It's been a long time coming, but Spot 7 is finally here. It may not look dramatically different, but don’t let that fool you. Under the hood, we’ve made dozens of changes, all aimed at helping you work more efficiently.
Here are some of our favourite new features and improvements.
Not everybody's cup of tea maybe, but few would disagree that it's a time-saver. Your video is uploaded to a secure server for processing (and deleted once complete) and within minutes you get back a .sptx subtitle file that's been timed based on your timing rules (minimum interval, minimum duration, maximum characters per line, snap to shot cuts, etc.) and translated into your target language.
It's as simple and as powerful as that. Yes, you'll need to tweak some of the translation and AI may introduce timing errors that need fixing, but you've just significantly reduced the amount of time needed to create a broadcast-ready subtitle file.
If you don't need a translation of the AI-generated transcription but instead want a timed English template file to work from, we've included two super quick automated template (and audio description template) makers that do just that.
And if you sometimes receive template files to work from and therefore don't need a transcription as the file has already been timed, Spot's template translator will create a copy of your template file translated into the language of your choice with the original timing and formatting retained. That's pretty cool. And you can translate 500,000 characters every month for free, which is even cooler.
The timeline has been rebuilt from the ground up. It's now scrollable using the mouse or keyboard, and autoscrolls when you approach the end of the current section so the waveform section you need to time against is always in view. We've given the timeline subtitles a thorough makeover as well, adding options for background transparency, border size, colour and subtitle positioning.
Shot cut detection is faster and works with real-time shot cut proximity warnings. Spot's video converter has been upgraded to version 2 and now runs directly on native FFmpeg. We've added a non-linear display option to the audio waveform, which removes noise and makes finding the start of audio easier.
We’ve trimmed a lot of empty space in the main window, making it easier to focus on your work. Compact view is now even more compact, so you can see more subtitles at once. The video window is larger with a new “fit to window” button and options to hide certain items, maximizing available space for video playback.
