I once asked this question and got an answer that made no sense (to me) - i.e. when I plugged in the font size I was given, the text took up the entire screen.

I just played around with the font size until I found one I liked.

yes it would appear google does not hold an answer for this question either. so it must be there is no standard size. i will render a small clip to judge the best font size. thanks frink.

ok since the subs have to go into the picture i had to use an outline to make them contrast against certain scenes. i chose red for this effect but would like an opinion before i proceed to use this outline color for all 200+ subs. and as you can see the clip finally displays in 16:9 thanks to ash for seeing my mistake.

without the outline you could hardly read the sub in this scene.

nm black looked way.. better and the font size i am using is 12 in vegas.

the subs are done man i have put enough work into them. i had used soft shadow and did not like the distortion in vegas. so i went with black outline on yellow subs in size 12. sadly this is as yellow as vegas would allow. anymore and gives error not compatible with ntsc or pal.

ibleedspeed, I know that you were originally very keen to have your subs not overlap the actual image.  So is this not possible at all now, even though it sounds like you're amending your original font size?...or have you just changed your mind?  Just curious.

imperial fighter: sadly after ash solved where i was making a major mistake the subtitles do not fit in the letterbox. only 1 line of text would fit and there are 2 lines in a lot of the subs so it would only fit half in and out or all the way in the picture. the choice is obvious. though believe me if it were possible i would have put them in the letterbox. ash i wont really know if they are too small until  i view this thing on a tv. but if they are it will be easy to fix so i am not worried about that now. my problem is i cant encode the damn thing.lol.

I agree with Ash, your subs look too small.

ibleedspeed said:

sadly after ash solved where i was making a major mistake the subtitles do not fit in the letterbox. only 1 line of text would fit and there are 2 lines in a lot of the subs so it would only fit half in and out or all the way in the picture. the choice is obvious. though believe me if it were possible i would have put them in the letterbox. ash i wont really know if they are too small until  i view this thing on a tv. but if they are it will be easy to fix so i am not worried about that now.

That's too bad.  In that case, I agree that they would look better if made a little bigger for legibility against the moving background image.  And I reckon Ash is also right that they'd look better if raised slightly higher from the edge of the letterbox like the example shot he posted.  Good luck on this thing, as I see you've had one or two matters to solve along the way already.

well 3 votes to change the subs. ok! i will but none of it matters if i cant encode it.: EDIT the encode problem has been solved. today i will be posting screenshots of various subtitle sizes and colors in this post. i would love for all you guys to vote for the best until we can agree on the final sub look. i will number each screenshot and you guys pick the best..

ok i think the previous posted pics of my subs at size 12 are deceptive because the pic frame was from the 3:2 files. you guys suggested i make them bigger. the next available sub size is 14. before i post all the sub samples in a 720x480 pic size i am going to show you this uncropped sample of what size 14 looks like this is after encode and is how it will look on the dvd should i use 14. however i feel this size is overly huge. so you guys be the judge. here a screenshot from vlc of the full 16:9 pic with size 14 subs.

and here is the subs in size 12.

now for the sub variations. you guys have a look and see what you like the best. i will give a description for each variation.

1 yellow with a black outline and black dropshadow.

2 red outline,black dropshadow- i think this is my fav.

3 red outline,no dropshadow.

4 white,black outline,no drop shadow

I like the larger font, and option #4 on the style (I'm not a fan of using color or other unusual font styles).

5 black outline, red dropshadow

6 this one is size 12 black outline no dropshadow