DCP Subtitles — A Complete Guide

Burned-In vs Soft Subtitles

Burned-in subtitles are part of the picture. The text is baked into the image before it reaches us. They cannot be turned off, hidden, or modified by the cinema. They will appear on screen at every screening, in every venue, without exception. If your subtitles should always be displayed, burned-in gives you complete control: you choose the font, size, colour and position. Some festivals specifically require burned-in subtitles to eliminate any risk of them being omitted. The trade-off: they are permanent. A subtitle-free version requires a separate picture file.

Soft subtitles — also called Open Captions — are a separate track within the DCP. The cinema can turn them on or off. One picture and audio track can carry multiple language subtitle tracks. To include soft subtitles, supply either an SRT file (we convert it to standard bottom-centre white Helvetica with black outline) or a cinema XML file (Texas CineCanvas for 24fps, SMPTE Cinema XML for 25fps or 30fps) with matching font file, for precise control over positioning and appearance.

OV vs VF — Who Controls Whether Subtitles Show?

If the subtitle track is included in the OV (Original Version — the main DCP), it will be on by default on most cinema servers. The projectionist would have to actively switch it off. If you want the option of showing without subtitles, this creates a risk: the cinema has to remember to turn them off.

A VF (Version File — a supplemental DCP) contains only the subtitle track, referencing the OV for picture and audio. To show the film with subtitles, the cinema playlists the VF. Without it, the film plays clean. This gives you clean control — simply do not supply the VF to venues where you do not want subtitles shown. Adding a subtitle track to the OV at time of making the DCP costs £100 ex VAT. A VF as a separate package costs £150 ex VAT.

Font Size

42 point is the most common industry size. We think it is too large for most films and use 39 point as our default — in the smaller end of common practice while remaining readable from the back of most auditoria. The minimum we recommend is 37. Below that, readability in longer venues becomes a concern. Font size is easy to adjust — it requires a new version of the subtitle file but not a new DCP.

Why You Cannot Fully Control How Subtitles Look in Every Cinema

Soft subtitles contain instructions for how to display the text. But it is down to each cinema server manufacturer how they render those instructions, and each cinema can calibrate their system for their specific screen size. We can show you what our authoring software generates as a preview — but it may not look identical on every server in every venue. If you need absolute control over how your subtitles look: burn them into the picture.

Our default subtitle positioning keeps text within a 10% margin from the edge of the screen — the SMPTE standard, which exists because lenses, keystone correction and screen masking vary between venues. For scope films delivered as letterboxed files: subtitles must be within the safe area of the active picture, not the black bars. Those bars will be cropped when we make the scope DCP.