Specifications

2. Select the video asset you wish to add your subtitles to and then choose “File,”
“New,” and “Timeline” (shortcut key is Ctrl + T). This will open the timeline of
your video in the lower region of the application.
Move the playhead in the Timeline window left or right to move forward and backward in
the video. To move in smaller one second increments, use the left- and right-arrow keys on
the keyboard. You can also play the video in the Monitor window for additional review.
Adding a Subtitle Track
DVDs may have up to 32 different subtitle tracks allowing the DVD author to add different
languages or other information into the subtitle track signal. With respect to providing
caption information on the subtitle track, similar principles apply to the parsing (or break-up)
of phrases, the timing of text appearing on-screen, and the inclusion of audio information as
part of the text content. A major difference with subtitles, however, is an inability to assign a
background color to the text content. The result is that the DVD author must be attentive to
the font style and size as well as stroke and fill color of the subtitle text and the changing
contrasts with the video.
Adobe Encore DVD allows for the import of subtitles that are either text or image-based.
Image-based subtitles are those in which images (e.g., .GIF, .JPEG, .PSD, etc.) are added to
the timeline with instructions specifying when and where on the screen they should appear.
One advantage to image-based subtitles as it affects captioning, is that you could control the
background color of the captions (as well as the caption text style, color, etc.). However, this
precludes any final manipulation of caption appearance that may be required after importing
the image-based content. Changing image-based subtitles for captioning would require the
editing of the content in a graphics application and then re-importing the content into the
timeline.
A more flexible option is to import text-based subtitles into the DVD timeline. Text-based
subtitles can have the various font appearance attributes modified during the import process
or after the import process is complete. Additionally, editing the text-based subtitle is
relatively easy; using the “Text Tool” from within Adobe Encore is generally sufficient to
modify how the subtitle content appears on-screen.
For Adobe Encore DVD, the subtitle text needs to conform to the following format:
Subtitle_# Start_Timecode End_Timecode Subtitle Text
The “Subtitle_#” represents the number of the subtitle track that the content will appear
under in the timeline. The “Start_Timecode” and “End_Timecode” represent the time-on and
time-off of the text content (i.e., the “Subtitle Text”).
Adobe Encore uses the following method of interpreting the timecode: hh;mm;ss;ff, where
“ff” represents the video frame and semicolons are used to separate the different time values.
This file is a basic text file that can be created (or edited) using any text-editing program
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