#1 Pet Peeve - Player generated subtitles! (1 Viewer)

[AndrewWickliffe]

Whenever anyone advocates burnt-in subs, I think about "Irma Vep," which I believe had some of the burnt-in subs cut off.

Subtitles, like most other things with DVDs, can be good or bad depending on the company.

I do think player-generated subs (from text) is a far superior idea than the stupid little bitmaps. Imagine getting to pick your own subtitle color (for instance, I prefer yellow for black and white full frame and white for everything else).

 

[Ted Todorov]

No, no, NO! Please don't give the studios any dangerous ideas. Just because you don't speak language X, doesn't mean that no one does. Subtitles should be optional. Period.

Some of the most horrible DVD transfers in my collection have burnt in subs. Just say no, please!

Ted

 

[MarkHastings]

I assume we are talking about only the subtitles that are needed for a specific scene (i.e. Greedo's conversation) as opposed to fully translating the movie into a new language?

But either way, I think the reason has to be so that the studios have a 'clean' print for every language. For a movie like Star Wars where they'd have to translate Greedo's speech into many languages, having the player handle it, they can use the same footage for every region without having to worry about various language versions.

It may not be the greatest method, but it makes a lot of sense as to why it's done.