Standards for video format and subtitle style
(thread in Post-Production forum)by David Evan Harris on 2009-07-08 20:40:04
(Standards for video format and subtitle style)
Thanks Irene for starting this discussion!
We do indeed need to adopt a standard video format as a group and I'd like for it to be one where our videos will play on the greatest possible number of computers.
Quicktime and Quicktime Pro do *not* playback HDV (MPEG-2 1080iXX) unless you have Final Cut Pro installed, so it has indeed caused us a lot of problems, even when we've gone out of our way to get a lot of macs for an installation. VLC is better, but can be unreliable and quit on us or give choppy playback.
I think that the solution is not finding a better program for playback, but probably converting our videos to H264 or possibly even Ogg Theora (http://xiph.org/quicktime/), as those are codecs that are much more commonly able to be played back on any computer with software that is free, and in the case of Ogg Theora, open source. Unfortunately, I'm not as well-informed as I would like to be about Theora's performance with HD (1080i60) content, or of the ability to export it easily...
The good news is that we don't need to do these conversions ourselves necessarily. The internet archive (archive.org) will take our footage and convert the full-res versions for us into Theora and maybe H264 (I need to double check) if we upload to them or even bring over some hard drives and upload direct to their servers here in San Francisco.
In terms of subtitles, I'm not very experienced with the format/styles. Does anyone else have an opinion or should we go with Irene's proposal below?
Thank you for reading!
-David
On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 11:04 AM, Irene Carolina Herrera <> wrote:
Thanks guys!
The template only asks for frame rate (30) and video settings. HDV1080i60. I didn't see anything about h264 rendering. Either way once you make a timeline in FCP Pro and have the subtitles as you like you export this into XMlL and title exchange reads the format. It's really well explained on TEP.
On the other hand I agree with the actual burning of a subtitle but until we find a solution for this and a way to project it properly we will have to continue working on FCP Pro and importing and actually playing back from there. Leading up to the screenings in isummit we tested many ways of doing this and FCP Pro Playback seemed to work the best. There is something about QT that I am still not convinced about neither in regards to converting files nor in regards to playback. I remember we tried many players and playing off the timeline seemed the more stable.
Once you have all this in XMLs all you have to do is export the language and put on a video track and it's set -- at least to play off of FCP Pro once it's rendered. It sounds very artisan like and I am sure the technology exists to do something more sophisticated however I do remember how we tried so many things before isummit and nothing seemed to work and we couldn't get a hold of anyone who actually was able to shed any light on this.
Best,
Irene
On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 1:41 AM, David Evan Harris <> wrote:
Is this for a 1080i60 h264 rendering? I think that the template has to specify the resolution and frame rate.
Either way, in general I think that it's best with glp to definitely establish a standard aesthetic but to avoid actually burning the subtitles onto any video in our collection so that we can be flexible with languages.
Thanks!
D
On Jul 8, 2009, at 9:04 AM, Irene Carolina Herrera <> wrote:
Dear all,
How is everyone?
Have we yet set a standard for our subtitles?
If we decide on something I can make XML file template so we can pass it around all can be used.
If anyone has suggestions please let us know.
We are inserting subtitles now for the screening of the Jamila piece this Friday!
From asking around so far I have
Outline text
Sans serif (font)
Size 26
Line width 15
Line Softness 10 (to avoid flickering)
Text opacity 100%
Color: white
I really don't have much experience with this but it would be great if we could make a decision regarding this very soon!
Thank you!
Irene