Subtitler:Comments

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File Format

Comments lines are lines beginning with a slash /. The text of these lines is ignored by the rendering. You can use comment for personal notes. You can also use comments to comment out a language version: You spot and transscribe a movie, then the translator comments out the original language and adds the translated subtitle.

Special comments are used to define a property of the subtitle: Currently these are the /file, the /tc and the /style comment.

You can use a comment to add your own filename. If the commentline has the /file tag, the following text will be used as the filename.

Examples for comments

This is a normal title without comment.

/? chabis
Here I added a comment that i did not understand the word chabis

/file generique
This title will have the filename "generique.tiff"

/file 00:01:12:10
This title will be saved as "00.01.12.10.tiff" because ":"
are not allowed in macintosh filenames.

You can use a comment to define a style on the title level. Adding a /style tag allows you to set titles bold, italic, underline or plain (remove bold, italic and underline) and align to left, right or center, to change the vertical and the boxlevel. Styles can be combined.
Examples:

/style bold
This is a bold title

/style italic left
This is a title which is italic and left.

Some subtitlers prefer the two lines left aligned and then centered. We have added the new horizontal alignment Center Left. The style comment for individual titles is /style centerleft The alignment works for exporting image files, but not for list export, as none of the exporting formats supports Center Left. On the formats that support formatting (Avid DS, DLP Cinema, EBU, QuickTime SMIL, QuickTime Text, SAMI, STL Text), the format is replaced by Center.

You can use the /style color(red,green,blue) comment to define the color on title level. You can combine the color keyword with bold, italic etc.

Example:

/style color(235,16,16)
This is a red title with 100% video red

/style color(235,235,16) bold
This is a bold yellow title with 100% video yellow.

Note: You can only set the color of the title. Border, shadow and box color are global for the document.
Note: Do not use spaces within the paranthesis.

The /style vertical(offset) comment allows you to offset an individual title. An offset might be needed because of the presence of a lower third title or of another important topic in the picture. The keyword has a parameter in paranthesis which defines the amount of pixels to offset. If you want to go up, the parameter must be negative. There must be no space between the keyword and the parameter.

In this example, the second title will be offset 36 pixels upwards.

In this building behind me I spent
over 70 nights and most days ...

/style vertical(-36)
during the war which lasted 77 days.

Box level can be set on title level.

Use the style comment /style boxlevel(n) where n represents the percentage. This way you can make a title with a difficult background more readable

In this example, the second title has a box at 50% level:

In this building behind me I spent
over 70 nights and most days ...

/style boxlevel(50)
during the war which lasted 77 days.

The Timecode comment /tc has the format

/tc 00:00:00:00 00:00:00:00

where the first timecode is the inpoint and the second the outpoint.
Timecode comments are created automatically when you import a list with the Import tool. You can edit them manually or use the keyboard spotting commands to create and trim titles when you have imported a QuickTime movie. Updating a title with timecode set to zero will remove the /TC comment.
Note for NTSC: Use the framerate menu of the movie to identify drop-frame and non-drop-frame timecode.
Note: You need to use the ":" characters to separate the numbers in the timecode, except for the frame separator ";" in drop-frame timecode. If you need to fix timecodes with "." as separator, use the spotting tool: Applying an offset of 0 frames will fix wrong timecode formats.

If you need a title to start with a slash, then use a double slash''' // to escape the slash.

Style Tags

You can define the style of individual words, using HTML-Style tags. The following tags are supported:

Bold
Italic
Underline