Some thoughts about subtitles - and whether FCPX is suited for that

Some thoughts here, quick write up – long and probably boring. Written within the short brakes and never reread again.
Only talking about subtitling - nothing else. Only talking about my experiences over a long time and my actual experience.
Again these thoughts are written up quickly – so forgive me any typos, errors or logical mistakes.

First thing is to think about why and where you want to use subtitles. Do you want to use it for a finished movie or do you want to work with them while work is in progress or want to use with several languages and so on. Or all of them.

Subtitles are needed for several purposes and audiences.
These old days of the traditional formats do have a kind of grey zone in-between meanwhile.

The old-fashined formats:

Closed Captions (CC)
Original CCs where thought for hearing impaired. Took a long time to find a consensus to move away from additional boxes to integrate these into the TVs and apply a common standard for the broadcasters.

The CC-Format is different in NTSC and PAL countries.
NTSC uses Line 21 or .scc files, PAL uses Teletext .stl
Both formats can be embedded in the video with several languages included to help also the not hearing impaired people to understand (parts of) foreign languages.
Normally this format uses monospaced fonts.
While US CCs and EBU Teletext where thought for SD only they are "hacked" to make them work with HD. But this requires a pretty complicated broadcast server setup and constellation – not to talk about the consumer reveicers or TVs.
There is a good reason why Telestream made a buy up of MCC.

Open Captions (OC)
Original OCs where edited and burned in to the video/film as visible text.
This requires to have a version of video/film for every language.
This format allows to have a smoother not "typewriter" style apperance. But it lacks on the "global" usage options

But there is a kind of collision between the used formats regarding the audience.
Not hearing impaired could be disturbed by a continuos subtitle stream especially if burned in. Additional music, scene and sound descriptions would be disturbing for them as well, but are needed for the hearing impaired.
This means that theoretically there have to be two streams per language, one for the impaired another for those who just don't speak the language.

With DVD, BluRay and Web it is different. All of these delivery formats are using side car files - so nothing of the actual subtitles is embedded into the stream except the information that subtitles could be available. The above difference between the 2 types of audience apply here as well. DVD and BlueRay can use an "Image Sequence" which the subtitle file refers to. For web delivery there are several formats which are supported.
And don't forget all the computer based players.

Next thing is DCP. Here also sidecar files are used. Looking back in time the digital projection saves a lot of costs. With analog film all subtitles for every language required a new negative master with burned in subtitles. That was time consuming means costs - beside the costs of creating the positives (regardless with or without subtitles)

Another next thing is that in many countries different colors for the protagonists subtitles are required. Also Plain/Italic is used always to distinguish which person says what.

Further thing to keep in mind regarding the audiences – while for not impaired people the subtitles should be short and just cover what the meaning of the phrase is, the hearing impaired might be confused if they are lip readers and speak the language spoken in the movie.

There even more things to consider.


But let us have a look at the 3 main NLEs Adobe, Apple, Avid (alphabetical order) and how the handle subtitles.

To cover all or at least the main things above all the above NLEs do need 3rd party apps. So not a big difference.

Now the details.
Line 21:
If embedded in video all three cover that both import and export - as long you don't change the video.

SCC:
Adobe and Avid accept .scc files. Adobe (Avid somehow) allow to modify and create them and export. PPro also allows to export EBU.stls from there. I'm not sure with Avid, but using the Subcaps plugin you can export .stl files. FCPX does none of that.

Teletext PAL(STL):
Only Avid supports it, but with limited style support.

Now the other formats which are frequently needed.
You have to consider that every delivery format needs another file format. And that you often enough have to make changes or retime or change already existing subtitles.

The most requested below.

Subrip SRT:
None of the above accepts nor exports that format. Each needs a 3rd party app to bring it into the accepted format. With Adobe and Avid formatting will be lost. With FCPX there is at least a chance – the XML option allows 3rd party developers to bring in every detail of the source and export every style setting from all Motion based subtitles. XML is also available in PPro but PPro XML doesn't support open title plugins with open text. (read about WebVTT later)

SBV (YouTube):
None of the above accepts nor exports that format. Each needs a 3rd party app to bring it into the accepted format. With import it is not a problem at all as this format doesn't support any style formatting. So you can export from PPro as .scc or .stl from Avid as DS Caption or .stl with FCPX as XML. So a 3rd party app only has to care about the text.

DCP XML (TI or SMPTE):
None of the above accepts nor exports that format. Each needs a 3rd party app to bring it into the accepted format. A 3rd party app could make it possible to convert these files to match the options of the import capabilities of the above NLEs. In this case it also might be limited. The export from the NLE differs. There are some options to retrieve some settings for 3rd parties, but FCPXML seems to be the best one.


The most unknown but required formats in professional environments below.

