How to copy the formatting of the original dvd subtitles

[jujuandhuhu]

Hi, I'm trying to add new subtitles to a dvd.

I was wondering if there is a way to find out the font, size, colors, styling, outline... of the original subtitles?

I think the color part is the easiest, and I tried to copy the color using the Open palette option in SubtitleCreator but the outline color wasn't the same as on the original subtitles so the new ones turned out to be really hard to read...


Thanks

[AlanHK]

the outline color wasn't the same as on the original subtitles so the new ones turned out to be really hard to read.

Use DVDsubedit to change colours.
You can change each of the 3 or 4 colours used separately (fill, outline, background).
You can edit individual subs, then do "Edit/Apply last change to all".

[träskmannen]

You can try to use WhatTheFont to determine which font was used.

[jujuandhuhu]

But, if I understand correctly, there is no way to find out the complete formating of the original subtitles?
For example by converting them into text?

[träskmannen]

Not really. The subtitles are stored as images. It is not possible to convert them to text, what you can do is to OCR them to text (Optical Character Recognition). That means that the software you use tries to identify letters in the images (=subtitles) and what you get is unformatted, raw text.

[AlanHK]

But, if I understand correctly, there is no way to find out the complete formating of the original subtitles?
For example by converting them into text?

No, as träskmannen says, that will just give you an ASCII file.

Make some screencaps and crop to the subtitle and try WhatTheFont. It's often right.
There is also a forum you can appeal to there if the automatic recognition fails.

Far too many subtitles just use Arial or ArialNarrow, awful as they are.
I think just because they start with A and become the default.

There is a lot of info about subtitling fonts at http://screenfont.ca/
I mostly use either Verdana or Lucida Fax.