It has proven to be extremely complicated to do subtitles for this project using DVD Studio Pro and Final Cut Pro. The latest wrinkle was to export the STL file back into Final Cut pro using Subbits. The program works well--but is not well documented so a lot comes down to trial and error.
The subtitles STL file we created for DVD Studio pro worked out fine but when we took the exact same file and converted it to XML using Subbits, the subtitles slowly got out of synch as the film advanced. The solution required us to adjust the STL in Subbits using the "Recalculate NDF to DF" option (a completely undocumented feature in the Subbits manual). On top of that when you choose the option it prompts you with the alert: "This will shift all timecodes down from 30fps to 29.97 fps. Are you sure you want to continue?" but since we are using PAL this makes no sense.
However, chosing this option -- despite the erroneous warning -- solved the out of synch issue with FCP.
** Update: It appears that this solution only fixed one out of the 4 subtitle STLs that we were working with. The others simply needed to have the Subbits settings for the project set to PAL instead of NTSC. (Clcik Edit>Preferences>PAL). Don't have the time to figure out why the two STLs needed to be processed differently--could have been a FCP setting instead. All in all though I still say Subbits is the best -- and lowest cost -- solution to the problem. I hope Apple will just create a more logical work flow to work with subtitles in FCP and DVD Studio Pro in their next version!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment