Subtitle Workshop bug: Lost 500+ subs because file didn't save despite program acting like it did Thread poster: Edmund Meinerts
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I made an account here to report a huge flaw in Subtitle Workshop, one that cost me over 500 subtitles and about 20 hours of work. Hoping for some commiseration, maybe advice (though any hope of recovering the work is gone at this point) and especially to warn others and prevent it ever happening to them.
Basically, what happened was I was working on a subtitle file for the last few days, saving regularly (as a SubRip file, .srt), but I never actually closed SW, only ever had it min... See more I made an account here to report a huge flaw in Subtitle Workshop, one that cost me over 500 subtitles and about 20 hours of work. Hoping for some commiseration, maybe advice (though any hope of recovering the work is gone at this point) and especially to warn others and prevent it ever happening to them.
Basically, what happened was I was working on a subtitle file for the last few days, saving regularly (as a SubRip file, .srt), but I never actually closed SW, only ever had it minimized. Well, last night before bed I saved and closed SW, no problem, but when I went to open the file again this morning I was shocked to find that it was just not there. It never existed. The only trace of it I could find on my computer was in Windows 10's "recent files" directory, but when I tried to open it from there I got an error message that the file could not be found/did not exist, and right-clicking it reveals it to be a 0 byte file.
After a bit of panic and some tests, I came to the conclusion that when you try to save from SW to a folder with a path above a certain length, no file is created. I didn't do an exact test, but the limit seems to be roughly 100 characters, so nothing crazy (my file was, or should have been, nine folders deep from "This PC") and well below Windows' file length limit of 256. There is no error message, nothing to give you any indication that anything is wrong...simply, no file. Interestingly, this same limitation seems to apply to video files...attempting to import video from the same folder returns a "not a valid video file" error message, but the same video imports no problem from the desktop or from shorter paths. I even ran into that problem when starting this job, but failed to put two and two together that it would also impact the file I was trying to save.
I'm angry and frustrated beyond belief. I feel like I want to sue Subtitle Workshop (I won't, but I want to). It's not that I was stupid and forgot to save. I did everything right. How was I supposed to second-guess that clicking "save" wasn't actually saving? How could anyone design a piece of software that doesn't give you an error message when it fails to save your work?
Has this happened to anyone else? I couldn't find any similar stories online, but I find it hard to believe I'm the first person to try to save a subtitle file with a path over 100 characters. If so, has anyone had any sort of luck restoring the work?
In the meanwhile: SAVE YOUR SUBTITLE WORKSHOP FILES WITH SHORT PATHS!!! ▲ Collapse
| | | | abdelkader jbira (X) 
Morocco
Local time: 20:44
Arabic to French
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Je travaille sur subtitle edit, mais normalement il doit y avoir sur workshop le bouton sauvegarder sous (save as), il faut cliquer dessus puis choisir SubRip.
Il faut donc faire une recherche de tous les fichiers portant l'extension subrip.
Normalement si on charge la vidéo sur laquelle on a travaillé sur ce logiciel, alors les sous-titres apparaissent automatiquement.
Enfin, il faut régler le temps de sauvegarde (par exemple 10 mn) dans "options, conf... See more Je travaille sur subtitle edit, mais normalement il doit y avoir sur workshop le bouton sauvegarder sous (save as), il faut cliquer dessus puis choisir SubRip.
Il faut donc faire une recherche de tous les fichiers portant l'extension subrip.
Normalement si on charge la vidéo sur laquelle on a travaillé sur ce logiciel, alors les sous-titres apparaissent automatiquement.
Enfin, il faut régler le temps de sauvegarde (par exemple 10 mn) dans "options, configuration, général) et cocher la case "se souvenir des fichiers récents". ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Subtitle Workshop IS the bug | Nov 11, 2019 |
Subtitle Workshop bug
Subtitle Workshop IS the bug. What version were you using? There are 3 versions out there, and I believe they are all totally unusable, specially version SWXE 6.01 r7 which is still in beta.
My software recommendations are:
- Subtitle Edit (free, for occasional subtitling jobs)
- EzTitles (€1620, when subtitling is you main income)
| | | | | Version 6.0b | Nov 11, 2019 |
My version is 6.0b. I only do occasional subtitles as part of what is only a side job as a translator in the first place, so one of the ridiculously expensive professional programs would be way out of my budget. SW hasn't been perfect but has worked for my purposes up until now. I'll look into Subtitle Edit for future jobs, though. Thanks for the tip.
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kmtext
United Kingdom
Local time: 20:44
English
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| Save in more than one location | Nov 13, 2019 |
Another good habit to get into is to save your work in more than one location. Swift used to have a similar bug where it seemed to save the file, but didn't. If you saved to another location, say a flash drive, it did, so, before you stop working on a file, save a copy of the file somewhere else. Then, at least if something goes wrong, you have a backup copy.
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