Best subtitle font?

[flickerx]

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]

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]

Sans serif fonts.

[DivinoAG]

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/

[Charmer]

I agree on Trebuchet MS. I used it with textual subtitles. By the way, what do you guys think about Deja Vu Sans? It looks pretty good on the screen.

[ConverterCrazy]

Well, I'm a late comer to this thread.
However I'd like to share my experience with subtitle fonts.

The font that resemples closest to Blu-ray font is Levenim MT (looks bawdy when in BOLD).

The next closest is Advantage Demi http://www.fontpalace.com/font-download/Advantage+Demi/

I experimented with Forgotten Futurist Shadow 3-D font in Lime color and liked it too http://www.fontpalace.com/font-category/3D+Fonts/5/

Personally, I prefer Tahoma, it shows all symbols , especially, those musical note symbols.

[El Heggunte]

Personally, I prefer Tahoma, it shows all symbols , especially, those musical note symbols.

Yes, Tahoma is a somewhat-decent font, certainly much better than Borial or Hellvetica

You could give a try to Droid Sans, or even to Consolas ( assuming you think monospaced fonts are OK for subtitles, I know some people don't think so, anyway I don't see the reason why they are good for CJK text but "bad" for Western languages )

Well, I'm a late comer to this thread.
However I'd like to share my experience with subtitle fonts.

The font that resemples closest to Blu-ray font is Levenim MT (looks bawdy when in BOLD).

The next closest is Advantage Demi http://www.fontpalace.com/font-download/Advantage+Demi/

I experimented with Forgotten Futurist Shadow 3-D font in Lime color and liked it too http://www.fontpalace.com/font-category/3D+Fonts/5/

Fancy-designed fonts MAY look good on ads, banners, T-shirts, whatever, but I doubt they may ever look OK on subtitles.
As for the other clones of Arial and Helvetica... seriously, IMHO we don't need more fonts that make no distinction between "I", "l" or/and "1"

[ConverterCrazy]

Choice of fonts is very personal.

I used monospace font for their directness & impersonal look as in Government/Official circulars.

I use Tahoma for its cute appearance and apparently larger size look (also for subtitles)

I use Verdana for convenience of reading

And I use Times New Roman (at least 12pt) for its classic literary looks to write poetry

Papa, he loves Mama
Mama, she loves Papa

And to write prose

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful Princess..

I could use other SanSerif fonts, if they didn't confuse 'I' for 'l' and vice versa.

Just sharing information - not setting standards.

[Crext]

Hey, I know this is a very late reply, and I don't expect the PM to reply, but this came up in top Google search when I was looking for the same thing as the PM. The PM was correct about text having possibility for outlining which makes them MUCH MORE VISIBLE. In windows Movie Maker you have "outlining" to the furthest right when you have a text/font selected, where you can select thickness and color of the outlining (if the text is a different color than black, then make it black for very good visibility). I was not able to figure this out anywhere and just stumbled upon it by accident. This is why I post it here so the word hopefully spreads or that people in the future sees this so they don't have to struggle as much to get this as I did.

[maxrockpro]

....Tahoma, it shows all symbols , especially, those musical note symbols.

Thanks. Just what I was looking for.

[JiaJia]

I am a FCP7 user. Fonts that I used for:
the Title of my doc: Xingkai SC 60;
Subtitle: Futura size 21;
Name title: Futura size 18.

Is it a bad idea to use the same Font in both subtitles and name titles. The documentary is about reunion, and it has many many names.

What do you think?

[jmourao]

Hello!

I could use other SanSerif fonts, if they didn't confuse 'I' for 'l' and vice versa.

Just sharing information - not setting standards.

For that specific reason, I use PT Sans Narrow (Bold).

[newpball]

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.

Is your film HD? If so then you really do not need to limit yourself to 40 characters per line.

[ConverterCrazy]

Hello!

I could use other SanSerif fonts, if they didn't confuse 'I' for 'l' and vice versa.

Just sharing information - not setting standards.

For that specific reason, I use PT Sans Narrow (Bold).

Thanks

It is good.

[Skiller]

I agree, PT Sans (Bold or Narrow-Bold) is very good for subtitling. I noticed it is very similar to ITC Officina Sans Bold (almost a clone), which I have been using for my own subtitles for a few years now. I feel affirmed to see other people have the same opinion about what is a good font for subtitling and why.

Arial/Hellvetica is probably about one of the worst fonts one can use for subtitling, yet I see it being used often because people don't realize how bad it is.

[domarco]

I'm using GEORGIA
The outline is Black with no shadow

it was comfortable and cool.
Try it, trust me

[manono]

Try it, trust me

No thanks.

[Skiller]

It would depend on how/where the subtitle is rendered. Georgia may look nice when rendered "live" from a SRT or ASS subtitle file at the display's resolution. For DVD-Video Georgia is not a good choice because the strokes are quite thin, vary in thickness and have lots of serifs. It would look very bad rendered to a 720x576/480 frame with 4 colors...

[JVRaines]

The BBC invented their own captioning font in the mid-1970s, when it was no mean feat! Contrary to the "only use sans!" mantra, it was a slab-serif.

[Skiller]

Yes, slab-serif fonts are usually a good choice for subtitles.

[ConverterCrazy]

The BBC invented their own captioning font in the mid-1970s, when it was no mean feat! Contrary to the "only use sans!" mantra, it was a slab-serif.

I use Devanagari script to write in my language – a very different script than Roman.
On readability scale Slab-Serif font doesn't score many points.

Not from me.

I still find PT Sans and ITC Officina Sans very convenient.

[hatbrox]

hello,

that post has been really instructive and I wanted to share a tip that I used to test subtitles. It's quite simple.
install the free video player Potplayer
load a video of your choice that has an SRT subtitle (you can also load an external SRT file, press L and choose the option)
when you see the first line of text, pause the movie.
open the preferences (F5 key)
Expand the subtitles category and choose font Style
from there you can choose the font, size, spacing etc...
when you change a setting, the movie will immediately adjust the subtitle in the video behind the preferences box.

It's a very quick and easy way to test various settings before you "burn" your SRT into SUP subs.