subtitle font size

[Hockey Man]

Whats a good font size for subtitles? I used 28 and those seemed too big but I dont want to have to keep burning dvds to see if they're too small or too big.

Anyone have any suggestions on which size to use?

[cor1]

Hockey Man,

I don't have a suggestion for size because it should be you who decides what's best for YOU.

BUT, you don't need to burn DVDs to test.

How I would do it:
1. Take a commercial DVD and view it on the TV (or whatever viewing device you happen to employ).
2. Remember if you like the size of it or if you think it too small/large.
3. Play the same DVD on your PC. Freeze on a frame with subtitle on and measure the height with a ruler. OR if you want to be more precise capture the frame, open the bitmap with any editor (e.g. Paint Shop Pro) zoom in and count the vertical pixels.
4. Put the subtitle on your film (it may be an idea to try this with a very small "film" to speed up your test) and this time try something smaller than 28 (say 24).
5. View your test film on the PC and repeat step 3 for it.
6. Compare with the commercial DVD's size and adjust accordingly.
7. When you've settled on a good size do it for real with your "proper" film.

[SaSi]

I have had a similar problem (size of fonts). I personally prefer them small (not intrusive on the movie), so that they almost display over the letterbox black stripe. Others (my wife) likes them big and highly visible.

My workaround on this "household" issue is to generate two separate subtitle streams. One (mine 8) ) is 20point, Arial Narrow bold, while the second is 24point, Tahoma normal.

Realistically, I believe that a subtitled movie viewed on a 20" TV need bigger subtitles compared to the same movie shown on a 40" flat TV. The plasma/TFT displays are much more crisp and large and even smaller subtitles are clearly visible.

In any case, the subpicture streams will occupy between 3-5 Mb over the entire movie, so why not have more than one size to choose from ?

(got this idea from a DVD that had separate subpictures for "wide" and "pan&scan").