Subtitle Series Part III – DVD Subtitle font, font size, position etc
This post is pretty much a continuation of the two subtitle technology blog entries I have written in May. The subtitles here deals mostly anime DVD with English subtitles.
Writing this entry is partially beause of one thread on animeondvd asking if FUNimation is gonna change their subtitle style on previous ADV DVDs. One of the replies directed to this thread, which is a discussion about how bad FUNimation’s subtitle. Personally I have also disliked FUNimation’s subtitle. The criticism of FUNimation’s subtitles also lead to discussion how the good subtitles should look. But it looks like 10 people have 8 different opinions of the how subtitles should look like. So here I would also like to say a few words about my observations and opinions after watching quite a few R1 released anime DVDs. My observations are provided by pictures, and divided into 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios based on distribution companies. Lastly, I’ll give my vision of the perfect subtitle style.
Before I start, here is some generalization about how R1 companies have their subtitles based on my observation:
Most of the R1 companies are using Font Arial (with variations such as narrow) without bolding. Most R1 companies have subitles with incorrect aspect ratio on their 16:9 release, thus subtitles look crushed. Most companies try to have absolute timings (subtitle starts exactly when a person speaking and ends when that person is done with speaking), but Animeigo is an exception. Also, companies such as ADV and Animeigo tend to translate signs on the image which can be good or bad depends on how it’s done.
So first comes with the 4:3 aspect ratio, I have ADV, FUNimation, Geneon, Animeigo here.
1. ADV’s release of Full Metal Panic:
ADV has probably my favoriate subtitle font style. I find this font size is exactly the one I liked. And I love yellow which stands out more than white. I just don’t understand why people don’t like yellow!
ADV’s release of Zone of the Enders Dolores, i:
ADV’s subtitle rendering software seems to have trouble rendering big size correctly, this is a representation of how terrible the big font size looks like…
After maybe 2004, ADV started to translate the on-screen notes, which looks like this, from Full Metal Panic Fumoffu:
It has lots of translations in this screen, it is overkill since the character reads the notes anyways. Too much notes will draw too much attention on the subtitle. Subtitle should be purely functional in stead of artistit.
2. FUNimation’s release of Case Closed, produced in 2003:
FUNimation has the worst subtitle style of all R1 anime DVDs I have! Small font size plus very thing boarder, the subtitles just don’t stand out of the pictures that much which causes eye strain after watching a couple episodes.
FUNimation’s new release of Case Closed, produced in 2008:
This is from FUNimation’s recent release, the subtitle got a lot bigger, but still smaller than ADV’s. Plus the subtitles still don’t have thick boarder. Anyways, at least they have a larger font now, a good movement for them… I don’t have a lot of FUNimation DVDs anyways…
3. Geneon’s release of adventure’s of mini-goddess:
This is the only geneon 4:3 release I got. Somehow they used arial narrow… It is certainly NOT a very good choice…
4. Animeigo’s release of You’re Under Arrest:
Animeigo don’t use very large font, either. But they use very think boarder and multi-color (usually yellow, green, and pink) to make the subtitles stand out. (pink is my least favoriate color, on some machines such as PS3 and software player such as PowerDVD, they render the pink as really reddish) Plus they translate the on-screen notes only where it is necessary.
A sample of green subtitle:
I’m not bothered with green, either, but I know quite a few people just don’t like it.
Pink, on the other hand, I think should be avoided at the most. Animeigo tends to use pink for songs which looks like this, release of Bubblegum Crisis OVA:
And Animeigo also has some neat Karaoke (no wiping) effects in their release of Oh! My Goddess OVA:
Yeah, it has no wiping effect like tranditional Karaoke notes, but it’s simple and effective. This is the disc I found that they are using Scenarist for their DVD authoring tool, they used DVD producer 1.0 on their older releases.
Another trait about Animeigo’s subtitle is that they don’t do absolute timing, in stead they time their subtitles reading time. They consider the reading time very carefully and made the subtitles really easy to read so that you barely miss any lines. I’m a big fan of their subtitles for this particular reason. But their position of the subtitles are always too high and sometimes have two lines even for very short sentences which blocks a lot of screens.
Then comes with the 16:9 aspect ratio, I have ADV, Bandai, Geneon, Mediablaster, and Viz here.
Most of the companies don’t do 16:9 aspect ratio correction somehow which annoys me. The result is the crushed font as illustrated below.
