Near Perfect subtitles

Afterlife · Member Joined: 31 Aug 2003

This guide is part of a bigger guide Im doing on authoring in general with DVD Maestro. This section is completely on subtitles and thus I think it deserved to be a guide on its own. I will be formatting it as I get time, and adding screen shots when I get the chance. For now I apologize if it is hard to navigate.

Subtitles are probably the only part of DVD authoring that has given me this much trouble.

The trouble with subtitles is that getting them the right length, font size, and font type can be a huge pain in the a$$, so with all the help I received and knowledge I learned making this guide I have decided to share.
Some of the information may be incorrect so I ask that you please inform me and I will correct it. On with the guide!

Software used:
SubtitleWorkShop
MaestroSBT
A decent Authoring program that accepts Image Subtitles
Maestro, Scenarist etc
If your using DVDLab, or DVDLab pro 1.53 go no further, the image subtitle support is broken as far as I have found and will only work if your willing to map the subs yourself (which when you have 1000+ is not worth it).

Why does this guide exist?
There are two two issues with subtitles:
1. Nice looking screen fonts cost too much money
2. No program addresses subtitle length properly

So as far as #1 is concerned your best bet is to either shell out the cash for a nice font (not worth it IMO), or use what ever you can for free.
So this guide will show you how to make the best possible looking subtitles.

So onto addressing issue #2.

Subtitles come in time frames.

For example
Sub# Show Hide Text
001 00:15:28,640 00:15:34,730 I am a subtitle

So basically this is Subtitle 1 that starts at 15 minutes, 28 seconds, and 640 milliseconds, and hides at 15 minutes, 34 seconds, 730 milliseconds.

And what will show is “I am a subtitle”.

So what’s the problem?

What if your line was “I am a subtitle, and I’m going to be extremely long”?

This line is too long, and most authoring applications won’t do the word wrapping for you, so you probably won’t see your entire subtitle on the screen.

What’s the commonly offered solution? Use a Subtitle program like SubtitleWorkShop to go in and set a max line length and then it will produce a sub file with wrapping.

Good right? WRONG.
If I set my maximum line length to 48(which is generally the standard safe 4:3 line length) then for demonstration purposes I could have this.

This is a 27 character line
THIS IS A 27 CHARACTER LINE

Oops that’s not good, as you can see character lengths are not all the same, a small ‘a’ does not take up the same room as say a “W”. Sure you could find a font that does, but it probably won’t look nice on a screen.

WWWWWWWWWW – 10 characters capital ‘W’
wwwwwwwwww – 10 characters lower case ‘w’
WwWwWwWwWw – 10 characters mix case ‘w’

We have not even brought into the equation that all fonts render characters different as well. So basing your line length on a set of maximum characters is well, useless.
The variations are slight but will make a difference.

So you’ve come this far looking for a solution and I have one for you so read on.

Subtitle files come in 2 flavors
- your generic text based (srt, ssa etc)
- and image based.

Now I can hear people crying because they only have text based versions.
Calm down, were going to make the bitmaps.

So open up your subtitle file in SubtitleWorkShop, and what I want you to do is get rid of all the word wrapping, every subtitle should be on one line, I know this is contradictory to what I said earlier that we wont be able to see the whole sub this way, but trust me this is what we want. Easiest way to do this is to determine what new line character your sub file is using and replace all with a space.

Example: .ssa files use | to separate
Hello | This is on two lines
Will be shown like so:

Hello
This is on two lines

So do a search and replace Ctrl + R and replace all instances of | with a space.

Got your sub file prepared? Now save this new sub file as a SubStation Alpha file .ssa. Awesome now we have something we can work with.

Now open up the program MaestroSBT and open your new .ssa file, now MaestroSBT doesn’t come with a manual or deep explanation of the settings, and I don’t claim to know what they mean either. I will tell you what I use and why, your welcome to experiment.

So let’s click on the first button

Set Files:
Browse for a new folder for your sub file and images (don’t use a folder with other files as your about to have hundreds of images populate this folder)

Rendering:
File Formats:
Script: .son (DVD Maestro)
This is the Authoring program I use, you can generate Scenarist, and .sub(which can generally be used in most authoring apps), but IMO no program but Maestro handles subs well.

Bitmaps: Compressed TIFF
This can be changed to a variety of options. Be prepared if you use Bitmaps to have a lot of space wasted on subs, which is why text subs are usually preferred, and if an authoring program addressed my char size is not the same as a pixel, id use them. As it stands they don’t.

8 Bit Bitmap Windows Uncompressed with 1000 subs usually ends up being 300MB +, this IMO is bad

Compressed TIFF generated around 25MB of subs, which while still large I can live with.

