Month: August 2022

Release of Stellar Automatic Subtitle Alignment

With so much media moving from a broadcast environment on to streaming service there is a huge challenge to repurpose subtitles originally created for broadcast to forms suitable for a streaming platform. Often the video has been edited to remove ad-breaks or to add or remove colour bars, slates, headers or bumpers. Any change in the video run length or timing requires a matching edit in the associated subtitle files, of which there may be many different language versions. This process is known as Conforming.

As well as subtitle file format conversion Stellar from Yella Umbrella now provides automated realigning (conforming) of the subtitle file to match the new, edited, video. Using Speech to Text web services from Amazon and others, Stellar realigns the subtitles to match the dialog detected in the new video edit. Subtitles can be moved or deleted, any edits that can’t be done automatically will flag as errors.

When moving a complete archive from broadcast to streaming there can be tens or hundreds of thousands of subtitle files to conform. Stellar greatly speeds up the process so reducing costs and improving productivity.

Contact Us to arrange an online demonstration.

From Mr. Neb and
everyone at Yella Umbrella.

Release of Stellar Auto Gap Detection for AD Scripting

One of the challenges when writing Audio Description scripts for a program is finding the gaps in the dialog, into which audio descriptions can be inserted. In some genres this can be a real challenge as there are few gaps and a lot of dialog.

Historically the script writer would have to work through the program listening to the program and inserting descriptions where there is space and working out how much description can fit into the available gap.

Yella Umbrella have added a new Gap Detection function to their Stellar timed text and audio tool set. Auto Gap Detection uses web based Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) to detect the program dialog, find the gaps and create empty text boxes on the timeline, ready for the script writer.

The script writer can then work through each text box in turn knowing the position and the amount of time available. As the script is written Stellar indicates the word count available at the speaking speed (words per minute) that is required by the client. This helps work out the best description that will fit into the time available.

Stellar also provides all the tools for a voice artist to record the descriptions, or to use a wide range of Synthetic Voices to create the description audio. The resulting audio track can then be delivered as an audio track, mixed with the program audio or video or as a Pro Tools project file.

Contact Us to arrange an online demonstration.

From Mr. Neb and
everyone at Yella Umbrella.

Release of Stellar V6.0

On Sunday 7th August, Yella Umbrella released Stellar V6.0,  a major update for our Stellar AD, Dubbing and  Subtitle Timed Text editing tool.

We have added a range of new features for subtitling authoring, translation and QC to Stellar. These changes make Stellar a web based subtitling tool with all the feature of existing PC and Mac subtitling applications – and more.

Use Stellar to create subtitle files from scratch or convert existing files from all formats. Use Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) tools to speed up the authoring process, choose from all the major ASR suppliers in a wide range of languages. Translate subtitles with the option of machine translation assistance.

Check and QC subtitle files using an advanced Rules engine built into Stellar. Speed up the QC process with advanced autocorrection tools for a range of common errors.
Define the file requirements Profile in detail and share these with your users via a central store. Profiles allow you to define all the style and QC rules for a client and have all your users work with the same rules, automatically.
Use new Layouts and hotkey maps to customise the look and operation of Stellar so your users can have the familiarity of their current subtitling software, but with all the benefits of the latest web based tools. Improve productivity and reduce retraining time.

See more on how the changes may effect you Here.

For a full list of the changes see the Version History

All the new features are covered in the Help Manual.

Contact Us to arrange an online demonstration.

From Mr. Neb and
everyone at Yella Umbrella.