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  1. Member sky captain's Avatar
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    I have a 40 minute piece that's going to DVD. I made a 29.97fps WMV of the show to use for writing subtitles in Subtitle Workshop. Everything seems to work fine. I then export my Adobe Encore text file of the subtitles and timecode.

    When I import the resulting text file into Encore, I sync up the correct frame of my MPEG to the first subtitle. Looks good.

    40 minutes later on the timeline, my subtitles are off by about 4 seconds. This happens gradually through the course of the show.

    Does this have to do with 29.97 versus 30 fps? What am I doing wrong?
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    Did you use drop frame timing?
    ICBM target coordinates:
    26° 14' 10.16"N -- 80° 16' 0.91"W
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  3. Member sky captain's Avatar
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    Good question. That seems to be the thing.

    Encore doesn't call it that. There's a switch for relative (with semi-colons) and absolute (colons).

    Sooo... I changed all my punctuation, imported as relative, and that seems to solve the problem.

    Except now when I try to save the project, I get "Unidentified Error."

    DAMMIT!
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  4. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    I don't know why Adobe would use such stupid, non-standard nomenclature like that, but thankfully it's easy to see what they meant. It IS industry standard practice to use colons [:] for non-drop frame and semi-colons [;] for drop frame. Notice how the semi-colon "drops"...

    Actually, a true drop-to-nondrop misjudgement should be off by 2.4 seconds at 40minutes in.

    You should check with adobe about NDF/DF timecode bugs...
    My guess is that you have mixed TC formats within the project, and the app expects them to all be the same. You may have to start with a blank project (set to the correct settings) and then re-import all your media and relink everything. Sorry, sounds like a lot of work. Don't use Encore (I had heard it was quite buggy--I guess it was true).

    Scott
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  5. Member sky captain's Avatar
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    Yeah, I thought 4 seconds sounded like too much. Maybe I did my math wrong, because making the change to relative solved the problem.

    With so much criticism for Encore, is there a "perfect" DVD program out there I don't know about? It seems that no matter what I pick, there's gonna be people who hate it.
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    When I first started doing subtitles, I used my subtitling program (SubStationAlpha) to "stretch" my subtitle timings to compensate. It works just fine, but it really isn't the proper way to do what was needed. I've never used Encore so I can't attest to the "bugginess" of the program (but, since Adobe bought Spruce, I would have assumed that it would have been as good as DVDMaestro). Perhaps not.
    ICBM target coordinates:
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  7. Member sky captain's Avatar
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    Here's a related question.

    In Encore, when I import subtitles, it asks what font size I want to use. I'm not sure if this would be the same with other programs - but is there a standard size? 32 seems to be the default, but I think I'll have to go smaller to keep my titles within the title-safe area.

    Once all the subtitles are in, I can't change this. I have to choose the size first.

    I'm using a sans serif font - Myriad.
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  8. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    SLK001--It was Apple that bought out Spruce. And they have since incorporated Maestro features into DVDStudioPro (a little in v2.0, much more in v3.0). Which I think is why it is now considered the most popular DVDauthoring app worldwide--lots of features, solid, but with easy workflow and user interface.

    skycaptain--titles can be whatever size you want. Most are probably around 32-64pt. The absolute limit of legibility is probably 14pt--don't go there. That's a bitch that you can't change it after typing.
    Good idea using sans serif. Myriad is good.

    Scott
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    Apple... yeah, that's the one (got those "A" companies confused)!
    ICBM target coordinates:
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  10. Member sky captain's Avatar
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    Anyone know what "overflowing subtitles" means?

    I keep running into new errors all the time.

    Encore is not my friend today.
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  11. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    My guess is another non-standard Adobe nomenclature.

    As per the DVD spec, subtitles must reside within chapter boundaries. If a subtitle "flows" over into the next chapter, most authoring apps would just cut it off. You would then have the subtitle disappearing early. But the app wouldn't freak out either. Maybe it is just a simple pre-flight, error-checking reminder...
    Anyway, to fix it, check all you sub start and end times and make sure they stay within their own same chapters. If you need a sub to continue on into the next chapter, you duplicate it, put the 2nd piece at the beginning of the chapter mark, and adjust the length of the 2nd section to taste. Yes, in final playback there will be a moment where the sub flickers out and then returns, but it's really not that noticeable.
    -or-
    you could lose the chapter marks.

    Only other thing it might be is if you've got a sub that is too complex for it's allowable bitrate. Either it's changing all the time at a full 30fps or it got tons of high-contrast picture elements and change alot (or both).

    Scott
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  12. Member sky captain's Avatar
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    Chapter stops. Brilliant. I'll have to check that when I go back to work. Thanks!
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  13. Member sky captain's Avatar
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    Well, I'm afraid that's not it. I found this in the instructions.

    Subtitle Text Overflow: Checks for subtitle text that has gone off screen because it overflowed the text boundary.

