subtitle

Subtitle adjustment results

Nick — Sun, 06 May 2007 18:28:15 -0400

Here, I will show a few example screenshots from the original subtitled MKV file of Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo from roxfan (Played and captured screenshots using Media Player Classic) and the output from our 46" Samsung DLP Widescreen TV using my repositioned version of the roxfan script (Using the highly technical process of playing the movie on the TV and capturing screenshots using a digital camera). The widescreen TV was using an older version of my original adjustments (The "TV" subtitles were actually placed too low; I had fixed that in the attached file, but didn't get pics of it).

Here's a good example of how much left and right screen space is lost from the overscan:

Original

Adjusted

As you can see, the subtitle was forced to two lines as a result of a lost of only 6.5% of screen space on each horizontal side (Though this gives 13% total lost area in the horizontal space). Truthfully, this one came extremely close on the original output to the screen (I think the "Y" was halfway cut off), but I found it much more comfortable to read when it was forced to two lines.

The following is an even better example:

Original

Adjusted

As you should be able to see, the left florescent light on the ceiling is completely off-screen, and so is the very right column of window panes and Kousuke's shoulder. Chiaki's chair also almost disappears. The original subtitle position would have almost worked except letters that extend below the basline ("p", "q", "j", or "g", for some examples) would have been cut off at the bottom of the screen. Though, comparing these two screens, it seems that there's not much cut off at the top of the screen (but still some).

Here's an example of a song being translated (with the original Japanese words being shown):

Original

Adjusted

In this case, the original subtitle positions would have had "wake" and "I was" nearly completely cut off, and the first line would have had the very tops of the letters on the edge of the screen. As it is, even the adjusted lyrics ran right on the left side of the screen. A bit more padding on the left and right sides might have been a good idea.

From what I understand, most professional broadcasters and video producers assume a certain amount of overscan (It seems the numbers used are available on this Wikipedia page.). It would be nice if more fansub groups would also follow the same numbers, but if they continue to release MKVs with soft-subs, it will always be possible to adjust the margins of the subtitles for ourselves.

Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo - Example 3 - Adjusted

Nick — Sun, 06 May 2007 18:12:34 -0400

Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo - Example 3 - Original

Nick — Sun, 06 May 2007 18:08:58 -0400

Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo - Example 2 - Adjusted

Nick — Sun, 06 May 2007 18:00:01 -0400

Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo - Example 2 - Original

Nick — Sun, 06 May 2007 17:55:30 -0400

Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo - Example 1 - Adjusted

Nick — Sun, 06 May 2007 17:43:42 -0400

Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo - Example 1 - Original

Nick — Sun, 06 May 2007 17:38:50 -0400

Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo - Subtitle file adjusted for overscan on widescreen TV

Nick — Sun, 06 May 2007 16:18:48 -0400

Well, I had managed to show off Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo (using roxfan's subs) to a few people using my housemate's 46-inch Samsung DLP widescreen (I forget the exact model at the moment). Now, this wasn't as easily as simply following the directions on my MKV to AVI guide as the Samsung TV has between 5% to 10% overscan, and subtitles and the karaoke would lie halfway off of the screen, making it difficult to read the dialog. In the past, with hard-subs in AVI files and many fansub groups that do not position their subtitles to adjust for this (This is not meant to be a slight against any fansub group, as they doing the much harder job of translating and timing these subtitles in the first place at no cost to us), there would be nothing I could do other than slightly windowboxing the video as to make sure the subtitles appear properly on screen. Now, though, thanks to MKVs with their soft-subs, I can at least do something about it when converting it to an XviD AVI file to play on the big screen.

In the case of Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo, I am able to adjust the margins in the .ASS file to account for this overscan issue. It's not all that difficult, as I bascially made sure the minimum vertical margins are around 30 pixels from the bottom or 20 from the top, and the horizontal margins are at least 50 pixels on each site (This is according to the original 768x432 raw MKV dimensions, not the smaller video dimensions used by roxfan). These numbers were determined via a good amount trial and error (and about 4-5 DVDs wasted burning the resulting file and playing it on the TV). As I can determine, our TV has a 4.6% top overscan, 7% bottom overscan, and 6.5% left and right overscan. Truthfully, the bottom margin could actually be smaller (probably at the 4.6% mark), but I liked to have the dialog subtitles a small distance from the bottom edge of the screen, instead of being right on top of it.

The result, though, is nicely easy to read subtitles when watching the film on the Samsung DLP. I think some parts, like the credits at the start of the movie, the English translations are slightly adjusted to the left or right than when they were originally, but nothing too bad.

For those interested, I'm attaching the subtitle file to this post (right-click and choose "Save As" to download it). Hopefully, others will find it useful.

UPDATE: I have screenshots highlighting why it was necessary to reposition the subtitles.

UPDATE 2: I've attached the fonts used with this subtitle file. You may have to install them on your computer for the subtitles to display correctly.