1. ADV’s release of You’re Under Arrest the Movie:
For the best result, the subtitles aren’t suppose to be crushed like this. But maybe for easier and faster productions, most of the companies don’t do aspect ratio correction. The ones they include are always optimized for viewing on 4:3 screen only!
2. Bandai’s release of Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex (Season 1):
The font size is the exact size I like except they should do 16:9 correction!
Bandai’s release of Ghost in the Shell: S.A.C. 2nd GIG：
Same production team, they fixed 16:9 issue in the second season, but the subitle font is way tooooo small now!
3. Geneon’s release of Fate/Stay Night:
Good size, but no fix for 16:9 display either. I have quite a few Geneon 16:9 titles, and they all look like this, including my favoriate Ah! My Goddess the movie:
3. The R1 Ah! My Goddess TV Season 1 is released by Mediablaster:
They have toooo big font size, no 16:9 correction. In the later episodes, in order to put in all the translations, they have to do 3-4 lines quite often, which almost covers half of the screen…
4. Viz’s released of DN:
It does have 16:9 correction, but the font size is way tooooo small.
Lastly computer subtitles(vobsub/vsfilter) and Blu-ray subtitles.
This is NOT the main subject here, but still I’ll say few words about them. These subtitles due to the advancement of the technology, have very good quality. Especially for computer subtitles, SSA or ASS subtitles are easy to make and great flexibity to make any style you want. Basically the font size should remain the same, but the font color, I really prefer white, unlike for DVDs. White just looks sharp and vivid for high quality rendering, I don’t know why… Yellow, compared to white, just looks dull and pale…
For 16:9 correction, this was never a concern for computer files until recently there’s a trend for some people believe that encoding should be done with original pixels. Thus there are now people doing original size 720*480 encoding and forcing 16:9 or 4:3 aspect ratio (or other ones for 2.35:1 films) during muxing into mkv or mp4 containers (or even during encoding). (this technique gives up tranditional cropping+resizing) The problem comes along with the original pixel encoding is similar with the DVD subtitle’s 16:9 correction. When you play the video, the subtitles are forced to play as the transformed aspect ratio, which results elongated subtitles in the Y direction (subtle) or crushed subtitles in the same way as DVD subtitles without 16:9 correction (annoying). There’s currently no solution for this yet since there’s no option in vobsub/vsfilter to output fixed aspect ratio for subtitle (subtitles are always tied to the video in terms of aspect ratio) Two examples are given here.
First, Central Anime’s (fansub) release of Macross 7 Remastered Edition:
The elongation in Y direction is very subtle here, so it’s NOT a big deal for 4:3 videos.
Second, some fansub I pulled off online which happens to be in sync (without any adjustments) with one of the Macross Zero‘s DVDrip:
It’s Chinese here. Can’t find any external English fansub. This is a very annoying problem though, it’s almost like the effects of the DVD with 16:9 correction unfixed. So new technology (concept) really creates new problem (conflicts). I wonder this problem will ever gets fixed…
So after me complaining all stuff I don’t like, what is my ideal subtitle style?
First, subtitles should be big enough to not cause eye strain, for the font size I liked ADV and Bandai’s release on Gits SAC S1 the most. I think all subtitles should be this big. I recommend using font Arial and size 22-23 for DVD rendering.
Second, for subtitle position, the position should be lower, with the overscan of LCD/Plasma TV, we DON’T need to follow 10% action safe guideline that strictly anymore. My preference is to leave about 7% above bottom.
For subtilte on screen translations and timings, I prefer Animeigo’s style with minimal translation on important stuff and the emphasis of readability rather than following absolute timing.
For number of lines, I prefer two lines at the most, if two lines are NOT possible, then three lines are OK, but four lines and above are unacceptable. (English translation seems to just need to use a lot of words to translate even very simple Japanese) Length of the lines shouldn’t be too long, they should really follow the 10% action safe guideline for left and right here. If it’s absolutely has to break a line into two, then break it.
After all, subtitles are just subtitles, they should be unobstrusive, and provide the best readibilty, they should be there, yet not be there. So here are some subtitle examples I’ve been experimenting follwoing my thoughts about the ideal subtitles:
Big size font, 16:9 correction, and low position.
When there are two people speaking at the same time, two colors should be used.
Three lines at the most.
That’s all what I want to say…
Love, day after tomorrow 
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