Subtitles

PRO: A movie can have up to 8 subtitle tracks. Initially there is only one Subtitle track visible to save space. As you add the subtitles to this track a new, empty track will become available.

DVD-lab allows you to import various types of subtitles and also adjust timing, text and visual effects.

DVD-lab Studio/PRO works with subtitle stream as any other streams such as audio or video. The subtitle stream has extension *.sp1..*.sp8

A new subtitle window will appear. From this window you can import subtitles, adjust them, set properties and finally compile them to *.sp stream.

You may wish to create some subtitles right away. Enter start time, end time and type some text.

For example the time above 00:00:01:00 means one second. A time 00:19:23:12 means 19 minutes 23 seconds and 12 frames.

The text can be maximum 3 lines per subtitle. You can either type text, import text from few common subtitle formats or import a 4 color bitmap that will be used instead of text.

Note: The subtitle editor in DVD-lab PRO is for simple creating, adjusting and importing existing text or bitmap subtitles. It is not replacement for a more sophisticated subtitle editor. We expect that you already have figured out the exact timing of each subtitle. Adding subtitles on audio cues is a lengthy and delicate process that is best carried in a NLE or dedicated subtitle editor and require perfect audio/video sync that is not possible when using elementary streams. DVD authoring application is never the best place to start creating subtitles from scratch.

You may look at "Subtitle Workshop", a freeware application from www.urusoft.net, which can be used to add subtitles on audio/video cues.

The most common way to enter subtitles is to import them from common text or bitmap formats. Press the Import button on top

Most subtitle editors (such as "Subtitle Workshop") will export subtitles in one of these formats.

Note: Most of the subtitle formats (except *.son) use timecode in HH:MM:SS:DD or HH:MM:SS:CCC where D are 1/10 sec and C are 1/100 of sec. It is important to note the difference. A timecode such as 00:15:49:200 or 00:15:49:20 will be imported to DVD-lab as 00:15:49:06 for NTSC or 00:15:49:05 for PAL which is the same time, but in format that depends on FPS. It is important to note this fact or you will be surprised why DVD-lab "changes" the timecode.

Generic Text Subtitle Formats		DVD-lab
HH:MM:SS:DD	HH:MM:SS:ccc	HH:MM:SS:FF (NTSC)	HH:MM:SS:FF (PAL)
00:15:49:20	00:15:49:200	00:15:49:06	00:15:49:05
00:00:05:85	00:00:05:852	00:00:05:26	00:00:05:21

You can export back the subtitles to *.srt or *.sub formats and the frames will be transformed back to 1/10 sec or 1/100 sec. Some rounding will apply.

Eye icon. By clicking on the eye icon you can disable displaying of the subtitle at that time.

You can load a bitmap instead of text subtitle. The bitmap has to be full screen (720x480) with only 4 colors used - black, white, red and green - 4-bit RLE-encoded.

For subtitles apply the same as for subpicture on menu. It is a mask that use 4 colors (black, white, red, blue) These colors will be then replaced by the Style color and transparency.

BMP Color	Used for	Color on screen
white*	Background	Transparent
black*	Main Color	White or Yellow
red	Outline	Black
blue	Antialiasing	Semitransparent gray

*If the bmp image has black background then the black and white colors in BMP will be swapped (Black will be used for background and White will be used for main color). The background is determined from the top left pixel of bitmap.

Note: You can apply the Outline and other styles to bitmap as well as it is apparent on the image above (Thin black outline)

Applied to all subtitle rows. This is found on the bottom of subtitle window. Here you can choose the font and a style.

Tip: Best fonts for subtitles are light Sans-Serif fonts such as Helvetica, Verdana, Tahoma or Microsoft Sans-Serif. You should start with size 24.

DVD-lab PRO allows creating White and Yellow subtitles with various outlines or background bars. Yellow subtitles are often used for their great visibility on any background.

There are two ways how the font outline is created and this affects the overal look of the text on screen:

Bitmap based Styles are all first styles from Outline to Smooth Max, Vector based are last from Vector Outline to Vector Thick Back

A Bitmap based create a rounder, less jagged text. However displaying it on some players may suffer from player poor scalling algorythm.

A Vector based create more crispier text. A Smooth Vector type is set as default.

Here is example of the same font processed through Bitmap and Vector outlining. Both have outline exactly 1 pixel. The Bitmap looks smoother but the letters may look less defined on TV, the Vector will show more jagged letters but it will be optically crispier because of more "air" between outlines.

While the font and style apply to all rows, each row in the subtitle window can have few unique properties. To change subtitle properties click on the small button, near the bitmap open.

Here you can set position of the subtitle. Subtitles are by default displayed on bottom center. Clicking on Apply to all Subtitles will apply this setting to all subtitles in the grid table.

A Subtitle Emphasis is other way how to further adjust each subtitle. For example, it is often used in dialogue with somebody off-screen, the first line, in italics, would be spoken by someone out of shot, whilst the second, in normal style, by someone in the shot:

When importing or writing subtitles in NTSC you have to know if they are written in Drop frame or Non-drop frame timecode.

This setting is to distinguish between Drop Frame (DF - 29.97 fps) and Non Drop Frame (NDF - 30 fps) timecode. The difference between NDF and DF is about 3.5 sec. in one hour and that is quite significant for subtitles. If your subtitles are getting progressively late or early, you had choosen the wrong timecode and choose the other setting. Most of subtitles created in external subtitle editors will be probably created in Real Time format (29.97 FPS)

PAL doesn't suffer from the DF and NDF issue, but if you import a NTSC subtitle for PAL project, there is a big chance that the subtitle was written in DF timecode. In this case the subtitles will go progressively out of sync when playing back on PAL. You should use the second option "From DF source" that will first compensate for Drop Frame and then use the subtitles for PAL.

Note: DVD-lab compiles the subtitles to the subtitle stream before you close Subtitle window. Having subtitles compiled before main compilation is a big timesaver. When you do any other changes to the project, the subtitles will not have to be recompiled, but directly the *.sp? stream will be used. Similarly if you do any changes to the subtitles they have to be recompiled.

By changing margins you can define the position of the subtitles on the screen. The margins define the rectangle inside screen in which the subtitles will appear.

A normal subtitle is formatted for 4:3 TV. A widescreen 16:9 movie is side-compressed on the DVD and so a Widescreen TV need to stretch the image to widescreen format. A subtitle will be stretched with it as well and depending on the font it may look "fat" on 16:9 screen.

This subtitle will look correctly on 4:3 TV, but on widescreen TV it will look bit side-stretched as the image above.

That means for 16:9 movies we may consider to squeeze the subtitles to something like this:

To squeeze the subtitles we have a Format for 16:9 option (In Studio version this is called Squeeze to 16:9):