What is a good subtitle font?

[Carpo]

Hi

I am trying to back up a few blurays i have some of which have forced subtitles, i have been googling this issue and have found that quite a few people suggest many different fonts, seeing as there are many to choose from i thought i would ask here.

What would be your suggestion for a good subtitle font?

[Ghitulescu]

You must probably be very confused about subtitles. They are bitmaps. You know as opposed to text. So you can't really change the font of a subtitle.

Or you can give us some more details.

[Lyle_JP]

You must probably be very confused about subtitles. They are bitmaps. You know as opposed to text. So you can't really change the font of a subtitle.

Or you can give us some more details.

Nonsense. Using .ssa or .ass with textsub(), you can choose any subtitle font you please.

My favorite is Alte Haas Grotesk (bold). It's worth tracking down. A very readable font at almost any size.

[Carpo]

@Ghitulescu

Who says i have to keep them as sup? ;)

@Lyle_JP

Thanks for that, here is a link (http://www.dafont.com/alte-haas-grotesk.font) for that font you mentioned, found it at dafont.com :)

[Ghitulescu]

Nonsense. Using .ssa or .ass with textsub(), you can choose any subtitle font you please.
Of course, but he didn't mention how he wants to play the rip.

Who says i have to keep them as sup?
You didn't, that's why I asked for details. Because there are fonts for PC and fonts for TV (direct, or after converted to PGS). And not all fonts have all the characters one needs, despite looking very well.

[Carpo]

PC is connected to TV so it would be on a TV screen, to be honest i dont know what format i will have the end video in as i tend to use a my PC and laptop to watch films (when i'm travelling) and the poor laptop cant always play HD MKV when it gets hot, so i might have to use xvid/avi.

Not sure yet, i am messing about with latest svn of media player classic home cinema and ffdshow trying to squeeze what performance i can out of it, seems newer versions are using less cpu so i might be in luck :-)

[jmartinr]

I like Univers.

I've done a lot of tweaking in DirectVobSub to get the subs right and have been using Univers for a long time now. :)

[Carpo]

Thanks, will have to hunt that down and have a look :-)

[Midzuki]

Call me square if you wish :p , but these are my favorite ones:

Lucida Console, Vera Sans Mono, Consolas, Droid Sans, Droid Sans Mono, Tahoma, and Segoe UI.

http://forum.videohelp.com/attachments/1014-1269444451/font-samples.png

http://forum.videohelp.com/attachments/1021-1269485381/segoe-ui.png

[Ghitulescu]

Tahoma is one of my favourites too.

[MatLz]

Mine is "comic sans ms" with a small modification of the " ' ".

[J_Darnley]

Tahoma is one of my favourites too.

Indeed. I prefer fonts which have an I with the top and bottom bars.

I'm not sure I would use a mono-space font for subtitles though

[manono]

Tahoma is one of my favourites too.
Indeed. I prefer fonts which have an I with the top and bottom bars.
Tahoma here also. But I replace all the 'I' with 'l'. I don't like the capital I with the bars.

[laserfan]

Take a look also at Trebuchet MS and Verdana.

[Yobbo]

Segoe Semibold.

[Midzuki]

Just to make things clearer: IMO, fonts with little or no difference between upper-case i and lower-case L are evil :D Another point: "non-evil" subtitle fonts "must" also make a nitid distinction between lower-case i and the upside-down exclamation mark (¡).

[manono]

Yeah, but there are plenty of commercial DVD production companies that might disagree with you. Among the best of all DVDs are those put out by Criterion, and they use a font that breaks your rules and which I like very much. The one on the left isn't Criterion, but another good company that doesn't agree with you. The pic on the right is from a Criterion DVD:

[Yobbo]

IMO...

That's just it! When it comes to subtitle fonts, it's a matter of personal taste.

[Midzuki]

... it's a matter of personal taste.

AND a lack of sense of humor too, apparently. :rolleyes:

[manono]

Oh, so 'I's that look like 'l's aren't really evil, just bad form or something like that? I'll start paying more attention to the fonts I come across, because it could be that most of the 'I's I see don't have the little bars on top and bottom.

[Midzuki]

Oh, so 'I's that look like 'l's aren't really evil, just bad form or something like that?

But of course. :)

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=133299

[laserfan]

Just to make things clearer: IMO, fonts with little or no difference between upper-case i and lower-case L are evilI was going to argue with you myself, but now I can't tell if you were kidding about this??? If the font's I and l are the same, then when your sub has been made from an incorrectly OCR'ed text file you won't notice any mistakes.

Subtitle Workshop sometimes corrects all the I and l problems, but occasionally a few slip thru. Oh, and btw your Lucida Console is the WORST in this regard wrt the ugly-looking ells (when they are shown in place of Is).

