Because it would give A&C segmenters the option to unlock languages, too, without being added as moderators so that they can go on with their job if their CS is not online. This can of course exist in addition to your CS role.
But what if the CM wants to do it herself (and is able to)? Why take that away from her? I’m just saying that the CM should have the option to decide whether she gives the option away or not.
I know. I have also had such cases and in one case, I completely gave up on explaining and just gave the timestamps each time, but for such cases, I would like for the CM to have a button to grant me access so that I can cut the parts myself. I just don’t want to take the option away from the CM in all cases.
(un)locking in all languages to prevent OL subbers from translating before their time
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We have never been able to delete other people’s subtitles. We can only modify them. The only way to delete anyone’s subtitle is to delete the segment it’s in and that can only happen if the language is unlocked. CEs are not by definition qualified segmenters so this wouldn’t be a realistic option.
Even CMs can only bulk delete.
I’m sure segmenters, who actually do the job, know much better what roles are needed to streamline the process, and could definitely give better suggestions as they have a full picture of the tasks involved. Maybe a separate A&C role is not needed (perhaps a CS role would be much more useful in fact), maybe just a way to make these segment adjustments count somehow? With subtitles, I think any change made to a given subtitle is linked with a person who introduced it, and this way it counts (I think), so if I edit my own subtitle, then I still get just “one contribution” for it, even if I edit it again, and again. Every edit on presubs counts. Not sure exactly how, but perhaps this could also be done with segments, and then A&C, or at least some of it, could count. Imagine there were no contributions for editing presubs (or any subs)… A tiny bit disheartening, right? Plus, sometimes creating something from scratch is easier and more fun than editing. It depends. This is what I was thinking.
It’s just an idea. Perhaps something could be done about it in the future.
It is not as simple as adding a new role. The system requires an action to increase the contribution counter. For subtitles, I think it is the “Save” button. Regardless of your role (subtitler or editor), after you hit that Save button the counter increases.
As for the segments, the counter might be increasing when a segment is closed(I’m not sure). After a segment is created, its start and end are adjusted via Ctrl+arrow keys. Current system doesn’t count that. Why? Because a noob like me might be using those keys 1000 times to A&C one part. So, even if they add a segment editor role, unless there is a way to count adjustments, sadly it will not make a difference.
I think it can. Save button is only activated when a change to the segment has been made. Same as with subs.
In subs the contribution is counted one sub per one person. Meaning, one user making several changes in the same sub will result in only one contribution. This is fair and can be applied to segments, too.
But someone has to actually make a script/patch for this.
If Viki gets rid of all languages we segmenters are in big trouble. Viki has released a couple of movies recently that have come pre-subbed in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. Most segmenters are not trained on how to preserve multiple languages when combining segments. So I am fixing those movies in my spare time. I had to create a document on how to do that for my students but I still need to train a couple of segmenters on how to do it correctly so we don’t lose the other language’s subs. A part that may take 20 minutes now takes an hour. And that is for movies that have decent timing. It would be a horrendous task if those movies had micro subs.
If they take all languages away, we can not do our job.
Right Actually that was not the point of my initial post, but maybe in my reply I should have said “single” action button.
Original poster suggested adding a segment editor role to solve the issue,Ijust tried to explain why the solution wound’t be as simple as that. In short, as you said some sort of programming is required, and yes “Save” button may and maynot be used while implementing that. I’ll leave implementation details to programmers
If Viki is not able to come up with a solution in the short run, maybe they should consider adding a fixed number per episode/series as a work around. Just as short term solution until they come up with a permanent solution. Let’s say there are 500 segments and 5 segmenters. Then add (500*X)/5 to each segmenter after they are done with the episode. I don’t know what would be a reasonable value for X since I haven’t done any A&C. I know this is a bit crazy, open to abuse, and not exactly fair, but not recognizing the efforts of people doing A&C is also not fair.
I mentioned “editor role” just because this is when you are allowed to edit someone else’s work (in this case segments containing presubs), but maybe it’s not needed. What I really meant is anything that would make A&C adjustments count, perhaps I wasn’t precise enough But you’re right. This is for sure something quite complex, but I think it would be worth considering in the future as more and more content comes presubbed. Maybe in the past there wasn’t such a need, because most productions were segmented here from scratch (I think), so everyone who worked on them was rewarded for their work, but this has changed, I believe. Hopefully, something can be done about it
So what is the trick to do that?
I usually save all the language subs of an episode to a text document or Google sheet and then go there to copy-paste them back. But of course that’s laborious, especially if there’s many languages. Is there a shortcut?
@irmar
Hello,
Since segmenters do not have access to the subtitle editor, they have to save the subs via the segment timer. They only need to save the subs they are going to combine.
I wrote this doc up for my segmenting team and send it to them if they need it for a job.
Ah, now I see why I very often saw, in The Forbidden Marriage, the same words repeated on two subsequent segments, and I had to delete them. Someone split segments, but forgot to delete from the first segment the sentence that went to the second segment, so it remained in both!
