Best practices for subtitiling vids?

[frayadjacent]

I'm doing some subtitles for Wiscon, and I'm wondering if anyone knows of guidelines for subtitling vids; i.e., is it best to start a subtitle a moment (how long of a moment?) before they lyric starts, or right at the same time? What about ways to get the subtitles to flow best with the music, or the vid itself? Is it better to keep a subtitle up a few frames longer than necessary when there are brief pauses in the lyrics so that you don't have a stutter effect (a few frames with no titles between two different lyric lines), or is it better to match the timing of the titles exactly with the lyrics?

Comments

[rbfvid.livejournal.com]

I prefer to start subtitles about 300 ms before the line is spoken, and let them linger long enough for everyone to read them without the effort (that would be no more than 21 characters per second for the English-speaking audience). Though my experience is only with subs for translated dialogue, I’m not sure how well it applies to music videos.

[rbfvid.livejournal.com]

Here is a good guide for subtitling: http://mediastorm.com/blog/2010/11/23/mediastorms-guide-to-using-subtitles/
Some advices definitely don't apply in your case (like matching line change with on-screen scene change), but others could be still useful.

[frayadjacent]

Thank you! This is very useful.

[frayadjacent]

Yeah, for some fast songs there probably isn't enough time in the lyric to hold to 21 characters per second. But it's still helpful to know these sorts of rules of thumb. Just a matter of thinking about how to adapt them.