Perl works well with text. It can be intimidating to look at and difficult to read, but it can perform wonderful tasks and save a lot of time when used. If you are using Mac OS X or Linux, Perl is most likely already installed on your computer. If you are using Windows, you can download Perl from Active State (http://www.activestate.com/Products/ActivePerl/; free).

The following is a Perl script to reformat .tds closed caption files:

	#!/usr/bin/perl
	# for Caption Center (.tds) files
	while (<>) {
	# remove everything before and including BeginData
$_ =~ s/.*BeginData//g;
	# remove all of the >>
	$_ =~ s/>> //g;
	# remove all of the úF
	$_ =~ s/\x9cF//g;
	# remove all of the Û followed by 3 characters
	$_ =~ s/\x9e(…)/ /g;
	# reformat the timecodes… i.e. ù01005108 to 01:00:51;08
	$_ =~ s/\x9d([0-9][0-9])([0-9][0-9])([0-9][0-9])([0-9][0-9])
	/\r\1:\2:\3\;\4\t\t/g;
	# replace all of the places where there is a tab-tab-return with a									single tab
	$_ =~ s/\t\t\r/\t/g;
	# print everything back out
	print $_;
	}

That's it. That's the entire application. Fin. Done. Out.

Save the file to your computer and name it CCConverter.pl—or whatever you want; it's your application after all.