[Frameworks] subtitle question

[Amanda Christie]

I've done a lot of googling. Came up with a lot of conflicting information, and that's why I threw it out to frameworks.
If your best response is "google it"... why bother responding?


Most of the recommended fonts are ones that I don't have in the Avid SubCaps editor.
For projection, most sites recommend sans serif fonts like Arial, Helvetica, and Verdana (hence my going with Verdana for the offline).
BBC and several other broadcasters recommend a specific subset of Helvetica that I don't have... I only have Helvetica Bold (which they advise against and looks awful) and Helvetica Narrow (which they also advise against and is unreadable).... And recommended fonts for cinematic projection didn't include any that I have in my system.

But I'm not asking about font.  I'm asking about size and character count (and yes font affects that... so I tried to choose a font "close to" the size of recommended fonts)


The post-house that's doing my online and DCP will have access to more fonts for the final finish... but in the meantime while I'm laying it out, I'd like to have a visual idea of the general size.  This will help me in determining where I break the phrases and sentences in the text.  That's all I'm looking for... not for the final finish of the font.  Just the size.


I would like to know for sure how many characters per line.  


My translator translated as if for a printed document (and ignored a lot of the speech patterns), and so, things aren't lining up great with what's on screen... so I'm reworking a lot of his translated text so it jives better (I will now need to have it proofread a third time in case I made major grammatical errors in doing so!).... but yeah, as I'm reworking the translation to lay it out on screen... I'd like to know what ballpark I should be aiming for in terms of character count and size.


Like I said... a few hours of googling revealed a lot of interesting articles, forums, threads, discussions, how-to guides written by amateurs for you-tube videos, delivery requirements for broadcasters, guides for subtitling DVDs and Blu-ray, more threads, forums, and articles... but also... mostly just a lot of conflicting information.


So if anyone on frameworks actually does subtitling and wants to weigh in with something more useful than "google it".... that would be much appreciated.

thanks!





On 2016-05-12, at 5:41 PM, Dave Tetzlaff wrote:

>> I'm currently laying it out in 42 point Verdanna, keeping it under 40 characters per line…
> 
> Standard printing and screen fonts, like Verdana, are not good for subs. The strokes are too thin and the detail too fine to render well in video and provide maximum readability. There are a number of specialized fonts, or weights in large font families, used for subtitles. I can't recall any of the specific names, but if you Google 'subtitle fonts' you can find some useful discussions of the issues, and also recommendations.
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