Regex add tag to subtitles

Question

I have a subtitle file of a movie, like below:

2
00:00:44,687 --> 00:00:46,513
Let's begin.

3
00:01:01,115 --> 00:01:02,975
Very good.

4
00:01:05,965 --> 00:01:08,110
What was your wife's name?

5
00:01:08,943 --> 00:01:12,366
- Mary.
- Mary, alright.

6
00:01:15,665 --> 00:01:18,938
He seeks the spirit
of Mary Browning.

7
00:01:20,446 --> 00:01:24,665
Mary, we invite you
into our circle.

8
00:01:28,776 --> 00:01:32,834
Mary Browning,
we invite you into our circle.
....

Now I want to match only the actual subtitle text content like,

- Mary.
- Mary, alright.

Or

He seeks the spirit
of Mary Browning.

including the special characters, numbers and/or newline characters they may contain. But I don't want to match the time string and serial numbers.

So basically I want to match all lines that contains numbers and special characters only with alphabets, not numbers and special characters which are alone on other lines like time-string and serial numbers.

How can I match and add tag <font color="#FFFF00">[subtitle text any...]</font> to each subtitle I matched with Regex's help ?

Means like below:

<font color="#FFFF00">He seeks the spirit
of Mary Browning.</font>

No language it is just subtitle syntax, just normal .srt files and Geany editor. — Vicky Dev, Nov 07 '16 at 05:46
The language you are coding in ... C#, php, javascript, ... what flavor of regex needs to be used ? — Jim, Nov 07 '16 at 11:00
No it is just simple subtitle text format, neither php, nor javascript or anything else. I think PCRE works fine so far I have used. — Vicky Dev, Nov 07 '16 at 11:06

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 30 '16 at 16:53

Well I just figured out by checking and analysing carefully, the key to match all the subtitle text lines.

First from any subtitle(.srt) file I have to remove unnecessary "line-feed" characters, i.e. \r.

Find: \r+
Replace with:

(nothing i.e. null character)

Then I just have to match those lines not starting with digits & newlines(i.e. blank lines) at all and then replace them with their own text wrapped around with <font> tag with color values as below:

Find: ^([^\d^\n].*)
Replace with: <font color="#FFFF00">\1</font>

(space after colon are just for better presentation and not included in code).

Hope this helps everyone head-banging with subtitles everyday.

Regex add tag to subtitles

1 Answers1