Subtitles: Yellow vs White?

Discuss internationally-released DVDs and Blu-rays or other international DVD and Blu-ray-related topics.
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Perkins Cobb
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Re: Subtitles: Yellow vs White?

#51 Post by Perkins Cobb » Thu Feb 14, 2013 2:28 pm

Those are horrible (and remember, I say that as someone who shrugs off the yellow ones). So much so that I waited until I could get my hands on a screener with burned-in subs (not great, but preferable) -- and, as part of that process, a friend who knows Puiu ended up sending him the Beaver link and saying, in essence, hey, look at these godawful subs on your film! Puiu was not consulted beforehand, predictably. There's now a Romanian special edition DVD that's vastly better on all counts.

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Lemmy Caution
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Re: Subtitles: Yellow vs White?

#52 Post by Lemmy Caution » Thu Feb 14, 2013 3:15 pm

That's odd. In both examples they mix blue and white to make weirdly distracting subtitles.
Just blue by itself might be okayish, or at least better than yellow.
Actually I don't much mind yellow subs on color films, and for b&w films I just turn off or way down the color. Anyway, it's good that subtitle technology has evolved where you no longer have to watch white subtitles occasionally disappear on white backgrounds.

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manicsounds
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Re: Subtitles: Yellow vs White?

#53 Post by manicsounds » Fri Feb 15, 2013 5:39 am

Someone needs to put out a disc with Black Subtitles.

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swo17
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Re: Subtitles: Yellow vs White?

#54 Post by swo17 » Fri Feb 15, 2013 11:46 am

I actually saw an Indian film once with black subtitles (and no borders). I can't remember what it was but I believe that a lot of the film took place at night. Perhaps this explains why I don't remember much about it.

Zot!
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Re: Subtitles: Yellow vs White?

#55 Post by Zot! » Fri Feb 15, 2013 12:02 pm

Perkins Cobb wrote:
Those are horrible (and remember, I say that as someone who shrugs off the yellow ones). So much so that I waited until I could get my hands on a screener with burned-in subs (not great, but preferable) -- and, as part of that process, a friend who knows Puiu ended up sending him the Beaver link and saying, in essence, hey, look at these godawful subs on your film! Puiu was not consulted beforehand, predictably. There's now a Romanian special edition DVD that's vastly better on all counts.
So the Romanian Edition of Lazarescu is pretty good? I was hoping for a good release of this, and I doubt it will would surface again in the near future.

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Tommaso
Joined: Fri May 19, 2006 10:09 am

Re: Flicker Alley

#56 Post by Tommaso » Sat Feb 23, 2013 7:05 am

bdurden wrote:and we eventually settled on yellow subtitles (not necessarily my personal preference), which was decided as it is more common among European releases
I really don't know how you got that impression. Talking about releases of silent/early cinema, if I look at the major European companies here - MoC, BFI, Edition Filmmuseum -, they've always used white subtitles. Yellow subtitles are only common on broadcasts by arte TV, annoyingly.

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NABOB OF NOWHERE
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Re: Flicker Alley

#57 Post by NABOB OF NOWHERE » Sat Feb 23, 2013 7:16 am

Tommaso wrote:Yellow subtitles are only common on broadcasts by arte TV, annoyingly.
Is that foreign language subtitling or HoH? In France Arte seems to follow HoH standard practice, which is white subtitles for on screen speakers yellow for off screen speakers and two shades of claret for sound effects or description of music. Perhaps, more likely, I have just pressed the wrong button.

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Tommaso
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Re: Flicker Alley

#58 Post by Tommaso » Sat Feb 23, 2013 7:26 am

NABOB OF NOWHERE wrote:
Tommaso wrote:Yellow subtitles are only common on broadcasts by arte TV, annoyingly.
Is that foreign language subtitling or HoH?
Foreign language subtitling on arte Germany.

peerpee
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Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 3:41 pm

Re: Flicker Alley

#59 Post by peerpee » Wed Mar 20, 2013 9:31 am

Tommaso wrote:
bdurden wrote:and we eventually settled on yellow subtitles (not necessarily my personal preference), which was decided as it is more common among European releases
I really don't know how you got that impression. Talking about releases of silent/early cinema, if I look at the major European companies here - MoC, BFI, Edition Filmmuseum -, they've always used white subtitles. Yellow subtitles are only common on broadcasts by arte TV, annoyingly.
I concur with Tommaso. Yellow subtitles are ABSOLUTELY NOT more common on European DVD or Blu-ray releases. If like you say that was the basis for your decision, it explains why so many people are upset by it.

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MichaelB
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Re: Flicker Alley

#60 Post by MichaelB » Thu Mar 21, 2013 3:19 am

I've watched hundreds, very possibly thousands, of foreign-language European DVDs and BDs over the last fourteen years and, hand on heart, I can't think of a single one with yellow subtitles - they've pretty much exclusively been of US/Australian origin.

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Tommaso
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Re: Flicker Alley

#61 Post by Tommaso » Thu Mar 21, 2013 7:25 am

Unfortunately, I can think of one: the German Jacques Rivette edition ("Marie et Julien"/"La bande des quatre"/"Noiseuse", both versions). Really annoying, as otherwise it's a pretty nice set.

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: Flicker Alley

#62 Post by Michael Kerpan » Thu Mar 21, 2013 8:17 am

david hare wrote:Please, white only.
Outlined white. ;~}

Jonathan S
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Re: Flicker Alley

#63 Post by Jonathan S » Thu Mar 21, 2013 10:20 am

Given that Flicker Alley often work in partnership with Lobster, I think their erroneous impression of yellow subtitles being more common in Europe may originate in the fact that Lobster do tend to use them on their DVD releases (e.g. the Retour de Flamme series, the two Duvivier silents). Lobster in turn often work with Arte who, as already mentioned, favour yellow, so perhaps Lobster were following Arte's requirement.

