit and easy to use and helps bulk subtitle processing of multiple subtitle files. Gaupol is open-sourced (see source link below) and can run on all Unix like OSes.

Gaupol includes a separately installable, user-interface-independent, general-purpose Python package, “aeidon”, for reading, writing and manipulating text-based subtitle files.

Gaupol is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

How to install Gaupol

Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, elementary, Fedora

There is no dedicated installer is available (I didn’t find any). Download the latest tar file from below link:

Gaupol

Once downloaded, extract the files and go to download folder via terminal. Once inside, run below command to run:

python3 bin/gaupol

Note: Gaupol requires Python 3.2 or greater, PyGObject 3.6.0 or greater and GTK+ 3.2 or greater.

Screenshots

gaupol; Image Credit: gaupol

Links

Subtitle Editor

Subtitle Editor is a GTK+3 tool to edit subtitles for GNU/Linux/*BSD. It can be used for new subtitles or as a tool to transform, edit, correct and refine existing subtitles. This program also shows sound waves, which makes it easier to synchronize subtitles to voices.

Subtitle Editor is free software released under the GNU General Public License (GPL3).

How to install Subtitle Editor

Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, elementary, Fedora

There is no executable installer available yet. Download the tar file from below link

subtitleeditor

Extract the files. Run below commands from the extracted directory to compile from source:

./configure make sudo make install

Feature Highlights

Multiple document interface

Video player integrated into the main window (based on GStreamer)

Can play preview with an external video player (using MPlayer or other)

Can be used for timing

Generate and display a waveform

Generate and display keyframes

Can be used for translating

Shows subtitles over the video

Style Editor

Spell checking

Text correction (Space around punctuation, capitalize, empty subtitle …)

Errors checking (Overlapping, too short or long duration …)

Framerate conversion

Edit times and frames

Scale subtitles

Split or joint subtitles

Edit text and adjust the time (start, end)

Find and replace (Support regular expressions)

Sort subtitles

Typewriter effect

Lots of timing and editing tools

Supported File Formats

Adobe Encore DVD

Advanced SubStation Alpha

Burnt-in timecode (BITC)

MicroDVD

MPL2

MPsub (MPlayer subtitle)

SBV

Spruce STL

SubRip

Sub Station Alpha

SubViewer 2.0

Timed Text Authoring Format (TTAF)

Screenshots

SubtitleEditor; Image Credit: subtitleeditor

Links

GNOME Subtitles

Gnome Subtitles is a subtitle editor for the GNOME desktop. It supports the most common text-based subtitle formats, video previewing, timings synchronization and subtitle translation.

How to install GNOME Subtitles

Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, elementary

Run below commands from the terminal and enter the password when prompted.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:pedrocastro/ppa sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install gnome-subtitles

Feature Highlights

Synchronize using the video, by setting 2 or more correct times (sync points)

Auto-adjust timings based on 2 correct times / sync points

Shift subtitles by a specified delay (can be based on the video)

Convert between framerates

Apply a reaction delay

Shortcuts for quick synchronization

Playback the videos showing subtitles with formatting

Drag-and-drop files

Can be used for timings synchronization

Fast and slow motion playback

Subtitle translation support

Merge and split subtitle lines

Supports formatting while editing subtitles

Spell checking support

Edit subtitle headers

Find and Replace, supporting regular expressions

Multi-level undo/redo

Drag-and-drop files

Character coding and subtitle format auto-detection (on file open)

Relaxed subtitle parsing, to read subtitles that contain errors

Support for more than 20 subtitle file formats

Screenshots

GnomeSubtitles; Imae Credit: GnomeSubtitle

Links

Website: gnome subtitle

Download for other Linux distributions: download

Source: SF

Aegisub

Aegisub is an advanced subtitle editor for Linux systems. It is open source software and free for any use.

Aegisub natively works with the Advanced SubStation Alpha format (aptly abbreviated ASS) which allows for many advanced effects in the subtitles, apart from just basic timed text. It has features to quickly edit subtitles, styling them and live video preview.

How to Install

I did not find any installation files- deb, rpm or even ppa for Aegisub. So, I had to compile from source and prepared a deb package.

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[Update – Sep 2016]

There is indeed a PPA available for Aegisub for Ubuntu. Run below commands from terminal and install in Ubuntu and related derivatives.

Thanks to one of our reader – http://forum.aegisub.org/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=66167

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:djcj/aegisub sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install aegisub

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If you want to compile from source, download latest Aegisub version from below:

Aegisub 3.2.2 – Source – 5mb tar.xz

After download, extract the files wherever you want and go to the extracted directory via terminal.

Run below command while in the extracted folder via terminal:

./configure make sudo make install

If you find dependency error, try to resolve them Or, you can run below prior to executing above for installation of all dependencies.

sudo apt-get build-dep aegisub

Screenshots

Aegisub Running in Ubuntu

Links

Website: aegisub

Download for other Linux distributions: download

Troubleshooting and Support

If you face any issues while installing or using the above subtitle editors you may drop a note using the comment section at the end of this article, Or you can post your query in any of the support channels mentioned below.

Generic Ubuntu Forum: Ask Ubuntu

Image Credits

GNOME Subtitles, Subtitle Editor, Gaupol, Aegisub

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