Text Replacement Methods

Opaque Background

Overlay text with an opaque background.

It is suitable for a situation when the background in the place where the text is placed is monochrome, but usually, this is not the case, and it is better to use other methods.

Note: Generally, when adding text with a background, it's best to round off the rectangular edges.

Gaussian Blur

Apply Gaussian blur to the place where the text is located, and add your own on top

A general method is suitable for a dynamic background and usually looks good. - Below is an example where it was better to use blur.

Note: If the background merges with the translated text, or blurred English text adds too much white/black to the background, then you can add a shadow or a translucent background to the translated text.

Bad example: opaque background doesn't look nice here

Example: blur looks great here:

Freeze Frame

Freeze the frame before the English text has appeared.

Suitable in the case of a static image on the background. Often used with a question on a slide.

If there is a beautiful animation going on, then blur is preferable.
If in the original video, there is a zoom (the image grows in size to make the video dynamic), then you need to add zoom as well.

You can try this method with the video in the training task for YT :)

Example: the text below can be erased by fixing the frame when it has not appeared:

Background Slide

It is usually fast & neat to replace text slides in the video with clean background slides. It is alright if the slide is a bit different.

You can find lots of backgrounds in our Google Drive:

Side Text

Sometimes, when the animation is particularly difficult, or there is not enough time for a blur, or it will just look better that way, you can put the translation next to it.

Note: we rarely use this method.

Stem (video without English text)

In this case, we proceed as follows:

• Download both the original with the text and the stem.

• Add them one on top of the other. It will help to keep the timings precise.

  I usually add a stem video above the original. This way I can always disable the stem track and see how the English text looks.

[TODO: add an image from DaVinci with stem]

Replacement Guidelines

• When translating a question on a separate slide, it's usually best to either use our default question slide or use the Frame Freeze method.

• If there is a slide with the text in the video and the text is not dubbed. In this case, the length of the text fragment should be sufficient so that you can read it slowly. So you may even stretch the video if needed.

• Sometimes the English version inserts subtitles directly into the video (usually during a question). We do not have to translate them, since the Russian voice dub is clear, and subtitles can always be turned on.
  But if you have time please translate it 🙏

  

• Once I was editing the video and it had subtitles for the full video duration. We decided to just leave it as it is.

  

• In the case when these are not subtitles, but a slide with a question, you should always translate it, even if the question is dubbed.

  

• English text should not be visible when translating. If text is appearing slowly (fading in), one trick is to make translated text appear a little before the English. This way when the English text starts appearing the translation is already 100% opacity and covers English fully.

  Bad example: It is better to make the background opacity 100%.

  

  Note: In the case of complex animation, this can be neglected for the sake of the overall aesthetics.

• Titles about the place and date of the video, such as "Darshan - Dec 2012 Isha Yoga Center" and similar non-essential text, are left unchanged.

  Reasons: they are not worth the time, and you will only make things uglier.

  

---

If you want to get involved but not entangled, volunteering is a powerful tool. You should make use of it, to make activity a tool for your liberation.

– Sadhguru