Hi everyone,
I'm new to DCP creation and in need of help regarding subtitles.
I need to create a subtitled DCP to be sent to festivals. I'm having trouble deciding between open subtitles vs closed subtitles vs burned in. Is burned in safer? Do both open subtitles and burned in have the same appearence, font size and position, when displayed?
Is there any recommendations regarding the scale and position of subtitles? It seems to me the default is a little big an upwards, is this a standard?
For the Berlinale, this is the recommendation I found:
"a font size between 38 and 40pt
a VAlign “bottom” with a VPosition of the lowest line between 8.0 and 10.0"
Is there a way I can apply similar settings using DoM?
I have also read about file sizes in captions, should I worry about this regarding subtitles?
If you have any tips, I would love to hear.
Thank you!
Subtitles
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Carsten
- Posts: 2905
- Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2014 9:11 pm
- Location: Germany
Re: Subtitles
Do you need to supply both a non-subtitled and subtitles version to festivals? In general, for high-profile festivals, it should be okay to send a non-subtitled OV, and a subtitled VF, using timed-text. For smaller festivals, it may be safer to send a subtitled version with burn-in subtitles.
In general, burn-in will look the same as timed text. With the same font, differences are very small. Burn-in offers a few more parameters for appearance.
Unless specifically requested, closed captions, or, closed subtitles should only be created when they are requested, as they need special equipment to be shown.
Many filmmakers hate subtitles in their image and make them unnecessary small and place them very low. That doesn't make sense - if they are present, they should be readable also from back seats, and not be cut off by the bottom screen masking.
The latest versions of DCP-o-matic have changed many things around subtitles. It is true that the default position appears to high for me. I would adjust Y to something like -10.
In general, burn-in will look the same as timed text. With the same font, differences are very small. Burn-in offers a few more parameters for appearance.
Unless specifically requested, closed captions, or, closed subtitles should only be created when they are requested, as they need special equipment to be shown.
Many filmmakers hate subtitles in their image and make them unnecessary small and place them very low. That doesn't make sense - if they are present, they should be readable also from back seats, and not be cut off by the bottom screen masking.
The latest versions of DCP-o-matic have changed many things around subtitles. It is true that the default position appears to high for me. I would adjust Y to something like -10.