Text:
Line Spacing % global: Unchecked
This is the global (all subs) setting for line spacing if you have multiple lines, its best to put 100% or just leave it at blank, which I assume is the same thing. 50% will have the subs overlap slightly, 1% will pretty much be on top of each other, you see the pattern..

Character extra global: Unchecked
Ok so this puts extra character spacing in-between the letters, unless your using a font which is generally hard to read (in which you should change), or like it better this way don’t change it. In case you want to, adding 1, 2,3 etc will add that many characters between letters.

Balanced Word Wrap: Check
Word wraps for you according to the specs for the text safe area on your tv. This is the magic of BMP subs, this option will make sure all of your subs will only span the Text safe area of the TV, so no more worrying and no stupid max character length.

No Horizontal Collision: Ignore
This is grayed out if you have intelligent collision checked, as I have no real clue what either do I leave as default.

Intelligent Collision: Check
This is grayed out if you have No Horizontal Collision checked, as I have no real clue what either do I leave as default.

Collision Foreseeing: Unchecked
No clue leave as default

Script Font code page: use styles
I think this tells it to use the style we will set later, who knows though. Leave it as default.

Correction: 4:3 or 16:9 or No Correction.
Ok this is pretty vital. If you’re planning on creating a WS movie, you’re going to need to use 2 sub files. One set for if it’s being viewed on a 4:3 TV, in which case use 4:3, otherwise if they will be displayed on a 16:9 TV then select this. Reason is if we use only 16:9 when rendering on a 4:3 TV they will be squashed to fit the screen.

Right to left language: Uncheck
Unless you’re in a country which reads from right to left, and want your subs done this way then ignore this.

Multibyte Code Page: System Default
Once again no clue. Leave as default

Screen and Bitmap Size
Output resolution: 720x480 (MPEG-2 NTSC DVD)
This is basically the size of the bitmaps, remember your subtitle bitmaps should be the same size as your video resolution. So if you’re working with PAL or anything else adjust accordingly.

Horizontal: 720
You can adjust the horizontal if you so wish, I don’t recommend it, though to be honest I haven’t tested

Vertical: 480
You can adjust the vertical if you so wish, I don’t recommend it, though to be honest I haven’t tested

Fixed Width: blank
If you want to set a fixed width for your subs to be in this is it, so we know our horizontal is 720, so if you want it to be only 200 of the 720 go nuts, I leave this blank.

Full Width: blank
I HIGHLY recommend against this, if this does what I think it does its bad, it will put your subs across the entire length. Sounds awesome as you’d get more subs per line. Something I found the hard way is overscan is an unpredictable pain in the a$$. So don’t enable this.

Minus 2: Check
This is defaulted with .son files, so I leave as is

Minus 3: Unchecked
It’s this or Minus 2, so I stick with Minus 2.

Don’t clip bitmaps (needed for Scenarist): Checked
This grays out Full Width and Add one pixel before clipping
If you ever see a thin black line under some of your subs, that's the reason, and you should redo them with this box checked. - Manono

Add one pixel before clipping: Unchecked
This one is self explanatory; I don’t use it as I use the above.

Color Rendering
Only one set of text antialias and outline colors: Checked
This seems like the best fit IMO, antialias generally makes fonts look better. Don’t believe me? Check this out: http://www.isocalc.com/tutorials/antialias.htm

Two colors for text, one for outline, no antialias: Unchecked
Three colors for text, no outline, or antialias: Unchecked
Sticky colors: Checked
No clue what this does

BG color button: grayed out
Color Keys button:
This brings up a window showing you 4 colors across the top and some options to the right.

Blue Red Black White Grey
Primary X
Anti/Secondary X
Outline X
Background X

This is the default

If you want your anti alias to be the same as your outline change it to black, if you want it the same as your primary change it to blue (Recommended), if you want it to kind of blend leave it as is.

I find the best is

Blue Red Black White Grey
Primary X
Anti/Secondary X
Outline X
Background X

Timing:
FPS in: 29.76
This should be the same as the output. So if your making PAL, chose 25, if your using a half-d1 hack of 23.976 or whatever keep them the same. Maybe its just me but my source was 23.976 so I set it accordingly and my actual movie was to be 29.76, when I set it this way it was really off, so this is my suggestion.

FPS out: 29.76
See above

Drop Frame: Unchecked
I am not at all knowledgeable about drop frame, maybe ill read up on it one day, so I leave this Unchecked.

SMPTE offset: blank
No clue on this either, default seems fine.

