Determining Max Line Length, font size etc

[Afterlife]

im having difficulty with this.

At first I thought 45 line length for standard TV's and 65 for Widescreen. Then after playing around I noticed some lines that are 45 still cut off, and others that are 45 are really short. I then remembered that not all characters are the same length.
as a line of 10 W's is longer than 10 small a's
WWWWWWWWWW
aaaaaaaaaa

So taking this into consideration its probably a better bet to do a pixel width.
Issue is though that i have yet to find a program (im using Subtitle Workshop) that will let me do this.

Is there a program where I can say: the font will be size 18(is there a reason to go 20+ it seems too big to me), in the font X, and I want no line under these circumstances to exceed pixel lenth of "PX".

If I could do this, then I could let PX = the safe zone on a DVD which is give or take 5, 575pxs centered.

So what I want is that no line is to ever under any circumstance exceed 575px's in length, if it does Ill go in the srt file and edit it so its either on a new line or a new sub.

Thanks!

[kschang]

Maybe it's easier to use a fixed-width font?

[Afterlife]

know of any fixed width screen friendly fonts? lol

[mikiem]

I use Ariel Narrow -- condensed font gives you a little more margin for error.

Don't know how you're rendering subs, & only mentioned because you gave w/s & pan separately, w/s subs I think are stretched/enlarged by player.

[Afterlife]

DLP has the ability to map different subs depending on the screen its being displayed on, this stops the stretching.

So when I map sub1 for WS tvs, it fixes the font so its not stretched out, and then a second sub, sub2 for 4:3 tvs.

But when doing this using the same sub file as the source, 45 char line is too short on WS, so means I have to create a second sub file with longer lines.

Im suprised this hasnt been covered before, and there are no tutorials regarding mapping and subtitle standards. If I can grasp this Ill write one myself.