Sbubby

A minimal yet ambitious subtitle editor.

Sbubby is a keyboard-only subtitle editor written in C that aims to be efficient yet precise. Interaction with Sbubby is done via Vim-like keybindings which provide an efficient way of navigating and editing, through the use of operators and motions.

Installation

Pre-built binaries can be found here, along with installation instructions.

Usage

To create subtitles from scratch:

sbubby.exe <video.mp4>

To edit existing subtitles:

sbubby.exe <video.mp4> <subtitles.srt>

Controls

Like Vim, Sbubby contains 2 main modes when interacting with the program: NORMAL and INSERT. NORMAL mode is used for navigating through the video and adding/deleting subtitles, while INSERT mode is used for editing text of the current subtitle in focus.

NORMAL Mode

SPACE - Toggle play/pause

ESC/Ctrl c - Clear command buffer

f - Toggle fullscreen

Movement

k - Seek forward

j - Seek backward

K - Seek forward (small)

J - Seek backward (small)

n - Frame step forward

N - Frame step backward

gg - Seek to start

G - Seek to end

With quantifiers:

10k - Seek 10s forward

5J - Seek 0.5s backward

Subtitling

a - Add sub and enter INSERT mode

i - Enter INSERT mode

I - Enter INSERT mode at start of text

w - Seek to next sub

b - Seek to start of sub / Seek to previous sub

h - Set start of sub at current time

l - Set end of sub at current time

e - Seek to end of sub

W - Switch focus to next sub without seeking

B - Switch focus to previous sub without seeking

r - Manually reload subtitles

dd - Delete sub

With quantifiers:

2i - Enter INSERT mode on sub #2

3w - Seek 3 subs forward

INSERT Mode

Ctrl p - Toggle play/pause

LEFT/RIGHT - Move cursor between characters

Ctrl LEFT/Ctrl RIGHT - Move cursor between words

HOME - Move cursor to start

END - Move cursor to end

Ctrl w/Ctrl Backspace - Delete word before cursor

Ctrl Delete - Delete word after cursor

ESC/Ctrl c - Exit INSERT mode

Ex mode

Enter Ex mode by entering : in NORMAL mode. Press ENTER to execute commands in Ex mode.

:w - Save current subtitles as <video.mp4>.srt

:q - Quit without saving

:wq - Save current subtitles and quit

ESC/Ctrl c - Clear command buffer

Building from source

Prerequisites

• MinGW-w64
  • SDL2-devel
  • libmpv
• Make
• DLL search path contains:
  • libmpv-2.dll
  • SDL2.dll

Steps

1. Clone the repo

git clone https://github.com/kokseen1/Sbubby

2. Build

cd Sbubby
make
make clean

3. Run

.\build\sbubby.exe <video.mp4>