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zedz
Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:24 pm

Re: Flicker Alley

#64 Post by zedz » Thu Mar 21, 2013 3:16 pm

It might be useful to flip the argument around and ask if anybody has ever complained about legible white subtitles.

RodneySauer
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Re: Flicker Alley

#65 Post by RodneySauer » Sat Mar 30, 2013 8:07 am

I've watched films where white subtitles were almost invisible against a white background. It's rare on silents, of course, since the background is usually black; but the version of Faust shown at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival (from 35mm) did have some illegible subtitles because they were printed across original German Fraktur letters that filled most of the screen. One small case where yellow would have been an improvement--neither white nor black would have been easily read.

Back to Flicker Alley, they've got the French Masterworks: Albatros Films collection on pre-order at an attractive price.

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captveg
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Re: Flicker Alley

#66 Post by captveg » Mon Apr 01, 2013 5:49 pm

When I was in college one of my film classes screened a 16mm print of Persona that had white subtitles which were essentially half there for a majority of the film. Suffice it to say many students had difficulty with the class that week....

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swo17
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Re: Flicker Alley

#67 Post by swo17 » Mon Apr 01, 2013 5:51 pm

No one is arguing in favor of white subtitles that don't have black borders.

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zedz
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Re: Flicker Alley

#68 Post by zedz » Tue Apr 02, 2013 3:24 pm

Also, in the celluloid screening situations mentioned, coloured subtitles were never an option. That would entail extensive optical work and the prints would then need to be printed on colour stock, which is not an option economically and would have been a disaster aesthetically, since colour stock fades in colour.

Perkins Cobb
Joined: Tue Apr 29, 2008 12:49 pm

Re: Flicker Alley

#69 Post by Perkins Cobb » Tue Apr 02, 2013 4:53 pm

Subsequent to our last white-vs-yellow subtitles argument, in which I was basically neutral but puzzled over the vehemence of the anti-yellow contingent, I watched a black-and-white Scope film (Taxi For Tobruk) with white subtitles. It seemed to me that yellow, by standing out more against the mostly white & grey image (the film is set in the desert), could've taken a fraction of a second less time to read than the white did, thus giving me a smidgen more time to look at the image rather than read the words. So there's that argument ... although it's certainly not enough to make me a zealot for yellow. And on the other hand, had the film been set entirely at night instead, the white would've been just as good and yellow might have seemed much more gaudy.

smergo
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Re: Subtitles: Yellow vs White?

#70 Post by smergo » Wed Apr 03, 2013 2:02 pm

Why are no DVD companies using the advantages of the format and put two types of subtitles on their releases? Why not include white AND yellow subtitles (and green ones, just for good measure)?
I also think it would be neat to choose between two different font sizes (a bigger one for smaller screens and vice versa).

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swo17
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Re: Subtitles: Yellow vs White?

#71 Post by swo17 » Wed Apr 03, 2013 2:55 pm

Your first suggestion is silly, but the second one is a great idea.

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Tommaso
Joined: Fri May 19, 2006 10:09 am

Re: Subtitles: Yellow vs White?

#72 Post by Tommaso » Wed Apr 03, 2013 3:47 pm

If I remember correctly, the first suggestion was actually realised on the second 'supa-dupa special edition' of the R1 "La dolce vita", which I don't have ( I have the first one with only yellow subs, and I always have to turn my TV to 'pure' black and white manually to get rid of the coloured subs). So I think it's a good idea indeed. And the second suggestion is even better. Would love to have it on many MoC discs which almost always have too large subs for my taste.

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TMDaines
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Re: Subtitles: Yellow vs White?

#73 Post by TMDaines » Wed Apr 03, 2013 5:55 pm

Both are good ideas and it does beg the question. A similar one is why companies don't offer both HoH subs and vanilla ones at times. It takes literally seconds to strip all of the sound effects annotations out of HoH subs.

Speaking of subtitles, I think I'm actually becoming in favour of subtitles being mandatory on all releases. I used to be against it on principle, but if France can do it then why can't other countries? It's so annoying to see the lack of German subs on DVDs of films from their own country. The knock-on effect is that fansubs are less likely to get made too.

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Tommaso
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Re: Subtitles: Yellow vs White?

#74 Post by Tommaso » Wed Apr 03, 2013 6:12 pm

I think we'd need some EU legislation to realise that, but I'm all for mandatory subs of some kind, ideally indeed with both HOH and 'normal' versions. It would only be in the interest of the labels themselves as it would allow them to sell more copies. Of course, there's the licensing problem which only a label like Filmmuseum probably doesn't have (speaking of their silents only). But even subs in the original language might be helpful. For instance, I'm somewhat able to read French even if I don't understand it acoustically. But the HOH subs on the Gaumont à la demande releases which always tell me "music continuing" or "gunshot" - and switching from left to right according to which character is speaking - are a complete no-go, which then makes me rely on custom-subbed versions and, alas, loses them a customer.

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knives
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Re: Subtitles: Yellow vs White?

#75 Post by knives » Wed Apr 03, 2013 11:48 pm

smergo wrote:Why are no DVD companies using the advantages of the format and put two types of subtitles on their releases? Why not include white AND yellow subtitles (and green ones, just for good measure)?
I also think it would be neat to choose between two different font sizes (a bigger one for smaller screens and vice versa).
Animeigo in the US actually do do your first suggestion with the option between colour subtitles that switch colour for each speaker and white subtitles that go into a light gray for a second speaker.

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