Subtitle Help

tygrus2000 wrote on 5/29/2005, 1:04 PM
I just came to the conclusion that my Canda West project should be put into a couple different languages for full effect. The project wont have much narration, maybe 5 or 10 minutes out of an hour but it will have text titles popping up for probably 100 out of the 300 pictures that will be displayed.

Now this all is fine and dandy if I stay in one language, but if I want my narration and the picture titles to be able to be displayed in say 4 languages how do I go about this and be on one DVD? Most of the project in just the primary langauge is going to fill up the disc, so there is not much space left. I assume subtitles are the way but I am pretty green in that area. If anyone has some resources or links that would be helpful.
thx.

Tygrus

Comments

johnmeyer wrote on 5/29/2005, 4:29 PM
If you want different language to appear, then do NOT encode the text into your video file. Once you've done that, they are part of the video, just like the people walking around or whatever is in each frame. Instead, copy the text into regions, and then use the script that comes with Vegas 5 or Vegas 6 to export those regions -- and the text -- to "SUB" files that DVD Architect can read. Add a subititle track for each language (there is a little drop down in the track header for each subtitle in DVDA that lets you assign the language name so the DVD player will correctly show the language). Once you have created and imported the French subtitle, then go back to Vegas, open the Edit Details window and selection Regions. This gives you a spreadsheet -style display that makes it very easy to now type your English subtitles. Alternatively, if you have the subtitles already created in a word processor, you can copy and paste them to the Edit Details window. You then export to a new SUB file, add another subtitle track in DVDA, and import the new SUB file. Do this again if you have languages other than French and English.
aspenv wrote on 5/29/2005, 5:40 PM
There is bug in DVDA: if you create subtitles AND chapters, the subtitles freeze in the screen.
If you want better control use the PluginPac from Satish so you can use the Subtitler filter from virtualdub in Vegas. Great quality subtitles.
You will need Subtitle Workshop to create the subtitles.
Yes, the subtitles will be embedded in the picture, but if you want to have chapters in you dvd that's the only way to go (in dvda)
johnmeyer wrote on 5/29/2005, 5:48 PM
There is bug in DVDA: if you create subtitles AND chapters, the subtitles freeze in the screen.

I'm not sure I ran into the identical bug, but if I did, I found a workaround.

What happened to me was that, when I would go to a new chapter, if there was no subtitle at the beginning of that chapter, the last subtitle would pop up and stay there forever until the DVD encountered a real subtitle. At that point, the subtitle would display for the appropriate amount of time, and the rest of the subtitles within that chapter would behave normally.

The simple fix was to include a "dummy" subtitle at the beginning of each chapter. Just create a subtitle, but erase the text (actually, I put a single period, left justified, set it to 8 point font, and moved it into the unsafe area, because I wasn't certain whether a blank subtitle would create other problems.

This completely cured the bug. Sony still needs to fix the problem, but this lets you use subtitles, and the workaround isn't very difficult to implement.
aspenv wrote on 5/30/2005, 1:39 AM
That did not work for me...the dummy subtitle froze as well...as a result I did not have any more subtitles to read...
tygrus2000 wrote on 5/30/2005, 7:06 AM
Thanks for the tips, however, DVDA was not going to be my authoring program of choice. I had planned to use DVDLab Pro because I just find the control over everything much better. Can I subtitle and use that application instead? I have read it has good subtitling support but I have never tried it yet.