Best subtitle font?

flickerx · Member Joined: 22 Mar 2005

I am using the title slides in Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 to create subtitles for a film I am making (its the easiest method for the moment because the film is being edited at the same time as subtitle creation - dont ask!!).

Can anyone reccomend what the best font for subtitle text is, thats readable on a TV screen.

At the moment I have two lines of text with no more than 40 characters on each line, for each subtitle slide, if you get me.

Any other reccomendations on colour, antialiasing etc etc are welcome.

Cyrax9 · Member Joined: 14 Sep 2002 Location: NJ

IF you have it/can find it....

AG Foreigner-Roman seems pretty good for subtitles. It's the closest I can find to the font Bandai uses for their DVDs (If anyone knows the name of that font PLEASE, PLEASE contact me! I'm going insane trying to find the font that they're using!) and it's very easy to read. I've used it on a couple of things I've subtitled and I've yet to find a font that works better than AG Foreigner-Roman when subtitling videos.

Also, a few quick tips:

- Avoid serif fonts (e.g. Times New Roman) -- ALL SERIF FONTS, especially Times New Overrated.

- Times New Overrated, Borial, and HELLvetica should be banned, permenantly. (I'll let you figure out what these are, if you have a PC they should be pre-loaded.)

- Don't make the text too large or you'll have "dancing logo syndrome" (e.g. screen bugging) -- keep it out of the overscan box, and size the text so that it's a fairly decent size on a TV Screen. Use up to two lines-- THREE MAX to a subtitle. Anymore than three lines on one screen is too many and ugly, anymore than two should only be used if you really need to break a line or have two people talking at once.

- Don't use fonts that are excessively wide (e.g. ADVs typefont used in Neon Genesis Evangelion) or suck up alot of screen space, these are ugly and hard to read.

Hope this helps.
~Cyrax9~

lordsmurf · Posted: Aug 22, 2005 16:55

Sans serif fonts.
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DivinoAG · Member Joined: 07 Jan 2004 Location: Brazil

flickerx
I usually use Trebuchet MS Bold, size 18. Very elegant font, with a clean design, but still carries some sutil graphic elements to differentiate all letters, like the lower case L to the upper case I. Makes it very good to read.

As for style, I always use white font, with black border and shadow, but that is more of a personal choice. But colors usually are either white or yellow.

Cyrax9
If you can get a good, clean screenshot of the font, you can try to identify it on this site: http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/