Subtitles: Yellow vs White?

[bunuelian]

The obvious question is not which color is better, but why the user isn't given an option on every title. It's not like the color has to be set into film on a dvd - it's probably something that a user can decide for himself.

I generally prefer white subs, myself, but I can understand why some people with eye problems might prefer the yellow.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

The obvious question is not which color is better, but why the user isn't given an option on every title. It's not like the color has to be set into film on a dvd - it's probably something that a user can decide for himself.

It isn't, really. That would be trivial if DVD subtitles were font-based, but they aren't -- they're stored as bitmaps. You can't change the color without editing those bitmaps, although I think some players have basic user-controllable options like opacity changes and moving the subtitles to a different position on the screen (which aren't part of the DVD spec). You can supposedly change the color fairly easily by altering the Color Look-up Table, although I've tried this a few times and it doesn't seem to work very well. It's possible the HD formats have more flexible font-based subtitles, but I'm not sure.

[marty]

The obvious question is not which color is better, but why the user isn't given an option on every title. It's not like the color has to be set into film on a dvd - it's probably something that a user can decide for himself.

I generally prefer white subs, myself, but I can understand why some people with eye problems might prefer the yellow.

Is that possible? I don't think so. The subtitles are encoded with the colour in the program files. I would imagine that the only way would be to provide different subtitle files with different colours, ie. white, yellow, blue, pink etc.

I think ChrisW can answer this for you.

[ChrisW]

It's true that subtitles are stored as bitmaps, so there is no control over the font and size for the DVD player. While there are DVD players around that can vertically shift the subtitles, I'm not aware of any that can change the colour. Such an idea would be technically achievable though.

The only solution, as far as authoring goes, would be to include two subtitle tracks; one of each colour. In my opinion, this would add confusion and wouldn't be worthwhile.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

The only solution, as far as authoring goes, would be to include two subtitle tracks; one of each colour. In my opinion, this would add confusion and wouldn't be worthwhile.

I'm sure that there was a recent R4 title that had exactly this, two identical subtitle streams, one in yellow, one in white. Can't recall which title though.

[marty]

The only solution, as far as authoring goes, would be to include two subtitle tracks; one of each colour. In my opinion, this would add confusion and wouldn't be worthwhile.

I'm sure that there was a recent R4 title that had exactly this, two identical subtitle streams, one in yellow, one in white. Can't recall which title though.

I think it may use up valuable space better spent on the visual and aural quality of the film. Then again I could be wrong!

[Rufus T. Firefly]

A complete set of subtitles for a feature film would probably take up about 5 Mb in most cases. About one-tenth of one percent of the capacity of a single layer disc. I doubt that the video or audio would be visibly/audibly affected by that small amount.

The DVD with the two sets of subs that I was thinking of was L'Innocente, which is an Umbrella release.

[Solaris]

I know Directors Suite release of La Strada has two sets of subtitles. Not sure what colours they are. Umbrella's release of Nosferatu also has two sets of subtitles, but both are yellow, I think the font is different.

[ChrisW]

Although I'm a bit late getting back onto this thread, thanks to everyone for your feedback on this.

Chris do you think the consensus is white? And willl AV "go over" to this in future (but please not as large a font as Ma Mere.)

Any consensus that does arise out of this would be considered. As an elaboration of this topic here, I started a poll at the Madman forums regarding the issue of subtitle style rather than colour, but a leaning towards yellow has become apparent over there; surprisingly so, given the consensus here.

[sevenarts]

just to add another vote, i can't imagine why anyone'd ever choose yellow. white, preferably with an unobtrusive darker border for light areas of the screen.

i recently saw the US story of marie & julien w/ yellow subs and it just reminded me how distracting they are. subtitles should be as unobtrusive as possible so as not to disrupt the film experience.

[marty]

I recently saw the US story of marie & julien w/ yellow subs and it just reminded me how distracting they are. subtitles should be as unobtrusive as possible so as not to disrupt the film experience.

I recently saw the R4 DVD of Story of Marie & Julien and I am pretty sure the subtitles were white and they looked great and very easy to read.

[ben d banana]

I really think people who are opposed to white subs must have only seen poorly done ones that fade into the background due to the lack of a dark border. I will even nerdily order overseas discs to avoid yellow subs (recently Artificial Eye's Cache instead of Sony's). I have been picking up a number of Australian discs of late (a great deal through work), but if I have to look at yellow subs I'll pass.