Segments:
Ignore this I don’t use it, no idea what it does.

Styles:
Has anybody else noticed that there is no option to create and save a new style? Odd… anyways select default, it will give you a brief description of what the subs properties are.

Now click edit style.

So we have 3 options for our vertical alignment:
Top, Middle, Subtitle: Check subtitle

And 3 options for horizontal location:
Left, center, right: Check center

Top Margin: 45
Left: 30
Right: 30
For our vertical alignment check subtitle and horizontal center, next change the Top margin to be 45 as this actually works out to push the subtitle 45px from the bottom (bottom margin…?)
Left and right are fine as is.

Now we can change our font
My Recommendations are exactly that, MINE, don’t like them don’t use them. I’ve spent hours testing fonts on my TV and these are what look best to me.

Font: AG-Foreigner-Roman
Font-size: 16
Font-style : bold
Font-Script : Western

I don’t know if AG-Foreigner-Roman is free or not, I’ve only ever found it here: http://font4design.co.kr/module/fontboard.php?subp=view&idx=56&di ... reqPage=2, and it’s a Korean page with no indication of a price. It looks good, and much better than most. If you cant find it or don’t like it, use Lucida Sans or NonSerif.

As for my font size, if these were text based fonts you would use 20+, because of my font and the fact I’m using images 16 is perfect. 18 if I like it a little bigger. Trust me it works out this way even if most people will disagree.

Text-Color: #00FFFF (yellow)
Outline color: #000000 (black)
Outline-size: 2
I know yellow is an ugly font color, but for the sake of my eye-sight its better. White even with a black border is hard to see on some screens and MAY weaken your eye sight, or may not medical journals change daily. All I know is people have told me to stick with yellow as it’s safer on the eyes. Also it’s more visible. Yes it’s ugly so what.

Non-SSA properties
Extra Character Spacing: Unchecked
Line Spacing (%): 0
Italics correction (%): 0
These are self explanatory, I don’t touch them

Allow processing of kerning pairs: Checked
Ligate characters when needed: Checked
Use Diatrics when available: Checked
These are default, I don’t touch them because I don’t know what they do, all I know is what I’ve done so far works so why mess with it.

Threshold 1: 85
Threshold 2: 200
Text %: 50
These are default, I don’t touch them because I don’t know what they do, and all I know is what I’ve done so far works so why mess with it.

Now below you can see a sample, though ignore it as its not too helpful when you cant see the movie or screen size it will be shown on. So let’s go to edit and preview, it make take a while to render this so be patient.

Edit and preview:
Now you can really see how big they will be and how they will look, so change your style if it’s not to your liking.

Generate:
Happy? Press generate and we now have our image subs.

Import the .son file into your favorite authoring application and compile.

I hope my guide helps, any questions, comments, contradictions, criticism, general hate etc are all fine.

stk · Member Joined: 18 Oct 2003

two thumbs up!

tks 4 the info

cheers

-C
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nbarzgar · Member Joined: 17 Sep 2004 Location: Germany

Really fine guide!

I am perhabs a bit dumb

, but I don't get the color key table... Could you state that more explicitely? I want to import to DVDLab Pro and my attempts with MaestroSBT so far produced subs with black main text and white outline, although I tried almost 10+ (?) combinations, including the defaults... (Using .son-file + .bmps)

My DVDLab is the 1.6-update-version, perhabs s.th. wrong with that?

Thanks for any help!

AlanHK · Member Joined: 25 Apr 2006 Location: Hong Kong

nbarzgar · Member Joined: 17 Sep 2004 Location: Germany

I found AG-Foreigner-Roman, here you are:

agfor26.ttf

EDIT: Was a free download.

SLK001 · Member Joined: 24 May 2001 Location: United States

A normal subtitle stream is only about 10kbps, so a two hour movie should only consume ~9MB of space on your disk. As for space "wasted" with .BMP format? You can use 4-bit compressed bitmaps which take up about the same space as compressed .TIFF. Even a full 720x480 bitmap (needed for Scenarist) that is compressed doesn't take up that much space (the background is mostly one color). MaestroSBT gives you the option of either one (plus a few more).
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AlanHK · Member Joined: 25 Apr 2006 Location: Hong Kong

lienny · Member Joined: 11 Jan 2009 Location: United States

what do you do if the subs doesn't sync with your the video file after burning it?

nbarzgar · Member Joined: 17 Sep 2004 Location: Germany

Hey lienny,

- this is not the right thread to ask this question
- look around the forum a bit more carefully, numerous threads and posts deal with this problem...

- try DVDSubEdit (look for the guides around!!!)

CU