DFXP (TTML):
Even though this format is pretty unknown it is used by a wide range of big companies for broadcast, also Apple uses it for their iTunes shows. But there are a lot of flavors.
Again none of the above accepts nor exports that format. Each needs a 3rd party app to bring it into the accepted format. The third party guys have to fight with the flavors of this format to make the best out of it for import and export NLE support. Both Adobe and Avid allow to export .scc or .stl but that covers only parts. FCPX allow to cover most of the parts, but it shares one thing with the others that position of the subtitles are hard to track.
For those how are interested: last month also BBC and all the UK braodcasters decided to use and accept EBU-TT(ml) as a common standard. And BBC is not such a small broadcaster.
Also ABC, Disney, HBO, MTV and other of the big players use DFXP - though each one in a slightly different flavor (which doesn't make things easier).
Again FCPXML – though not perfect – covers more of these needs than any other NLE.

WebVTT:
Same as DFXP this seems not to exist. WebVTT is an "update" of the not more developed SRT format and adds some more features to it making it ready for today and the future.
As an example Vimeo prefers to get WebVTT as subtitle format, but they accept other formats.
And as always the standard is not yet signed by all – lot of open questions there.
As above none of the above accepts nor exports that format. Each NLE needs a 3rd party app to bring it into the accepted format. While Adobe and Avid stay on their classic formats FCPX using XML gives some more options.

Again there way more formats to cover. None of them is covered by any NLE mentioned. Take France with their preferred Ayato – and so on. It will always need a 3rd party app.


As said in the beginning one could say: "none of the NLEs cover the broadcast or film requirements."

My personal resume part 1.

FCPX:
Let's start with Apple as this forum focused on FCPX.
With the first release I agreed with all those who said this is "iMovie on steroids". I totally agreed with them.
But - even though I'm old – I watched the development and tried to dive into. I found quite a lot of workarounds during that time which worked but didn't make me happy. With the release of 10.1 I've to state that this is a kind of future proof NLE (not perfect yet - but none will be ever). 10.0 was a kind of paid beta version. Regarding subtitles Apple did more than any of the competitors in the last years (see the final note at the end of the text).
The current XML format covers nearly all what is needed for modern and global subtitle handling/formats and distribution. For most of the users it's not obvious since there are no "built in" templates to cover this part of the workflow. The user still needs to rely on external templates. But thats on the other hand is a good option. The editor can design his "own styles" to either follow the production requirements or is his own ideas both for OC or CC once he understood the way it works.
Another both annoying and helpful feature is that you can attach multiple language subtitles and keep them while you work, show or hide them by roles. None of the other NLEs is able to do. But I've to admit it could be handled way better as it is often confusing.
Also XML handling is not at the point I would love. Exporting an XML by roles would be great – wishful thinking.

PPRo:
While the Title tool in PPro is really good it is not a subtitle tool. Editing or creating subtitles in PPro you have to switch to .scc mode. This is okay in many (maybe most) cases. But the subtitles will only conform to the scc rules and therefore will look kind of "ugly" and not ready for a modern and "stylish" distribution. Multiple languages are pretty hard cover or to handle. Thats one of the disadvantages with tracks (though organized well it could be an advantage).
I wrote a script to use PhotoShop as a workaround. This will work in the Adobe environment pretty flawless and allows a kind of interchange. This "script way" of handling subtitles applies to Avid and Smoke as well.

Avid:
As I mentioned in the beginning subtitling needs good plan. Many users use the Title tool in Avid for subtitles on the fly. But when it comes to export, change etc they are stuck. It is similar to using the PPro Title Tool. So use the SubCaps in any case. As with PPro the tracks could be a way to organize languages and different from PPro you can change appearance of globally for subtitles. It's a bit tricky but it works. So the Avid DS subcaps format works quite well - though when working in an "exchange world" they are not flexible enough.


My personal resume part 2.
FCPX has no native support for subtitle formats, but allows to create subtitles on the fly very easily (if you do it right) and using XML and 3rd apps makes it open to the world. None of the other NLEs do have an RTF style option for subtitles which do allow a copy/paste from RTF styled text
PPro is somehow bound to one traditional meanwhile legacy format.
Avid is bound to their own format and two legacy formats.
Legacy doesn't mean it's bad or not used.

My personal resume part 3 working with subtitles (imported or created inside the NLE).
FCPX in it's current version allows to find and/or replace (parts of) subtitles with a finger snip. There are options to make it better though.
Avid, PPro and others don't allow any of this.

Working with other apps like authoring apps FCP and FCPX are the only NLEs which do allow a simple XML to XML conversion to finally create high quality bitmapped subtitles (again using 3rd party utilities).
FCP was able to handle seamlessly outside handled changes of subtitles without the need to import and manual replacement of changed stuff - hope this comes back soon.
Avid PPro didn't and don't ever had this option.

My personal resume part 4 – short.
While FCPX at it's actual state doesn't support any old or future subtitle format natively Apple made it ready for the future. Can't be used for that at the moment.
Adobe and Avid currently insist on the old fashioned formats.


