How to convert subtitles from "Text" to "Outline Text"?

thanks for the tip.

after some tweaking i see that the effect is better when i set "Range" to zero and radius to 0.3. but it still looks a bit different. isn't there a way to convert the subtitles to outline text? maybe somehow through xml?

thanks. what i finally did was going into the xml code and edited it. it does however require a little more changes than Meg the Dog wrote. If you do it his MtD's way it does change the subtitles from Text to Outline Text, but it also resets their position, font, and font size – not to mention getting rid of all the italics.

I agree that subtitles should be as simple as possible and I'm very much into typography (and I am of course using a sans serif). But it wouldn't be wise to have a white subtitle without some kind of thin, black outline for it not to blend in with the film itself.

yes, but these are not closed captions but subtitles meant to translate from one language to another. The film is meant to be screened at festivals and you must surely be aware of that subtitles in cinemas and on dvds are not in black boxes but only white (or sometimes yellow) text with an outline.

Gentlemen, gentlemen!

let's not all get anal retentive.

Surely we must be talking about two seperate things here. You are talking about broadcast norms (in the UK) and I'm talking about cinema. I'm preparing a film that is going to be shown at festivals and later have a DVD-release. The subtitles that I was given were just white text in "Text" and I wanted to simple convert them to "Text Outline" since a off-white font with a thin black outline (or a drop shadow) is the style that most closely resembles to what is the norm, and agreed upon, on all subtitles screened on big screens and on all globally released feature film dvds.

I challenge you to name one film you've seen in cinemas or a regular feature on a dvd that has text on black boxes. And I'm not just talking about the burned in subtitles. (I have seen balck boxes on Sweidsh vhs releases though.)

I'm Swedish myself, and have grown up with subtitles on translucent black boxes on television. Being a film drector and also a writer for the BBC, I'm aware of different institutions trying to enforce various standards. And although caption on black boxes might be easier to read to the poor sighted, it surely isn't more aesthetic. It would be blasphemous to most filmmakers I know to have their meticulously designed shots being covered by two wide black stripes with text in them. Drop shadowed off-white text is less obtrusive and I think there is a clear reason for these kind of captions being used by all the major hollywood studios.

I am aware that some very inexperienced creators place text directly over video, use various appalling text attributes, use inappropriate colours and inappropriate fonts. This is not accepted as best practice by anyone other than by inexperienced creators.>>

I see this statement and namedropping the BBC, the BFI and the Royal National Institute for the Blind as very offensive and British in nature (something you e45blue probably is not even aware of). I have also once worked as a graphic designer and I would be the first one to be annoyed about people using minuses instead of hypens and inch marks instead of quatation marks and so forth. But there is a bigger world out there outside of your island and people interpret life in all different ways. Of course it would be much easier if all bustops in the whole wide world looked like the ones in London but the standardisation/colonisation isn't the only way forward.

All I asked for was some simple technical help and not a lecture on "superior" high standards.