[Release] English subtitles for the Risen Q&A trailer from the GC '08

[foobar]

1. What is this about?

During the Games Convention in Leipzig, the developers of Risen (Piranha Bytes) presented their new game and also answered questions from the audience. The movie from this show is linked here (http://www.worldofrisen.de/download_10.htm). However, it's all in german. Bad for people who don't understand our fine language which reminds me of Lego (http://www.lego.com) all along - it always looks a bit bulky but you can compose almost anything with it. ;)

What I did was to translate everything they said (well, at least everything that matters) and generate subtitles from it. The translation should provide you with all relevant info from that trailer.

2. How to get it

There are two ways to get these subtitles. You can either just download the subtitle file itself or download the complete, subtitled movie. Read the corresponding section to learn more about each option and then pick your poison.


2.1 Using the SRT file

This is best for any non-noob user who already has the trailer and just wants the subtitles. You will prefer to use this file with the original, un-recoded version of the video if you're a quality fetishist, too.

Also, if you have only a low-bandwidth internet connection (i.e. modem) you can download the SRT file alone and read it with any text editor (that supports the given encoding and lineendings). Free editors are SciTE (http://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html) or NP++ (http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net), for example. I think the timing info in the SRT will not disturb you very much once you got used to it. So you can read the info without the bloat (audio & video).

The subtitle is in the SRT format which should work with any at least half decent movie player. It is encoded with ISO-8859-1 and unix lineends. Should you require something else, just ask.

After you have both the original movie and the subtitle file, you just have to convince your favorite movie player to load and display these subtitles with the movie.

On my system, it worked fine with mplayer. However, there was a strange timing difference of 3 seconds between the subtitle editor and mplayer which I corrected in the file itself. If you think that the subtitles on your system don't match the speech, then try adjusting the offset.

If you don't know what to do with SRT files, try to check the documentation for your favorite movie player. Of course, you can always get the free Mplayer (http://www.mplayerhq.hu) (available for almost all platforms), install it as described and then just use the command:



mplayer -sub gc-risen-qa-v2.srt GC2008_Risen_Q&A.wmv
Note that on some shells (particularly the bash) you'll need to escape the '&' sign first. And the filename of the subtitles might not reflect future versions.

Or, you simply go for the care-free solution below.


2.2 The subbed movie

This is what you probably want if you got a crappy movie player (like Microsofts WMP :)), don't want to bother with stuff like timings and text encodings or just have not yet downloaded the unsubbed version. You'll need an Xvid codec for the video stream, though. Try Mplayer (http://www.mplayerhq.hu/) or VLC (http://www.videolan.org/vlc) in case of problems, they are free and support this format.

In the subbed AVI, I burnt the subtitles directly into the video stream so you can enjoy them with any player and without having to care about timing and encoding. Just download and watch, it should work fine.

Inserting text requires alteration of the video stream and that means a recoding was unavoidable. I chose a smaller bitrate because I wanted the recoding and upload to finish today (it would take me ~9 hours to upload the 700 MB of the original movie). But since there is not much happening on the stage, the quality loss is tolerable and the really important part is the audio track, I think it's not a big problem.


3. The links

Download the standalone version 3 of the subtitle SRT file right here (http://upload.worldofplayers.de/files/gc-risen-qa-v3.zip)

Here are all mirrors hosting the movie file (that are known to me)


Rapid-Share (http://rapidshare.com/files/145847214/GC2008_Risen_QA_engsub_v3.avi.html)
Word Of Players (http://www.worldofrisen.de/download_12.htm)



4. Final words

It was the first time I subbed anything, so don't judge me too harsh if you think I messed it up.

If the text changes too fast, try slow motion or hit the pause key. It's not my fault that Mike talks so fast! ;)

And I really do hope I did not waste my time on this because there is already another translation out there and I was just too stupid to find it.

However, for comments, suggestions, questions, complaints and marriage proposals (with pix!!!1eleven!1) please use this thread.

