subtitle in flame premium

[Anonymous]

Hello everybody

i have a question adding subtitles to a final sequence in flame.

the company that make subtitles, send me usually a xml wth the subtittles, they make this xml in final cut and also they change the font size the position and some other properties.

when i imported the xml i have the text but none of the properties load in the xml (text,font,size), so i have to do all this manually.

what is the usual workflow for adding this xml 

thanks

Diego

[Grant.Kay]

If the identical font can be seen by flame, it should load with the font and sizes.

If it does not, you can edit the XML and replace all values relating to the font and than import into Flame.

This will save you loads of time instead of going into each segment one at a time to make a styling change.

Hope this helps.

Regards
Grant

[Anonymous]

We create a style in Flame (used to be on Smoke) and save it to a location OUTSIDE the project.

Then we use Notepad ++ to REPLACE the following in the XML

<setup></setup>

to include the font location we created

<setup>/usr/discreet/subtitles/Arial_50.ttg</setup>

This is what Grant was talking about. It works great on all Western languages.

Paul

[Beau_James]

If you need to throw this to burn and you are getting issues with missing fonts or the font gets substituted by the deafult.  Instead of copying your entire font library to the nodes, you can just symlink the directory holding the fonts on the flame to the burn node or visa versa through an nfs mount or going directly through /hosts/.  Basically point the burn directory /usr/discreet/font/ -> the /usr/discreet/font/ on the flame.

[Anonymous]

Hi!

We have the same problem here, usually I have to scale and change the font manually. Is there a way to load the XML completly without this problem?

Have a nice day!

[Grant.Kay]

The issue you have is that the values created by FCP are represented differently in Flame and Smoke.

We read the co-ordinates differently to FCP and visa versa.

This will probably cause the issues you are seeing.

As mentioned in the previous threads, just open the XML and perform a search and replace on all those values and you can fix the text issues in a matter of minutes.

Hope this helps.

Regards
Grant

[Anonymous]

Hey Jose,

if you look at my previous post, you can see how to change the font in the XML (I think I gave step by step instructions clearly), but let me know if you need it explained a bit more.

You can also do the Vertical & Horizontal offset in the XML too, but it takes some playing around to get it right.

Grant, what is different in the XML import between Smoke & Flame? I noticed that the V/H setup does not work from my Smoke settings. Anything in particular I should look for?

Paul

[Anonymous]

Yeah!

I read it, just need a little bit of explanation in the scale an positiong values in the XML.

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Well, you set up ALL that in the Flame (Smoke) first. You just go in and type in some random text and set the size, the border, color and save that as a setup/template. But save it somewhere OUTSIDE your project. Note where that location is and when you go into the text tool (like Notepad ++) you do a find and replace for the setup like so:

<setup></setup>

to include the font location we created

<setup>/usr/discreet/subtitles/Arial_50.ttg</setup>

See how we placed our designed font outside the project path? That way you can use it for ALL projects. In the case I have here, we created an Arial font at 50 points, all the border and color is saved too.

Let's see what Grant says about the offset (which is also in the XML that you can replace).  You may want to look up in the manual about saving font styles.

Does that help a bit more?

[Grant.Kay]

Hi,

The XML importer should be the same in concurrent versions of Smoke and Flame.

Current Flame is 2015 EXT 1 and Smoke is 2015 SP1 … So I suspect there are some improvements in the extension but it should not impact on this workflow. So I am assuming the behaviour will be the same.

The positioning of the text in the XML is based on the origin parameter. This is displayed in a ratio rather than an actual pixel value. So a lower third alignment is represented as 0.33333. When I import this into Smoke/Flame, it is almost identical but I adjusted the origin to 0.35 and it lined up correctly.

As mentioned earlier, the font sizes are interpreted differently. I found that ARIAL 18 in FCP is matched to ARIAL 50 in Smoke. I don't know why but it matched up.

Also, if you use AUTO-KERN/LEADING in FCP, they will not come across into Smoke/Flame because it is just an auto switch in the XML and not an actual value. So I set my leading value to 15 and that matched the auto-leading in FCP. Bear in mind that each text set up may be different but keep an eye on this.

In terms of colour, I found that my text always came in black in Flame or Smoke. When I looked at the colour values, there was actually something there. However FCP 7 has always worked on an 8-bit colour platform.. So any colours are represented between 0 and 256. But Smoke/Flame defaults to 16-bit colour so the mapped value from the XML gives you the wrong colour in Smoke/Flame. To fix this, I multiplied the 8-bit colour value by 16. So 256x16=4096. This new value in the XML gave me the correct colour but in a 16 bit colour space as opposed to FCP 8-bit.

To discuss the offset in the actual text setup file, you need to look for the Channel Translation. This will show you the pixel value matching what was entered in the text editor. However as I said, it has no correlation to the FCP XML because one uses pixels and the other uses a screen ratio.

I know I am probably rambling now but I hope this helps.

Regards
Grant

[Anonymous]

Thanks, Paul and Grant, I'll check it and then comment my results Later 

[Anonymous]

Wow Grant. Thanks for the info. 

I just want to make sure that we're talking about the same thing. Reading your info, it looks like you are talking about a project created in FCP that includes text. Am I mistaken?

What we're talking about is when a company creating subtitles in another program that can save in an FCP XML. 

OR are we discussing the same thing?

Cheers!
Paul

[Grant.Kay]

Hi Paul

That is correct.

The FCP project contains a load of subtitles for the edit.

The exported XML can import into Flame/Smoke but it will require the tweaking I mentioned.

If another company makes subs as an XML that does NOT come from final cut pro, there is a chance that Flame/Smoke will not be able to read the file.

This is because XMLs are so flexible and so many vendors have put their own "spin" on the export.

My suggestion would be to import the XML into FCP and re-export the XML again to ensure the format meets the exact Apple XML requirements and that should work in Smoke and Flame.

Hope this helps.

Regards
Grant

[Anonymous]

Thanks Grant, but we've been doing subtitles for a few years now on Smoke/Flame. 

I was just trying to help out some people here that may not be using, or have access to FCP.

Cheers!

Paul

[Grant.Kay]

No probs… thanks for helping out 🙂

[GennadiySnopkov]

Hi, Grant!

If somebody still interested and do subtitles a lot, maybe good idea to look at TitleExchangePro 

http://www.spherico.com/filmtools/TitleExchange/

They have tool to convert to different formats include STL, FCP XML, AUTODESK SMOKE XML

[Grant.Kay]

Thanks for the tip.

Regards
Grant