If you have read everything till this line: Congratulations!

Here the final note I promised above.
Apple offered me to have a look at available jobs in the team last year "…programming and design skills Proficiency in C/C++.Knowledge of popular subtitles and captions formats, such as WebVTT, CEA708 and TTML. Experience writing encoders, parsers and renderers for subtitles and captions." Some of these programming requirements I couldn't fulfill, but it's promising that something is going towards the right direction.

-Andreas

Andreas,

I have been reading this with much attention. You should know that my entire career in television and film has started with movie subtitling. And although at this time I happily leave this technology to specialists like yourself I am always interested in reading about it. I have learned some new things today and I thank you for this.

- Ronny

Yeah, FCPX do have lots of good aspect about subtitles, till now, I could think apple maybe need to improve the Fcpx's database, maybe load them all or by select into ram,and make better ram management, maybe can release some while situation is apropitiate. That can help smooth controlling.
The 10.1.1, can close events, maybe it's a temporary update to solve the slow loading events, apple may develop the final solution for that.

Yeah,

I agree that memory handling could be better.

Here another little tip if you work on only one machine with subtitles.
Make a copy of your favorite subtitle title and rename it to Basic Title. In the FCPX package rename the Basic Title to Apple Basic Title and copy your renamed title into the matching folder in the package.

So now when you launch FCPX the cmd-T will insert your Title. This is quite handy since you can look at the audio waveform, select a region and press cmd-T to create a time matching subtitle.
Once finished you can use my X-Title Export to export to STL or SRT for further subtitle handling or use the XML and just replace the link in the XML with the link to your original subtitle – its only one line to replace.

Regarding your issue in the other thread. Have you tried to select a bunch of subtitles (in the timeline index) and just press + and enter the amount of time (or frames).
I just tried it again with a 900 subtitle only project. No problem at all, even on my old machine with only 16G of RAM.

-Andreas

Ronny,

For me it was somehow the same.

When I was young and crazy me friends and me every week collected the spare money we had to buy Super-8 films to create movies. All the camera equipment was borrowed from our parents. There had been some nice cams like the Beaulieu S 8.
The scripts were created by our group mostly in slightly drunken stage and shooting (not drunken) was a lot of fun. But was kind of very professional - okay we sometimes got a little trouble with the police when shooting chases in inner city parts with 2 or more slightly modified cars to capture the right angles.
Our most famous and most costly action film was "Lego And Let Die" a really stupid and funny adoption of "Live And Let Die". The story was about that all Lego bricks in the world were destroyed except the 2 first ones created in 1949. Magically these two had the ability once they are paired to reproduce variants of clones. But these two ones were at different locations. The bad guy tries to find and steal them to bring the worldwide toy industry under his control. With a lot of also bad guys the hunt starts.
We had up to 5 angles. One of the cams had a variable framerate – which was really cool to bring up a 2CV to speed of a sports car.
Then all rolls where compared using these Steenbeck style Super 8 machines, piece of paper was inserted to mark the cuts and a list of angles was written down. Then the movie was cut joining the slices. An undeveloped negative was created from there.
Next step was create subtitles (to look professional ). So we took a black board with lines hand wrote the subtitles with a chalk and took a black and white picture of each subtitle. These were developed in a way that the lines where not visible. Then the real big challenge started (was really fun). While one guy was sitting there looking at the master and controlling the slide show in a dark room another guy was filming the slide show. The whole edit started again to make sure the subtitles match the master. After creating this subtitle master it was developed and was put over the undeveloped negative in sync. The negative so had been exposed a second time to burn in the subtitles. This was the final master.
Sound was recorded on that time small "travel" tape recorders which always needed to have a power supply. So we often enough carried car batteries with us and a converter from 12 to 240 volts.
Then these tapes where dubbed and the dub was cut into slices and glued together – using a diagonal cut.
To find the right underlying music it needed several beers and several collected tape recorders and record players. Every body in the "team" always had another idea but eventually we found a common sense.
The background music was cut the same way as the original sound. Having these two masters we used a mixer to create a master (that time we had 3 Sony collected tape recorders with wired remote control - I built a little hardware to make them play in sync)
Next step was to make the projector play in sync with the final audio mix. That was one of the easy parts.

But we also did some serious "Scientific Entertainment" the same way as above and having some beers. Two of these movies were "over refunded" by the government thanks to our teacher. One was used in many schools all over Germany in biology lessons. With this one it was only Rum, sugar and hot water which helped us to stay the cold during shooting.

Unfortunately our team broke apart cause of everybody went to study in a different city or country.

Many years later the subtitling thing came back in the computer age.

Why I'm writing this stupid thing?
In over 40 years the principle hasn't changed. You got better means and a faster turnaround. But thats not all.

-Andreas

to bring up a 2CV to speed of a sports car.

You just got me rolling on the floor here.

That was a great write up. Thank you very much for the effort.

...a former proud owner of a Saussente. :silly: