DVD Studio Pro 2 and Subtitler

Belle Nuit Subtitler creates still image files, which can be used as subtitles for DVD authoring. The subtitles can be created and edited offline by a translator and the editor does not have to retype the titles in the title tool, which both spares time and lowers the risk of typo errors.

Why use Subtitler? While it is possible to import STL textfiles directly into DVD Studio Pro 2, the approach with Subtitler has some advantages:

DVD subtitling has some differences to video subtitling. DVD authoring does not support 8bit mask and antialiasing. It has four key colors and for each one you can set a color and a transparency. As one color is the title and one color is the background, this leaves you with two colors for either features like border and background or for a simulation of antialiasing.

DVD Studio Pro has two methods to define the key colors. You find them in the Property Editor of the subtitles in the Color Settings tab:

It is important to notice that the colors you set in Subtitler are not the colors finally used in DVD Studio Pro. In Subtitler you set the key colors, and in DVD Studio Pro you map these key colors to the colors of the title and its transparency.

We will discuss first the recommended standard approach. We recommend that you make titles with border and antialiase between the title and the border.

  1. In Belle Nuit Subtitler, select PAL or NTSC as video format. Use 16:9 formats if applicable.
    Note: Do not use the DVD formats. The DVD video formats in Subtitler are only for programs that do not support grayscale mapping.
  2. Select text color to white, level 100%, soft 0.
  3. Select border color to black, level 30%, width 6, soft 0.
    Note: It is important that the border is not too fine. It would be exagerated for normal video subtitles, but because of the lack of antialiasing, it needs to be thick to avoid flickering.
  4. Set the file format to PICT. This will create a separate mask file. The mask file is actually used by DVD Studio Pro.
  5. Export the titles.
  6. If you have timecode comments (/tc) in the Subtitler document, you can now export an STL Graphic file into the same folder as the rendered subtitles.
  7. Import the STL file into DVD Studio Pro. Select a subtitle track, control-click on it and select Import on the context menu.
  8. Transparencies are now probably wrong (title is background and background is title). This is because the transparency information is not included in the STL file. You have to set it manually. Select the first title in the timeline and go to the property window, set mapping type to grayscale. Then set

    KeyColorOpacity
    TextBlackYellow or white15
    Outline 1Dark GrayEdit Palette to mix a color between Yellow(or white) and black13
    Outline 2Light GrayBlack11
    BackgroundWhiteWhite0

  9. Apply to Stream.

Following we show you four settings in Subtitler and DVD Studio Pro which show you various output options of the titles.

Title with border
SubtitlerDVD Studio Pro
Video FormatPAL DVDMappingColorOpacity
Title100% whitewhiteyellow15
Border100% red, width 4redblack11
Boxblue-0
Used Image0001.pctblack-0

Title with border and box
SubtitlerDVD Studio Pro
Video FormatPAL DVDMappingColorOpacity
Title100% whitewhiteYellow15
Border100% red, width 4redBlack15
Box100% blueblueGray8
Used Image0001.pctblack-0

Simple title with two levels of antialiasing
SubtitlerDVD Studio Pro
Video FormatPALMappingColorOpacity
Title100% whiteblackyellow15
Borderdark grayyellow10
Boxlight grayyellow5
Used Image0001mask.pctwhite-0

Title with box and one level of antialiasing
SubtitlerDVD Studio Pro
Video FormatPALMappingColorOpacity
Title100% whiteblackyellow15
Borderdark grayedit pallete to mix yellow/gray12
Box30% whitelight graygray8
Used Image0001mask.pctwhite-0

Title with border and one level of antialiasing
SubtitlerDVD Studio Pro
Video FormatPALMappingColorOpacity
Title100% whitewhiteopacity 15, yellow15
Border30% black width 6light grayedit pallete to mix yellow/black12
Boxdark grayblack11
Used Image0001mask.pctblack-0

Multiformat output

Note that the witdh of a DVD format is slightly different than the width of a video format and there is also no DVD 16:9 format. If you create title for both video and DVD, the maximal with of a title may change and therefore you may need to reformat the titles. You can workaround this problem by slightly changing the font size.

STL format specification

If you need to create the STL file by hand, refer to the DVD Studio Pro 2 manual to the details of the STL format.

You need DVD Studio 2 for this workflow. Earlier versions do not support the STL format.

Using STL Text

If you prefer STL Text, you can also export STL Text and import that file into DVD Studio Pro. DVD Studio Pro 2 supports only MacRoman characters. Later versions of DVD Studio Pro support Unicode, but the file must be an RTF file. You cannot yet export directly an RTF file from Subtitler. Export as STL file with Unicode, then open this file in TextEdit and save it as RTF file.

Importing problems

DVD Studio Pro often experience importing problems, when they first work with Subtitler. There are two things to remember:


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