I have a blank SRT file associated with a video, the timecodes have already been set in a transcription software platform (i.e. the boundaries of each caption have been set but the captions have not been written down), I have uploaded the video to youtube, and now I want to the blank SRT file to it, so someone can transcribe it using YouTube's transcription/translation platform.
Blank SRT:
1
00:00:01,05 --> 00:00:04,64
2
00:00:05,02 --> 00:00:07,18
3
00:00:07,81 --> 00:00:11,03
4
00:00:11,04 --> 00:00:15,92
5
00:00:16,35 --> 00:00:17,11
But there is a problem, since there is no text in the captions, youtube does not recognize the timecodes, and so nothing happens when the srt is uploaded to a video in youtube.
To get around this, I place a single non-alphanumeric character in the blank line beneath each time code (usually a "-").
SRT file with dashes:
1
00:00:01,05 --> 00:00:04,64
-
2
00:00:05,02 --> 00:00:07,18
-
3
00:00:07,81 --> 00:00:11,03
-
4
00:00:11,04 --> 00:00:15,92
-
5
00:00:16,35 --> 00:00:17,11
-
This is very manual process that can take a long time. There has to be a way to use a find and replace in something like Notepad++ and simply add the dashes. I'm trying to do that using regex but running into problems.
^$ correctly targets the blank lines, however if I simply replace them with a "-" I get:
1
00:00:01,05 --> 00:00:04,64
-
-
2
00:00:05,02 --> 00:00:07,18
-
-
This is unacceptable since it breaks the syntax of the SRT, when uploading an SRT like this to youtube, it thinks the content is a single caption. Thus I need to place a dash ONLY in the first blank line, the one that is directly beneath the timecode.
I cannot figure out how to ONLY select the first blank line in each pair of blank lines. Any solutions would be appreciated.
You could match the specific format at the end of the line followed by a newline and assert directly the end of the string, and then replace with the full match and
-
Find what
Replace with
Regex demo
Or the shorted variant matching only the comma, digits and a newline followed by an anchor: