making a VF for a DCP not authored in DOM

[ednamillion]

Hi, are there any things i should worry about if I want to use DOM to make a subtitle VF for a DCP that was not created by me / that was authored in a different software? Does DOM automatically pull all of the important settings from the original DCP or are there things I need to do to make sure the OV is correctly configured in the VF? Someone also recently cautioned me that there are "font issues" in DOM that I should be concerned about if I am doing this workflow, but I am not sure what they were referring to. Any advice to make sure my workflow is unproblematic?

[ednamillion]

also wondering specifically about the "reels" configuration from the OV and if there is anything special I need to do to configure the subtitles.

[Carsten]

Current versions of DCP-o-matic offer to set current DCP properties from a loaded one. That makes it easy to create a VF with the same properties as the OV. Load OV DCP and right-click on it!

[IoannisSyrogiannis]

About the reels, last time I checked, DCP-o-matic did split the subtitles into reels automatically.
If multi reel, I would do the spotting or re-cutting with an mp4 export and then import the essence to the content as one compatible file.

Depending on your subtitling program, you may export directly to IOP or SMPTE .xml and export compressed fonts as well.
If you are working with a freeware, like SubtitleEdit, you might get somewhat limited on your positioning function and I am not aware of any font manipulation abilities.
Yet, you may as well change positioning by editing manually.
Texas Instruments had a font compressor, especially due to limitations on Series 1 projectors, but you can only find it on web archive nowadays. They don't support it any more.
Some argue that it's not necessary at all and others don't bother having font's at all. I would advise against that, if you are targeting beyond personal "consumption".

As a side note, another SMPTE DCP came in my hands recently with no zero-subtitles on the first and last (credits) reel. I feel a bit envious towards people who use really expensive software and hardware like Clipster, and end up producing crap, because they don't know and they don't care to do a standard check on what they create.
And when I get the "the DCP played on various venues already, it should be something wrong with your equipment" answer, I get really frustrated.

[ednamillion]

thank you! so, just to be clear, if I follow these instructions in subtitle edit and make a SMPTE xml subtitle file that is 24p, i can just drop that into DOM with the DCP, use the advanced setting to copy formatting from the OV DCP and that's all I need to do? I do not need to split up the XML into multiple reels manually or anything else like that?

i did notice that the subtitles were positioned too high using the XML and not sure what would have caused that. i lowered the positioning using the coordinates in the text tab in DOM but maybe that is not the right thing to do.

and i do not need to use any special font—default font is fine. the only settings i care about are subtitle size (i usually do 75% inside of DOM because the 100% sizing looks way too big to me) and adding a black outline. will these DOM settings play back correctly in a variety of settings? Is there anything else I should know to make a subtitle VF?

[Carsten]

When referencing an OV, DCP-o-matic can only take the existing OV reel structure, reuse it, and apply the same reel segmenting to any new content added to the VF. The moment you check 'Use this DCP's video as OV and make VF', the reel config automatically changes to 'split by video content' - which, in the case of a loaded DCP means, 'use existing reel segmenting'. When you add audio or captions, DOM will distribute these assets to the prexisting reel structure as needed.

In some older versions, you had to choose 'split by video content' manually to enable OV/VF functionality, but Carl has changed that some time ago.


- Carsten

[gunnar]

As a side note, another SMPTE DCP came in my hands recently with no zero-subtitles on the first and last (credits) reel. I feel a bit envious towards people who use really expensive software and hardware like Clipster, and end up producing crap, because they don't know and they don't care to do a standard check on what they create.
And when I get the "the DCP played on various venues already, it should be something wrong with your equipment" answer, I get really frustrated.

I could not agree more with you. It is amazing how poor and bad DCPs are often made even with the most expensive DCP authoring tools like Clipster.
Some producers I work with have sometimes let labs in another countries do the post production their films like grading and stuff like that and then the DCPs sometimes end up being made there too. I have often been contacted afterwards when the premier is near and then the DCP just doesn’t work or subtitles are out of sync because no one bother to check the DCP after it was made and the I have often been asked to rewrap DCPs to fix what is wrong with them.

And since you mentioned the compression of font files. I still compress each font file even today when I am doing SMPTE DCP. Since my subtitling authoring software does it automatically when I create both SMPTE and Interop subtitle files.