[iab]

a million thanks!
you are our good man!
good job! :gratz

[Godolphin]

... and then pick your poison.

That had me cracked up and lol. :D

Marvellous idea, this subtitle thing. Thank you. §thx

[Feyenord]

Thank you very much ;) ! Now I can finally understand what they are saying. The subtitles aren't perfect, but good enough for this trailer.

[foobar]

The subtitles aren't perfect
I already found some typos myself and fixed them. Now I'm negotiating with the WoR admins if they want to host this new file. I'd hate to have to upload it twice.

[foobar]

Ok, the new versions of the subtitles and movie have been put online. There were only a few minor minor text bugs fixed (a missing word here, a forgotten whitespace there), so those of you who have the old version will probably not need to download it again.

The original post has been edited to reflect this update and the old RapidShare-Movie has been removed.

[Emad]

Nice job, it was really interesting :)

[eXecutioner]

Thank you ever so much!

[rotator]

Big thanks, nice work! §wink

[Lazor]

Thanks a lot foobar :) !

[SlamDunk]

Thank you very much for doing the subs, foobar :A

I know how laborous this kind of stuff can be. Much appreciated.

The interview itself was very interesting. From that Q&A Risen appears to be much in the same vein as Gothic 1 and 2, which is a good thing.

[TheDoctor]

How about mailing GameTrailers about this video?

[mkreku]

Thanks for the translation, foobar! Your effort is greatly appreciated.

Too bad we English speaking fans have to get the info this way though. Would it really be too much to ask for either Piranha Bytes or Deep Silver to treat the English speaking audience with the same respect as the German one?

[TeLovesc]

Would it really be too much to ask for either Piranha Bytes or Deep Silver to treat the English speaking audience with the same respect as the German one?

sorry to say this but i dont think anyone is disrespected. I would like to see the news in english coz i dont understand german but on the other side is publisher`s option to ignore the english community . I dont care too much coz i`ll always be loyal but in my opinion ,paying more attention to english comunnity would increase their sales . But that is not our porblem ,is Deep Silver`s :gratz

[foobar]

Too bad we English speaking fans have to get the info this way though. Would it really be too much to ask for either Piranha Bytes or Deep Silver to treat the English speaking audience with the same respect as the German one?

As for PB, I ask you to consider the fact that they have to work on a game. Whatever they do here in the forum is a service for the fans that they provide beside their normal duties. What other game studio has its members answer questions and partake in discussions in an independent community forum (which means there is no way to avoid harsh critic) on a daily basis? Let alone such a small studio as PB who don't even have an official "community manager" or something like that? Sure, it certainly does not damage their image to show presence here but a lot of studios get along fine by leaving almost all the dealing with fans to the publisher. PB is different in that regard and personally, I don't think that's a purely economical decision.

Whatever PB does as community service with the little spare time they have, it is done quicker by doing it in german. That is their native language after all. If they had to do it in english it would take more time, resulting in an overall reduced amount of information given to the community. So maybe we're better off if they simply continue to give us stuff in german and rely on the fans to translate that, even if it means that the english speaking fans have to wait for translation. Because that way, you might not always get your info immediately; but you get more info at all.

For DS, I have to agree with TeLovesc in the most part. It would be their job to address the english speaking community. But on the other hand, most of the "official stuff" (like the game trailer) is already provided in english. I have to admit it would be a lot of work for them to continuously monitor all the "inofficial" channels (like all threads in the german board) and translate them to english. When DS releases official information themselves, they usually do it in english as well.

Just try not to envy us germans for getting info first hand from the developers themselves (which is quite uncommon anyway), but instead feel lucky for all fans that we have such a good and close contact to PB and - given a little time to translate it - share it with you gladly. :)

[TheDoctor]

How about mailing GameTrailers about this video?

Nevermind, I'll do it myself.

Edit: Just sent an email to GT about the video. Expecting a result/answer tomorrow, or in the upcoming days.