Read text from a file : I wrote a plugin

DusX

I just want to ask if there is any updated version of this plugin for Mac, or has the above linked version proven to be solid?

Alexserrano

Does anybody if it's possible to work with a srt (subtitles) archive with any Isadora plugin?

The point is that I want to project subtitles but synchronized with a timecode…

Fred

Essentially it is a text file, change the extension and it should work fine.

Alexserrano

So, what about the time code. Do you think that can it be synchronized a video?

Fred

I guess so , read the time code, compare it to the incoming time code from the movie and display it if it is within the range, read the next code etc. There is a bunch of text parsing to do but I cant see a reason you cant get this going.

Fred

Ok, there is one problem, I had a quick go and you have to do a fair bit of work but the last step I cannot get around is that the timecodes come in as text not numbers. everything else is solvable but getting the time right. When I read the timecode from a standard .srt file you get this

00:02:17,575 --> 00:02:19,065

It is a tricky bit, I think using the text chopper you can then do the addition of the times as time code, I used the timecode comparator and you have to do some strange stuff but basically, in the timecode actor seconds are actually split into 256, so if you chop and parse each number from the line that has the time in and out and then work out the total time in seconds, multiply by 256 and then compare it with the current time...... kind of annoying to do. You may be better off trying to modify the above user actor to do it.

jhoepffner

Personaly, I use a quicktime text movie, you can use belle-nuit subtitle software to translate .srt to quickTime text and then QuickTime 7 pro to obtain a QT movie. You can also write the QT text yourself, using text edit.

Played in Isadora, you can activate the text track and use text/draw actor to screen it.

If you need to slave it to entering timecode, as MTC, you can use MTC reader. If you need to slave to another movie, you can slave it via position

I send you a patch in Isadora (pre-release version), with subtitles in text and QT.

A little bit easier…

Hope that helps,

jhoepffner

26cf11-testsubtitles.zip

DusX

@djinoui
Have you tested the plugin on Windows 8 or 8.1?

I have a project that is using it that now crashes shortly after the text read.. (on all installed versions. inc, both the stable release and pre-release)
Strangely no error report is created, just a windows prompt that its crashed and windows will try to find a solution.
So debugging is a little slow.

Armando

Wow Jacques. Very creative solution!!!!

As always ;-)

djinoui

@DusX

Yes, I just installed Windows 8.1 on VirtualBox, I'm also getting a crash. I don't have much time these days but I'll try to install VC++ and investigate about this.

DusX

@djinoui
thats good to know.. I wasn't entirely sure it was the cause.

If you get around to it I would be very grateful.

djinoui

After installing 1.5.3f25 (latest pre-release) on the W8.1 virtual PC, everything seems to be back to normal again.

Could you please tell me if you still get a crash with this version?

DusX

Yeah.. just did a quick test, and I still crash..
I will try to create a simple version for testing.. to make sure (the patch I have thats using it is pretty complex)

DusX

OK, spoke to soon... some fiddling.. and it works again.. I think it has to do with the init settings for the plugin. I didn't really change anything and its working, so I think that I simply saved a happy value into an input when I updated my user actor.

djinoui

OK, keep me updated if you manage to reproduce the bug.

For what it's worth, I wouldn't be surprised if it was related to file encoding. Or even special characters in the input path.

hobbyte

pretty cool actor
thx

jtoenjes

Thanks for this plugin. It works great, even in 2017 with the latest version of Izzy! Just what I needed.

djinoui

Glad to read this, as I didn't test it with Isadora 2! Happy VJing!

mark_m

@djinoui

@Woland @mark

This readtextfromfile plugin is one I've utilised extensively in a number of projects.
Sadly, it doesn't work with Isadora 3.
Is there an easy way to update it, or recompile it, or whatever, so that it does?

I realise that there are other solutions available, but I do like this one :-)

mark

@mark_m said:

Sadly, it doesn't work with Isadora 3.

It does now. ;-)

I spent a hour on Benoît's plugin this morning and recompiled it for Mac and Windows.

Now, I have an "official" file reading plugin in waiting in the wings, which I've been wanting to get out. (I've been consumed by making sure Isadora 3 runs well on Catalina fixes this past week.) It does not, however, have the char/file/line/paragraph option that Benoît's plugin has.

One thing that for sure wouldn't have worked in the old version: if you have a fie path that included non ASCII characters liek ü, ø, ç, etc, it would not have opened the file. I've fixed that by updating Benoît's plugin to handle Unicode file paths.

But there's a few things that caught my eye as I examined the code. I don't quite understand why he would send output text using CR/LF line endings when the source file is CR/LF, because Isadora's going to have trouble parsing that: Isadora uses CR as a line ending internally, due to it's MacOS origins. And it seems a little ineffecient to me to read the file every time you change a char/line/paragraph number. I guess that's no big deal for small files, but what if it was huge?

Anyway, these critique notwithstanding, here's are the usual caveats: I didn't write it, it's not official, it may crash, blow up, or allow evil clowns to enter your living room. I do not have much time to repsond if there are bugs but hopefully it will "just work."

The updated source code is included.

Enjoy,
Mark

read-text-from-file-v1.0.zip (FOR ISADORA 3, 64 bit!)