Subtitle Quality Control

Does any of the few people here who do subtitles does any QC on timing (min. max. duration, gaps) reading speed, max. chars per line and all the fancy things?

- Andreas

Sure, all of those things are either checked continually or set automatically in most subtitling applications, and they can and should also be QCd as a final check of the entire file.
Standards for all of this vary from country to country, and depending on target (TV, cinema, web, etc.), but it is important to stick to whatever standards are in place, both for technical and readability reasons.

Talking about Subtitles QC...

Do you have any preferred font to use for HD video? I usually use Tiresias by recommendation from a professional translator/subtitler many many years ago. Maybe there is something new and better now. Thanks!

Tiresias definitely looks like a suitable font for subtitles, but I am partial to condensed fonts, such as condensed Myriad, Avenir or Helvetica, usually in bold or semi-bold.

fb_527411383 wrote: Tiresias definitely looks like a suitable font for subtitles, but I am partial to condensed fonts, such as condensed Myriad, Avenir or Helvetica, usually in bold or semi-bold.

Thanks!

fb_527411383 wrote: Tiresias definitely looks like a suitable font for subtitles, but I am partial to condensed fonts, such as condensed Myriad, Avenir or Helvetica, usually in bold or semi-bold.

I don't agree here for condensed and bold.
Tiresias is good especially since the "l" (lower L) and "I" (capital I) are easy to distinguish and have "a nice appearance"

Choice for non-roman is often easier

- Andreas

Saw this today.

BBC Subtitle Guidelines wrote: BROADCAST
DVB
The subtitle encoder creates bitmap images for each subtitle using the Tiresias Screenfont font

So I wasn't so off track then. Thanks for the info Andreas!

If Tiresias does everything you need, great! No use in changing just for the sake of changing.
After reading about it, it seems as it doesn't have an italic. How do you handle that?

Tirisias - all fonts - come with regular, italic and probably bold. As far as I know.
You can download for free in many countries from websites for "blind" people.

- Andreas

Oh, ok. When checking out and reading about the font it was specifically pointed out that it did not have italic, but I guess everything on the internet isn't true...

What do you think if I would create an app for basic QC.

Just drag a project from Event Browser to the app, select role and go thru the subs checking length, reading speed, line count and subtitle gaps.
Placement of ?, ! handling of ... , balance of ¡! or ¿?

Once done saving the XML FCP will ask to replace or open a copy of the project.

- Andreas

For people who create subtitles from scratch within FCPX I imagine such a tool would be useful. For my part, though, the dedicated subtitling apps that I use already check or automatically set the things that need QC'ing.

Yes, we check the length of gaps between titles, we check the minimum and maximum length of titles and we also check there positioning according to where the shot changes are. We also left-align titles with dashes (that indicate 2 people speaking), and this is a real problem om FCP, because clicking on "left-align" moves longer line right off the page. FCP does not center left-aligned titles according to the longest line on screen.
I also work on EZ Titles, and this program is a breeze - it does all this automatically and you can set the minimum and maximum lengths as well as reading speed. AND it automatically builds from the bottom line upwards, whereas most options in FCP starts on the top line.
I do not understand why FCP does not provide a title generator that conforms to EBU standards.