Subtitles in FCP

[Andrew Commiskey]

If you are delivering it on a DVD I would do the subtitles there. You can have 1 video with different audio options and subtitle options. Make it once and deliver it to many places.
Drew

[David Bogie]

Subtitles or captions? H_UG_E difference.
If you are burning in subs, 75-90% transparent yellow sans serif characters, 24-40 pixels, with a 1.5 pixel black border that is the same level of transparency as the letters.

Some clients require a gray 10-50% transparent box behind the characters. I think this is much worse than the characters alone but sometimes it’s necessary..

You want yellow because it will show up against almost anything, dark or bright.
You want transparency so the encoder has some ramping to use in calculating LUTs.
You want the edge/border to help pull the text out of the action.
You want to consult carefully with your client on the use of a box and whether or not you are timing accurately to the film. Six seconds a panel is about average for legibility and retention. We use 15 frames blank between sub panels because we feel it helps communicate the text has changed and just breaks up the monotony.

bogiesan

[Mark Maness]

Even easier…

Look at Digital Heaven for a plugin called DH Subtitle. It cost all of twenty dollars and does all of your figuring for you. There are many option to choose from.

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com
https://blogs.creativecow.net/waynecarey

[Greg Nosaty]

[Wayne Carey] “Even easier…

Look at Digital Heaven for a plugin called DH Subtitle”

I agree. It’s easy to use, has a few parameters that you can edit and renders pretty quickly. I’ve used it on a half a dozen broadcast shows and had no complaints.

cheers,
Greg Nosaty

Cinemontage Productions Inc

[David Bogie]

Yar, we have this plugin. On our old G5s it took for freakin’ ever to render. On the Intels, not so bad as long as we’re DV.

Individual and project-specific formatting decisions for readability and timing are not built into the effect nad, you gotta understand, this permanently burns your subs into your video. If you need captioning, Digital Heaven’s great little subtitler is not your answer.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[Greg Nosaty]

[bogiesan] “If you need captioning, Digital Heaven’s great little subtitler is not your answer. “

The original question was about subtitling (open captioning) not closed captioning. I know the difference, do you?

DH Subtitle is a great tool for subtitling. if you need closed captioning I would hire a captioning service, every major city has one.

cheers,
Greg Nosaty

Cinemontage Productions Inc

[Bouke Vahl]

As i’m from Europe, i have a different angle.
We DO NOT use color in our subtitles, we use white letters with a little outline and shadow.

As for Digital Heaven, it can’t do that as far as i know.
But my subtitle prep tool comes with a (free!) FCP text generator that does this (and is controllable by XML if you like)

Download it from
https://www.videotoolshed.com/?page=products&pID=12

Bouke

http://www.videoToolShed.com
smart tools for video pro’s