Running and Configuring EZTitles > Configuring Project Settings > Project Settings > Effects (Subtitle Presentation)

The following notes are applied for classic DVD authoring with 4 colors. BluRay and HD-DVD systems may have more colors and there is no restriction about the effects.

DVD authoring systems accept subtitles as rendered images prepared in Windows bitmap files (with a .BMP extension), TIFF files (with a .tif extension) or PNG files.

These images, however, must obey some rules and one of the most important is that they cannot have more than 3 colors (actually 4 colors are allowed but one of them is reserved to the transparent background so the possible number of colors is reduced by one).

Hence when specifying DVD subtitles presentation style you will face some restrictions. For example you cannot have box, outline/shadow and anti-aliasing all together.

EZTitles will react to your choices, disabling one of these options when you select another (for example when you apply a box effect and you have also selected outline/shadow, anti-aliasing will be automatically disabled).

Also every DVD authoring system has its own default color palette from which you can choose the colors for the different effect components. The color lists are updated automatically when you change the DVD authoring system – Project Type and Mode. The color palette used can be modified when exporting images for that system. For more details, please check the dedicated Color Palette section in the Predefined Authoring Systems topic.

If you have check marked the Properties Preview the subtitles may look a little squared at first sight. That is so because it isn't possible to perform a full anti-aliasing (like those in games and multi-media applications) by using a single color. But the quality produced is good enough for the TV viewers, because a regular TV has much lower resolution than a computer display.

When EZTitles creates images for any of the 4 Color DVD authoring systems it correctly takes into account the respective pixel aspect ratio.

Sometimes, depending on the selected font and its size, the letters may look somehow rough and distorted. In this case you may find it useful to compensate the pixel aspect ratio applied by horizontally scaling the font to 106%-107% for PAL or 90%-91% for NTSC.