Sometimes when I split a long segment during A&C, I put the same subs in both parts of the split segment if I’m unsure about where it’s best to break the text. My reasoning is that by having the same subs in both bits, the English editors can delete the unwanted words. I’ve been working on the principle that it’s easier to delete unwanted words than it is to type in new ones. Also, from a viewer’s perspective, the same sub in both parts of the split sub will still seem like a single subtitle in the original long segment until the English team get to it.
But the original long segment has been split, so you see these words both at the end of one segment and at the beginning of another.
And it’s very easy for an editor to miss this repetition, the human eye has a tendency to compensate for illogical things, and maybe sees them as one, forgetting that it has already seen those words.
I would MUCH RATHER you split the sentence wherever you felt suitable, and if the editor doesn’t agree, s/he can always change it.
This is a great document @porkypine!
I’m not sure if you know of these shortcuts or not… just in case you don’t…
(1) Once the Language icon is clicked on in Segment Timer, pressing a letter on the keyboard will take you to the first language that starts with that letter. For example: when you click on the language selector and press S, you are taken to “Samoan”; if I can type SP pretty quickly on the keyboard, I’m taken to “Spanish”.
(2) Once the language is selected, there are two mouse-clicks to get to editing the segment in the different language (one click on the selected language and one click on the resultant “leave this page”). What I now do is use “ENTER” for these mouse clicks. As an example… Let’s say I presently have the Segment Timer set to English and I want: (a) to combine two segs; (b) to adjust the timing on the first seg; (c) to move to Portuguese. My approach is…
(a) In English… Adjust the segment timing of the first seg.
(b) Copy the text from the second seg and add it to the first seg.
(c) Leave the first seg selected.
(d) Press “Enter” to save.
(e) Click on the language selector.
(f) Quickly type POR (this takes me to Portuguese) and then press “Enter” twice. This gets me to the Portuguese segs. (Now that I’m quick at doing this, it saves quite a bit of time using keystrokes.)
(g) In Portuguese… Then it’s copy, paste, save from the first seg to the second second.
(h) If no more languages needs adjusting, then the second segment can be deleted and the first segment is then adjusted as needed.
I take your point. I was recently CS for a movie that had English, Portuguese and Spanish subs. While I could comfortably make a logical language-split for English, my team and I had no idea where to break the dialogue for the other languages. As a consequence, it was much easier just to copy the subs into both bits and leave the subs to the various language editors. Viki are now providing some shows with English, Portuguese and Spanish subs and it’s a very slow process having to make changes for three languages. Then, at the end of all that A&C, the credit that Viki gives to the segmenting team does not properly reflect the amount of effort that the seggers put into doing the task.
How tedious to have to adjust in multiple languages!! It would help a lot if the subbers who did the original source language to English had learned to segment properly. It’s so much easier to cut raw segments then to edit existing segments on an already subtitled video! I think it probably takes 5 to ten more times to adjust when you have to religiously save already existing subs.
When I edit movies A & C is the least interesting part of editing.
@ Manganese – I love the idea of putting the same sub in two segments when the original segment was too long and letting the editor decide where to split.
It is indeed deplorable that this hard work is not recognized by viki. But then viki staff could say the paid subber’s/ production company segments are perfectly fine and don’t need any editing.
Chief Editor vs Chief Segmenter
When I first requested appointment as a “Chief Editor” in 2011, it was because I wanted to simultaneously adjust segments and edit the English subtitles. Since then, I have done my editing 99% of the time within the segment timer so that I could merge and split subtitles, delete unnecessary segments and create additional segments.
For certain repetitive tasks which didn’t require changing the text, I usually punted to the Chief Segmenter. Back in 2012 or 2013, if a segmenter either was routinely early or late in synching. I would either ask the segmenter to fix all of her segments carefully without touching the text or ask the CS to fix. Or lack of extensions on pre-subbed movies, I asked the Chief Segmenter to fix. If a segmenter seemed to consistently chop sentences into several 1 second or less parts, I asked the Channel manager to remove the segmenter from the team as soon as I discovered the problem. If I caught the problem before subbing, I would delete all the segments and recut them myself or if there were too many parts by the same segmenter, I would ask the CS to check and re-segment. If a segmenter made the same sort of error more than three times in a part, but not nearlly all the time, I wrote to the segmenter with specific examples and asked that in the next episode to avoid that error. Gradually, as channel managers required all segmenters to be Seg 101 or Ninja graduates, I rarely had to ask the CS to fix segments on any volunteer segged videos. It seemed that it was usually only in presubbed movies that we had tiny segments or no extensions which the CS worked on. But as we are rarely having volunteers segment the videos we work on, the chopped up sentences have become frequent again as well as the perennial lack of extensions.
Actually that was not the point of my initial post, but maybe in my reply I should have said “single” action button.
But you’re right. This is for sure something quite complex, but I think it would be worth considering in the future as more and more content comes presubbed. Maybe in the past there wasn’t such a need, because most productions were segmented here from scratch (I think), so everyone who worked on them was rewarded for their work, but this has changed, I believe. Hopefully, something can be done about it 
