Good software for authoring HQ subtitles?

[Butcher Wing]

Sorry if this has been discussed before, i did search but found nothing.

Ok here goes...

I want to create dvds with better quality looking subtitles. Subtitles with nice spacing between the letters and smooth undistorted shapes. Basically like you see on some retail dvds.

Can anyone tell me the a good font, and software for doing this please?

My current method is ok but the subtitle letters/characters are too close together and the resolution of them seems to be low. I want them to be clearer.


Here is my current method-

SubRip - I rip subs to .SRT file.

Subtitle Workshop - For editing subs.

DvdLab Pro 1.53 - for adding the subs to the dvd. I have tried many fonts but can't find a decent one. The best seems to be Arial (regular) with Smooth Max outline.

DvdSubedit - for positioning the subs where i want them.

--
If anyone can recomend a better authoring software, font, or method. Please let me know.

:) Thanx alot.


I would be happy if i could just find a font that is the same as Arial but with bigger gaps between the letters.

The perfect font/look- I'm looking for is the font used on alot of the (Joy Sales Legendary collection dvds) HK movies.

Also, I've noticed that alot of fonts that look good normally, look totally different when authored with DvdLab Pro. It's like DvdLab Pro totally ignores what the font is meant to look like and just makes most fonts look the same pretty much.

[looney]

Subtitle Workshop - For editing subs.



This application was a much better in the old incarnation which allowed you some awkward transformations between any kind non-standard fps you'd like. But in the end it's not much powerful than the old one (pre 2003 i think), and it's poor editor that haveediting will of their own you coud format .srt files much better in the Notepad and when you load it to SW it'll only allow you one <i>/<b> aso tag per subtitle appearance while in fact vobsub can display every letter with different tag-style, and it also removes some of the ascii-256 chars for some reason 0x0C..0x0E ... and probably many other weird things. But for timings it's ok (delay +/- should be a radiobox or somewhat even more effective, cause that list asks for too many clicks)

[Butcher Wing]

I'm not quite sure what you've just said, its a bit advanced for me i think. 'lol Are you saying that the visual quality of subtitles are determined by Subtitle Workshop aswell as DvdLab Pro?

Because i thought the way the final subs look on my dvd is all down to DvdLab Pro.

I guess what I'm asking in my original post is - Which software;s do proffesional distributor companies use for authoring their dvds? Because I want better quality looking subs basically.

Smooth edges, nice spacing between characters, no horrible jagged, rough edges etc...

Someone suggested 'DvdMaestro' to me but when i installed it I found it to be way more complicated to use than DvdLab Pro. I didn't know where to begin!

[looney]

Jaggies in original DVDs cames from txt to image conversion an these images have some final resolution (smaller the better) obviously w/o AA cause they're only 4 colors to be "that small". Original visual effects are preserved by directly ripping your subs into idx+sub, and afaik your edited txt subs must be converted into the same when you creating your dvd.

Yes quality of our subtitles depend on quirky Subtitle Workshop whose last incarnation (2.51-2004) still does a messy work with your tags and some special chars and cannot convert back from utf8 to ansi. So it's my question too. What subtitle editor is the way to go?

[Butcher Wing]

Ok, thanx for your input.

So can anyone recomend some better software;s for authoring dvds with high quality subtitles?