DCP-o-matic - movies with burned-in subtitles

[Mike Blakesley]

I have to convert a movie to DCP that has a few scenes with burned-in subtitles. How do I set up DCP-o-matic so that it imports the correct language subtitles? I've done movies in the past where no subtitles show up at all. I don't want to get ALL the subtitles for the film, just the ones that are supposed to be there in all showings. (I know this was discussed in the old forum but I can't find it.)

[Jim Cassedy]

If the subtitles are actually "burned-in", you shouldn't have to do anything, since they are already embedded onto your source video image.

[Leo Enticknap]

If the subtitles are burned in on the source file, as Jim says. However, if they are encoded some other way and you want to make them burned in on the DCP, the main issue is going to be the form in which you have the subtitle data to start with. If it's a DVD or BD, then DVDFab can extract the subtitles such that DCP-o-Matic can read and re-encode them. It's been around a year since I last had to do it and so I can't remember the specifics, but it's definitely do-able.

[Mike Blakesley]

What's happened in the past is, a movie has subtitles (like certain scenes in a Star Wars movie for example) that play on the BR player, but they don't come out on the DCP. So I need to know how to force them to show up on the DCP.

I think it's because the BR has multiple languages, so therefore it has different subtitle languages too. So I need to know how to make it pull the right subtitles out. I use MakeMKV to generate the source file, if that helps any.

[Brad Miller]

On the Content tab, click the sub tab Timed Text. See below. You will be able to live-preview the placement of the subtitles and adjust as you need using "offset" and "scale". Finally the "Stream" option at the bottom will let you choose what subtitle track to burn into the image.


DOM.JPG

[Mike Blakesley]

Thanks Brad that's exactly what I was looking for.

[Carsten Kurz]

Mike - typically, BRs have standard subtitles and forced subtitles. The normal subtitles are meant to subtitle ALL the dialog in the feature (e.g. english for a french movie). The forced subtitles are those where only certain parts have translations (e.g. when a sign with a foreign language is depicted, or when an alien talks in his native alien language). I guess one would call standard subtitles subtitles, and the forced ones 'forced captions'. Forced means, you can not disable them when showing the DVD/Bluray with the standard subtitle controls.

If you use e.g. MakeMKV to extract the feature, you can choose wether to use all subtitles, or only forced subtitles (they are separate tracks). You may extract both general and forced subtitles, but select in DCP-o-matic that only the forced subtitles are used. You need to switch between them in the timed text section to find out which is which. Per default, even if there are subtitles in an MKV from a DVD or Bluray, they are not activated in DCP-o-matic, so, as in Brad's screen shot, you have to enable them explicitly (unless they had been burnt into the DVD/Bluray, but that happens rarely).