Subtitler:DVD Studio Pro

Using Subtitler with DVD Studio Pro 2, 3 or 4

Belle Nuit Subtitler creates still image files, which can be used as subtitles for DVD authoring.

Why use Subtitler? While it is possible to import STL textfiles directly into DVD Studio Pro, the approach with Subtitler has some advantages:

• Better quality of the titles
• No font rendering bugs that DVD Studio Pro 2 has with some fonts (eg with Arial Narrow, double ff show as simple f, spaces before the capital A are removed).

We following instructions apply both to DVD Studio Pro 2, 3 and 4. You cannot import subtitles into DVD Studio Pro 1 and 1.5.

1. Select text color to white, level 100%, soft 1.
2. Select border color to black, level 100%, width 4, soft 0. Note: It is important that the border is not too fine. It would be exagerated for normal video subtitles, but because of the lack of antialiasing, it needs to be thick to avoid flickering.
3. Set the video format to PAL DVD or NTSC DVD.
4. Set the file format to TIFF-DVD. This will create a TIFF with key colors white, red, blue, black.
5. Export the subtitles.
6. Export an STL Graphic file into the same folder as the rendered subtitles.
7. Import the STL file into DVD Studio Pro: Select a subtitle track, control-click on it and select Import on the context menu. The import will replace all titles on the track. Note: You cannot import from the file menu. You must use control-click on the subtitle track.
8. Transparencies and colors may be wrong. Select the first title in the timeline and go to the property window, set mapping type to chroma. Then set:

Type	Key	Color	Opacity
Text	Black	Yellow or white	15
Outline 1	Red	Edit Palette to mix a color between Yellow(or white) and black	13
Outline 2	Blue	Black	11
Background	White	White	0

1. Click on the Apply to Stream button.

If you choose not to have a border or an underlining rect, then your palette settings may have to be slightly different. Look at the RGB values in the palette comment of the exported STL file.

STL format specification

If you need to create the STL file by hand, refer to the DVD Studio Pro 2 manual to the details of the STL format.

You need DVD Studio 2, 3 or 4 for this workflow. Earlier versions do not support the STL format.

Importing problems

DVD Studio Pro often experience importing problems, when they first work with Subtitler. There are two things to remember:

• Note: You cannot import in DVD Studio Pro with a menu command. You have to select a subtitle track, control-click on it and select Import on the context menu. An import will remove all existing titles on that track.
• In the Subtitler preferences you can choose wether or not to use tape offset for STL export. While DVD Studio Pro is timecode aware, this is often a source for errors. DVD Studio Pro will not import all titles because they are beyond the video assets in the track. You cannot have subtitles beyond the video assets. We therefore recommend to work with absolute timecode (start at 00:00:00:00 or not using tape offset).

Using STL Text

If you prefer STL Text, you can also export STL Text and import that file into DVD Studio Pro.

DVD Studio Pro 2 supports only MacRoman characters. Later versions of DVD Studio Pro support Unicode, but the file must be Unicode RTF.

If you use a right to left character set like Arabic or Hebrew, DVD SP may refuse to recognize the spotting in the RTF file. Add a first title in the beginning with latin characters (like "Hello World" or even ".") and it will work.

Sometimes DVD SP does not like the Unicode RTF file Subtitler makes. In this case, open the file in TextEdit and save it again under a new name.