    I knew I had a few places where I was going outside title safe, but I was hoping Adobe would let me burn a disc anyway. Instead, I'm getting errors (unknown error DVD Error -1) that stop the burn process.

    I'll keep hammering away at it.
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  14. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    Must be an Encore-internal thing. Never had that restriction on Maestro, Scenarist, DVDSP, Pinnacle ImpressionDVDPro, or DVD Architect.

    Good luck,

    Scott
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  15. Member sky captain's Avatar
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    I found out I could ignore the overflow suggestions. Yes, I go outside of title safe occasionally, but not by much.

    The unnamed errors that were halting the burn were unrelated timeline problems. If you put a chapter marker too close to the end of a timeline/mpeg, it wigs out.
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  16. Just had same issues in Encore!
    The way I fixed it was to import the subtitles FIRST!
    Then Video+audio

    Any better workarounds?

    Thx.
    Stephen
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  17. Member sky captain's Avatar
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    I'd forgotten about this thread! This goes back to one of the first DVDs I authored in 2005.

    Since then, I've had similar subtitle import problems that I solved a different way. (I either forgot about relative vs absolute, or it didn't solve the sync problem on other projects. Not sure.)

    Lately, if imported subtitles are off by a number of seconds, I calculate the difference and delete them. Then I go back to Subtitle Workshop, STRETCH all the subs to match a new fake length. For example, the subs in Encore are 4 seconds long, so I return to SW, and tell it to recalculate all my subs to match a project 4 seconds shorter.

    I don't have Subtitle Workshop in front of me, but I can look up the menu area and exact terminology later if people are interested.

    The result in SW is bonkers -- now most of my subs will be off when watching in SW -- so I save it as a new project (SRT). I make sure to run error checks because a lot of subs will overlap now. Then when I import that SRT to Encore, it fixes Encore's timing problem.
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  18. So much trouble for such a simple thing. I create SSA subs for DVD. Those match the audio with no stretching. From them I create SST subs within MaestroSBT with the Drop_Frame box checked. I use the resulting SST subs in Muxman to create a compliant DVD with synched subtitles. Never a problem in well over 1000 DVDs made.
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  19. Member sky captain's Avatar
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    I haven't used Muxman. Does it have all the design and menu capabilities of Encore?
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  20. Originally Posted by sky captain View Post
    I haven't used Muxman. Does it have all the design and menu capabilities of Encore?
    No, Muxman is a pure authoring program with no menu-creating abilities. I create my menus in something else and then add the Muxman-created DVD to it.

    Or maybe Encore accepts SST graphical subs as input? Or maybe it accepts SON subs (also can be created using MaestroSBT). Or you can create your menus however you like and replace the output video with a Muxman generated DVD. I do something similar - create a menu with 'dummy' video and audio (very short M2V and AC3) and later replace it with the real DVD (thus keeping the menus) using PGCEdit. Lots of ways to skin a cat. There's also the added bonus of creating menus with very short audio and video as it gives you the chance to thoroughly check the menu afterwards without having to waste all the time redoing it with original and much longer audio and video. If you make a mistake, you can make the changes and redo it pretty quickly.
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  21. Member sky captain's Avatar
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    Now it's my turn to say "so much trouble for a such a simple thing."
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  22. Originally Posted by sky captain View Post
    Now it's my turn to say "so much trouble for a such a simple thing."
    Touché. If you want to pay, then the professional version of Muxman has menu creation abilities. And I expect it's a helluva lot cheaper than is Adobe Encore. But the freeware DVDAuthorGUI suits my menu-creation purposes. I can create about any kind of menu I wish. And I don't have any subtitle synch problems, and I can create anti-aliasing colors for those subs so the subs look smoother on the screen. Maybe Encore can do that also, I don't know.

    You begin with crappy SRT subs and Encore spits out ... what? It has to be some sort of graphics-based DVD-compliant subs. SST or SON, most likely. Or doesn't it ever show them to you? And you can't import any graphics-based subs into Encore to begin with? Sorry, but I purposely never use any Adobe products (except for their Flash crap I'm forced to use) and am ignorant of what it can do. I do know that - purely as an authoring program - Muxman is as good as any ever created.
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  23. Member sky captain's Avatar
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    I come from a design background, so a strong GUI is important to me. I'm paying the Adobe subscription happily because of all the programs in the suite I use daily for my business.

    I respect your ability to get under the hood with each of those programs, and certainly anti-aliasing subs sounds intriguing. But I suspect the learning curve would be too much for me.

    Admitedly, Encore hasn't been updated in years. They stopped moving forward with CS6. I do think it's superior to Apple's DVD Studio Pro, which was its main competitor for some time.

    I have no idea what Encore "spits out." And I don't believe there's a way to export subs from Encore, although there is a janky export in DVD Studio Pro.

    In my work, I find I'm making less DVDs, and not even many Blu-rays. Most videos I edit are now delivered as files or posted online. When I do create Blu-rays, they're bare bones (just a menu, maybe with subs) for theatrical screenings that don't require DCP.
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