Just seeking feedback from my existing users on this–
In the current version of Project Threepio, subtitles are shifted to the top of the screen not only when there’s onscreen alien subtitles, but also for subtitles adjacent to those alien subtitles. For example, in the Han-Greedo exchange, ALL of the dialogue is shifted up even though technically only Greedo’s lines have to be shifted.
There were a few reasons for this: first, I felt that, particularly for subtitles using the Latin alphabet, it was hard on the user to alternate rapidly between high and low subtitles. Secondly, back in the early days of this project, there was no guarantee that burnt-in subs would have theatrical timing, so I needed to be able to dodge mistimed subs.
That latter part of the problem is largely solved, now that pretty much everything uses film-based burnt-in timings. The earlier part is pretty subjective. I’ve always felt that the Greedo scene worked pretty well, but that the Jabba scenes weren’t so cut-and-dry.
What does everyone else think? Should I shift Han’s lines back down? Should I leave Star Wars alone but consider doing it for Jedi? Are there other subtitles in other parts of the film that obscure some crucial detail and SHOULD be shifted up? The tractor beam text translation was a tough call–both high and low subs would block some text, so I went with low. Similarly, the SDH subs for the chattering probe droid noises – high blocks the tops of the antennae, and low blocks the droid’s head, so I went with high.
I’ve already pretty much decided to shift the pre-crawl titles back to low positions. That was just a legacy from when I shifted subtitles manually and it was just easier to keep track of things that way.