[Midzuki]

manono said:

I'll be better off here anyway.

I see. :-\

[Keiyakusha]

Default Segoe UI or Calibri looks OK to me.

[LigH]

I'd like to vote too for Tahoma/Verdana, especially if the result is to be used on DVDs - for several reasons:

distinct-enough similar letters (i/I/l/L, o/O/0), better than e.g. the - more harmonic but less distinct - "Arial / Arial Narrow" pair
good readability (these font families were specifically made to be easily recognisable on-screen)
partially "Grotesk / Egyptienne" font class: same-width stems in horizontal and vertical direction plus occasional serifes where useful (which support the reading flow)
not too small stems (especially horizontal stems in letters - like in the middle of 'A' - may need a minimum height of preferably 3 lines to avoid annoying interlace flickering on CRT TV sets)
Tahoma is almost a condensed variant of Verdana, therefore it is useful for similar-looking 16:9 subtitles (which have to be made anamorphically too for anamorphic wide-screen video)
wide availability (where shall I find all those other fonts, may I have to buy them due to their licenses?)

There is one drawback though: Verdana is a rather wide font. Therefore not a lot of letters will fit in a line. But that is not simply a bad attribute. Shorter sentences can often be recognised easier as a whole, so even rather briefly displayed shorter subtitles can be understood better than longer displayed longer sentences.

[GrofLuigi]

Arial is an abomination (http://www.ms-studio.com/articles.html). :devil:

Having said that, I use Arial Narrow for quick and dirty DVDs when I don't have time to check the final result - it's readable even on stretched anamorphic wide-screen video. :o

GL

[Dark Eiri]

I kinda like Helvetica.

[laserfan]

Hmm I found one that looks sorta nice--haven't seen it up on the Big Screen yet, though. Aharoni.

[[)370|\|470!2]

Segoe UI mostly.

[~bT~]

Tahoma here also. But I replace all the 'I' with 'l'. I don't like the capital I with the bars.

that is what i always do. my subrip app has l instead of I lol

[mr.duck]

The best font is 'Calibri'. It came with windows 7. It's clean and clear like Arial only it looks much better.

[Chetwood]

I still prefer font and colours use by Star Trek TNG which is Arial IIRC.

[Lighto]

I mostly use Arial, Verdana or Segoe UI.

[Rumbah]

I really like Calibri, too. Really easy to read if the font size isn't too small.

As for the I/l distinction I think it isn't that bad for English but I don't like it for German. There are some words in a sentence that begin with a capital letter, not only at the beginning of the sentence. Then I find it harder to read without a I/l distinction.

[laserfan]

Segoe UI
An odd thing I just discovered about this font is that while regular text looks like "I", in italics it appears as "l"!? Verdana looks good by comparison.

[nx6]

AG Foreigner Light-Bold

It's sans-serif but has thicker linework than Arial for greater visibility.

[Ghitulescu]

Actually the best font would be the one that is sans-serif, it's not "too" thin, and contains all the characters you need. Remember, there are people needing more than 26 letters.

[LigH]

I don't think so. Sans-serif fonts are not in general "the best". It is important for subtitles to be read quickly. Serifes can support the reading flow. Therefore, "bastard fonts" (combining attributes from the Antiqua, Grotesque and Egyptienne families) may turn out to be optimal.

Typical samples: Antiqua (serif, proportional, kerned, unequal stems) ~ Times; Grotesque (sans-serif, proportional, kerned, equal stems) ~ Helvetica; Egyptienne (serif, monospace, equal stems) ~ Courier

[Ghitulescu]

You must be right, there are two fonts, one for PC and one for interlaced displays. I was always talking about interlaced ones, as I don't watch movies on PC.

[LigH]

Of course, interlaced displays always have the problem that horizontal stems smaller than 3 lines flicker annoyingly. But there are such bastard fonts with serifes as thick as all other lines. And only few of them are used at all (e.g. not many more than the capital "I").

[Daiz]

Generally speaking sans-serif and slabserif fonts work well for subtitles.

I prefer some variation in my life so I tend to use different fonts for different things. Recently, I've been using Calibri, Candara, Corbel (all three of which I really like, Microsoft has done a great favor to the world by bringing us these two fonts), Vesta, Linotype Finnegan, Helvetica Neue... For easy font choices, I can really recommend the first three I listed, since they come with Windows Vista/7. Hell, some Trebuchet MS is fine too occasionally.

Besides the font choice, I also find proper padding very important for my subtitle styling. Aegisub's overscan mask is a great tool in this regard as making sure your subs stay out of the masks generally leads to very readable results padding-wise.