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View Full Version : Imitating the "cinematic subtitles" look?


dollparts
25th August 2008, 16:37
Hi. As the topic suggest I'm out to imitate the look of cinematic subtitles. If this sounds confusing I'm referring to subtitles seen in theaters. I'm not quite sure how those are made and applied to on film reels but they don't look very much like subtitles found on DVD:s. It is also possible that the look, or at least the font, varies from country to country, so I'll begin by paste a sample here so you'll have a fair idea of what I'm talking about:

http://img180.imageshack.us/img180/3083/subdubrr6.jpg

Those kind of “cinematic subtitles” look a bit blurred, they are not very sharp and seem to be moving around, if just very little. I don't think it is something you'll find on a recent R1 or R2 DVD, possible on some low budget eastern-european or asian DVD. Most people would probably not prefer this look, but I happen to love it. Could anyone give me a hint of what I could do to imitate this look? I'm currently working with Subtitle Workshop but would of course be willing to try something else out if it would help the cause.

sincerely

GrofLuigi
25th August 2008, 23:02
They are 'burned in' on the film reel. Sorry, I don't know how could you imitate them.

GL

dollparts
25th August 2008, 23:31
I guess I can realize it myself but hardcoding the subtitles with virtualdub would make no similar effect, right? The font itself seem to be a rounded helvetica, but the font is only half the visual experience. It doesn't give that same feeling the cinematic subtitles have :(

That you regardless for the reply.

J_Darnley
25th August 2008, 23:34
http://users.telenet.be/darnley/images/subtitles_cinematic.png
The answer is to use text based subs. ASS has features lots of features to toy with to create what you are looking for. Shaking subtitles would be harder because you would need to animate them and I don't know of something that would move them about randomly. Also, as I have just discovered myself, newest versions of VSFilter have been updated/expanded to support varying amounts of blur and edge blur.

dollparts
25th August 2008, 23:47
The blur edges on top of blur edges seems nice and would probably do a good job when used with helvetica. Thank you kindly!