Subtitle Nightmare

HoGs

Newbie Location: California Joined: Dec 24, 2012 18:15 Messages: 20 Offline

Solved by

Dec 29, 2012 01:33

I'm in disbelief that a program as complex as this one has such poor subtitling capability. One should be able to simply click on them & drag them to wherever he/she wants on the frame. Their default position is bottom-center, but sometimes the image will obscure the subtitle in that position. When I called support I was dumbfounded by his response: He said that I had to go to the subtitle room, highlight the particular subtitle, then play around with hitting "enter" until I got it to the right height. Then to better position the subtitle right or left I had to put in spaces before or after the subtitle (just guessing how many spaces might be needed). This is ridiculous! Not only that, but sometimes when I would do those steps the formatting would change, or if I changed the text formatting the position of the subtitle would change causing me to go through all those steps again. If you're listening CyberLink, for all of our sakes, please fix this extremely tedious and unnecessary process.

vn800rider

Senior Contributor Location: Darwen, UK Joined: May 15, 2008 04:32 Messages: 1949 Offline

Dec 29, 2012 04:40

Subtitling seems to occasionally cause users upset. From my reading of the topic over the years, the problems often referred to are based on the assumption that subtitles are a "free form" process, whereas there are quite complex rules and agreements in force as to the use of subtitles and the internationally accepted protocols that apply. Whether CL applies these protocols too tightly is possibly a matter for debate

Should users want to have a "freeform subtitle" they would be better off using the title function which gives much greater flexibility, but does not allow the import from standard SRT files.

This wiki link gives a reasonable overview
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subtitle_(captioning)

and this BBC guide shows the constraints that operate in commercial productions
http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/futuremedia/accessibility/subtitling_guides/formatting.shtml

Cheers
Adrian Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. (see below)
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Carl312

Senior Contributor Location: Texas, USA Joined: Mar 16, 2010 20:11 Messages: 9090 Offline

Dec 29, 2012 09:02

Powerdirector uses Two forms of "subtitles". The first is the one you apply in the Subtitle Room (also known as Closed Captions on a Disk). This subtitle is a fixed position on the screen, Bottom Center, Two lines. Position is above the TV Safe Zone.

The other is not actually a 'subtitle' but rather a "Title". Titles are found in the Title Room. Titles can be any font, any position on the screen.

Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

HoGs

Newbie Location: California Joined: Dec 24, 2012 18:15 Messages: 20 Offline

Dec 29, 2012 16:27

Thanks Carl312, at first try it seemed that Titles are separate frames that don't overlay the photo or video. That doesn't really suit my purpose. I finally figured out they have to go on another row in the timeline. As you can see, I'm definitely a newbie on PD. The problem I still have is all the titles I searched through had effects & motion. I just want a simple, editable text caption. How can I create one of those to put in the title library?

BTW, why didn't customer service just tell me to try titles instead of subtitles? I get one month free calls for buying the software, but usually they actually charge quite a bit. For that money I'd want precise, expert service! The guy actually had the audacity to tell me to read the user upload, implying I shouldn't bother him with this stuff.

HoGs

Newbie Location: California Joined: Dec 24, 2012 18:15 Messages: 20 Offline

Dec 29, 2012 16:48

Never mind. The 3D default title seems to work as a kind of generic subtitle. Thanks again.