locating all the positions for a subtitle in the frame

[loninappleton]

Please review for me how to reposition subs in the frame. I never thought I'd need it but a part of a new task has a lot of printed information on screen about what the character's role is and such.

So to make a subtitle I have to move the speaking part to another part of the screen like the very top or bottom out of the video area.

What's the grid and how does it work for Subtitle Edit? (please, just an explanation... no youtubes.)

[Subtitles]

Please review for me how to reposition subs in the frame. I never thought I'd need it but a part of a new task has a lot of printed information on screen about what the character's role is and such.

So to make a subtitle I have to move the speaking part to another part of the screen like the very top or bottom out of the video area.

What's the grid and how does it work for Subtitle Edit? (please, just an explanation... no youtubes.)

You can use the Alignment submenu

[Ennio]

"Just an explanation" is a bit short, if you don't mind. You have to be aware of certain basics if you want to understand how positioning for subtitles work. And where your mentioned "grid" can be read as the target video resolution, or as the resolution as defined in the subtitle file, or even as a player-scaled output resolution.

There are two basic types of subtitles to be considered. Text-based and image-based. Where you initially want to know what types may/may not be supported by your player.

Srt was designed as a simple, "quick & dirty" text format, initially without any bell & whistles. As such, not all players will honour the alignment tags @Subtitles is talking about. In which case the tags hopefully will just be ignored. Or annoyingly be shown as text.

There are subtitle formats which hold positioning coordinates. You can imagine that such formats also must carry target resoltion; the "grid" on which these coordinates must be applied.

A more advanced text-based subtitle for example, ASS, holds offset coordinates and grid resolution. Standalone mediaplayers often support this format only if they are externally added. I remember much talk about ASS issues with HW settop boxes. A reason for me to not much use it as end product.

Much supported image-based formats like SUP and XML/PNG also carry positioning coordinates and target resolution. A main advantage I find is that the position of each subtitle image can be easily and pixel-accurately adjusted. Where the images itself don't have to be touched.

Subtitle Edit has a lot of features onboard for creating & editing less- or more advanced formats. Much of my sub work is done for SUP. Being (UHD)BD compliant, they're widely supported.

Should you want to experiment with SUP, it's easy to export a small test-srt as one. Then open it with SE's SUP editor and see what it can do.