Making a DVD with subtitles but get “Clips don’t have safe gaps for BD export.” message

[Manolo Sanchez]

Hi Adam, don’t understand why this doesn’t work for you. I had the same problem but when I made some titles shorter it was o.k.
I had another problem, exporting my movie WITH subtitles visible in any format. And I was tearing my hair out how to do it and found a solution. Maybe this could work out for you too.

Encore: export WITH subtitles (CS5.5)

There you are with your new edited movie, blood sweat and tears spilled.
Even made subtitles and exported in Blue Ray quality. But how to get it on YouTube or send it to friend? No subtitles! As Chad Perkins clearly explained in his video tutorial about Encore (the guy should get a reward, he is with head and shoulders above all the other masters teaching us Adobe programs, a really inspiring teacher) that Encore is NOT a video editing program. So your subtitles are in a separate track. I searched the forums and found more people with the same problem. Lots of suggestions about other programs but I want to stick with Adobe, Encore is a very good program and the subtitles are easy to make.
For days I was experimenting, I couldn’t let loose this problem.
The movie with the subs is right in my face, every player shows them, why cannot I export it with the titles?
I even tried screen recorders like FlashBackPro and Fraps, poor quality, not acceptable.

This is my work around. Only for small movies I guess, mine was 20 minutes with 75 subtitles, this method works for me.
After finishing the movie In Premier Pro export it to Media, check the box Match Sequence Settings to have a clean video to work with, and call it “Sequence 1”.
After that, export your movie also to Encore (dynamic link – send to).
Make your subtitles according to Chad Perkins lessons, real easy but he forgot to mention to check Align Center, you want your subs in the center on the bottom of your frames. That’s why they’re called subtitles!
Export your movie, Build, using Flash, F4V format.
Make a new Premiere Pro Project and import “Sequence 1”.
Here’s your clean cut new movie without the subs but now you won’t mess up the original where you spent so much hours on.
Go to Media Browser and change Files of Type in All Files.
Open the F4V folder and click on Sources, click on the next “Sequence” Folder. Now you see all your subs, as PNG files.
For unknown reasons they are not always in the right sequence, don’t know why. If not, you have to import them in the right sequence in the Project Panel.
Highlight the subs by clicking on the first and Shift click on the last in the Project Panel and DRAG them to a second video track.
But the subs are all in the center in a black box now! We’ll deal with that later.
Now comes the hard part, all the subs are close together and now you have to shove them to the right place and trim them, they were not affected by any time code. (This means you didn’t have to worry about trimming them in Encore) This will take some (much) time, depending on the length of your movie.

When you’re done, switch of the main video track, by clicking on the eye.
Export again with Media, check box Match Sequence Settings again,
call this “SequenceSubs”. When this is ready, import it again and drag only the video track with the subs to a third video track. Switch of the second video layer (with the subs you moved around) and switch on the main, first video track again. Now you can work on the visibility of your subs.
Use the Crop from Transform tool (Video Effects) to make a rough cut in the video subs track and use the Color Key from Keying to eliminate the black background around the subtitles letters. Put the subs at the bottom of your frames with Motion, Position in the Effects Controls Panel. Export your finished movie again in any format you want, now your subs are integrated in the movie. I hope this a way to do it, more roads lead to Rome, as we say in Europe.

[Adam Williams]

Thanks for the reply.

My point of concern was that it seems I was running into what I believe is a blu-ray issue despite me making a DVD.

I ended up giving up and adding the gaps, after which the DVD built correctly.

[Manolo Sanchez]

o.k. I see, for anyone still having problems I wrote it again in short:

1. Send to Encore and make the subtitles, don’t worry about the exact place on the time line, don’t trim them.
2. Export as Flash F4V file.
3. Open the Flash folder and find the subs folder (in it are PNG files) and import them in PP in batches, say per ten titles, in the Project Panel.
4. Drag them to a new video track and put them on the exact place on the time line and trim them.
5. Export only this video track (match sequence settings) and import it again in PP after removing the old subtitles track
6. Now you can use the Crop tool and Color Key to remove the black background and put them in place in the Effect Controls panel with Motion/Position.

Also:
When you make the subs in Encore you don’t have to adjust the titles in the monitor.
After finishing typing export the subtitle track as text and import it again; now you can
check “Align” in the import subtitles dialogue box and they will automatically be in the
right place. Saves you a lot of time!

[Drew Lahat]

If someone is still making DVD’s in 2019… (I do sometimes, because a few clients ask for it), indeed baking your subtitles into your video is one possible workflow. (And there are much more efficient methods to get it done than using Flash ???? and manually re-timing every single subtitles.) But of course that is a different animal, and misses the whole point of optional subtitles / closed captions.

So I’m writing to add that I experienced the same problem as the OP – Encore doesn’t complain about gaps with DVD’s, but it did fail to build the disc with the notorious PGC %0 error.
The solution that worked for me was to create gaps between the subtitles. Not with Encore (the gap fix option is grayed out anyway for DVD’s), but in my subtitling software (Subtitle Edit). It allowed me to go for a more subtle 2-frame gap, compared to Encore’s extreme and excessive 5-frame BD gap. (Which btw, is why I banned Encore for BD’s and use tsmuxerGUI whenever I don’t need menus.)