[Perkins Cobb]

I feel like I might've asked about this already years ago, but explain to me again why there's a consensus against yellow subtitles....?

[Matt]

See here, for starters.

[Perkins Cobb]

See here, for starters.

Thanks for pointing that out, but that discussion reflects my puzzlement perfectly -- it mostly treats the matter as settled and needing no explanation (the word "obvious" is used four times on that page), apart from descriptions of yellow titles as "gaudy" and "ugly." Whereas I don't see much difference. Can someone elucidate as to why white is seen as more aesthetically appealing? Hasn't the ship pretty much sailed once text (of any color) has been superimposed over the image?

[zedz]

White is less obtrusive, more like the theatrical experience, and less likely to clash with the colour schemes devised by the director and cinematographer. In a black and white film, the incongruity of the aesthetic intrusion is particularly jarring.

As far as I can tell, the only argument in favour of yellow is legibility, which is extremely dubious, since there are ample typographical and design solutions for making white titles completely legible in all contexts.

[knives]

I actually don't mind yellow and I've found that non-movie people prefer the colour as it is easier to read or something, but at the same time I do find yellow, especially that shade, to distract from the image a little and I focus less on the subtitles when they are white. In a silent though this seems irrelevant.

[Perkins Cobb]

White is less obtrusive, more like the theatrical experience, and less likely to clash with the colour schemes devised by the director and cinematographer. In a black and white film, the incongruity of the aesthetic intrusion is particularly jarring.

As far as I can tell, the only argument in favour of yellow is legibility, which is extremely dubious, since there are ample typographical and design solutions for making white titles completely legible in all contexts.

Fair enough. I'm just curious as to why some people seem to react so strongly to this and it doesn't bother me at all (and I'm usually pretty picky about such things). It seems to me that yellow subs would be more intrusive upon a color than a b/w film, but now I'm reminded that I thought it was totally arbitrary back when my mother explained that orange clashes with purple, or whatever. If I ever fill out an online dating profile I'll say that I dress like a color film with yellow subtitles.

One thing about white is that there are a lot of 35mm black & white prints made during the 50s-70s (and maybe even later) which carry white optical subtitles that become completely illegible in bright scenes ... although, as you point out, I've never seen a home video equivalent. Just too bad they didn't think of yellow back when it would've helped.

[captveg]

Better let Francis Ford Coppola and James Cameron know yellow subtitles are wrong.

[Tommaso]

One thing about white is that there are a lot of 35mm black & white prints made during the 50s-70s (and maybe even later) which carry white optical subtitles that become completely illegible in bright scenes

You're right, but that's only because in these cases noone thought about putting a slight black 'outline' around the white letters which would have made them completely legible, and which is standard practice with dvd subtitles nowadays. Otherwise: what zedz said. With black and white films, you can at least get rid of the jarring intrusion by simply setting your TV/monitor to plain b&w, but with colour films or a tinted silent like "Mathias Pascal" this isn't possible, obviously. And I don't even find yellow subs more legible, rather to the contrary, to my experience.

One question to MichaelB, out of technical curiosity: why do you say that yellow subtitles were acceptable in a way during the VHS-NTSC era? Anything to do with the NTSC format?

[zedz]

Just too bad they didn't think of yellow back when it would've helped.

Technically, that would not have been possible - or if so, it would have been incredibly complicated and expensive, involving printing on colour stock and doing costly and complicated opticals for every single shot of the movie. And we'd probably have a whole generation of foreign classics coming down to us not in black and white, but light pink and white. The subtitles might still be legible, but the picture could be a casualty!

[Koukol]

WHITE!!

[Perkins Cobb]

Technically, that would not have been possible - or if so, it would have been incredibly complicated and expensive, involving printing on colour stock and doing costly and complicated opticals for every single shot of the movie. And we'd probably have a whole generation of foreign classics coming down to us not in black and white, but light pink and white. The subtitles might still be legible, but the picture could be a casualty!

Eh, silent films were tinted; might've been interesting. And lots of the b&w 16mm bootlegs I've seen are green or purple anyhow!

[manicsounds]

Why aren't there more titles with blue subtitles?

[Gregory]

Casa Negra also did a release with blue subs: screen cap by Matt
Strangely, I read several reviews of this DVD and not one called out the decision to use bright blue subtitles.