how to fade subtitles

The new subtitle tool is great and super easy...
but is there any way to fade in or out?
or maybe convert a subtitle line to a regular text object?

The new subtitle tool is great and super easy...
but is there any way to fade in or out?

Hey George.

just out of professional curiosity, why would you want to fade in/out subtitles?

Subtitles are a tool with a purpose that works a certain way - cuts in sync with speech (with a minuscule calculated delay)
Having them fade would make them hard to follow and by that defy the tool's purpose

in nearly 15 years of Color Correction & On-Line work in the broadcast industry. I never seen subtitles that fade in/out.

or maybe convert a subtitle line to a regular text object?

I need to look into that.
Why not just use a text object in the first place? or Copy/Paste into one?

in nearly 15 years of Color Correction & On-Line work in the broadcast industry. I never seen subtitles that fade in/out.

Take a look starting around 0.33 here:

(That's not my video, it's one that was just posted to the "Look what I shot!" thread in the Cinematography section of this forum).

Take a look starting around 0.33 here:

Yup... that's the difference between subtitles (everything up to that point) to a title/graphic element/text animation, or what ever you want to call it. It looks great but at that point it isn't subtitles.

The fact that some extreme cases use subtitles artistically, as a story telling device, way to pace a message to the viewer/reader, or leave a stronger impact... Immediately turns them into regular titles in my opinion, and definitely don't prove that fading/animating subs is a common practice.

Immediately turns them into regular titles

There is no provision in the .srt file structure that allows a "fade" in the XML styling tags. That would be one problem. There is no keyframe capability to control dynamic transparency. That would be another problem.

SRT files are themselves a kind of XML text file -- you can open them with any text editor, and very easy to corrupt after that... like using a space or carriage return will interrupt the data stream and everything after that will not be in the right interpretation cell. So your Time Code "In" point might show up as text... and the playback software *might* tell you that the text it is seeing isn't a valid timecode -- if it has any kind of internal error dialogue at all. Conversion back and forth between regular text generators and srt cells is something that a dedicated meta-text application like MacCaption and CaptionMaker do all the time -- its what they do... unfortunately not for free.

Subtitle (often confused with closed captions) will likely experience a period of abuse now since several NLEs are introducing "Digital" tracks accessing the VANC packet.

Both from a practical and legal standpoint, this is a feature that will give and take away at the same time, as users come to grips with what the tool is really meant to supply as a service. Not meant to be *lower-thirds*; that is what the text tool is for. I think the subtitle tool in Resolve will evolve so that it is also useful for captions, but there is a level of subtlety here that most will fail to grasp upfront.

Someone asked me if what "colorists" do is convert black&white movies to color. Several producers have asked me to "font" some scenes ("add text")... so, really, proven once again that a little bit of knowledge is a ridiculously dangerous thing to have.

jPo, CSI

There is no provision in the .srt file structure that allows a "fade" in the XML styling tags. That would be one problem. There is no keyframe capability to control dynamic transparency. That would be another problem.

That too of course... I was answering from a practical aspect, signaling the difference between the tool - Subtitles and a use of a regular title that looks like a subtitle for artistic purposes

For things like music videos, it can help to fade subtitles. The cutting in and out can conflict with video edits. I realize I can use a text tool for that. There is just no way to copy and paste a subtitle into a text tool. I would like to see something where I can drag a subtitle clip on a video track and it turns into a title, or copy and paste.
As it is now I am looking at a complete redo of the subtitles using a text tool instead just so I can fade them.

Hector and Joe above are absolutely right: no proviso to dissolve, wipe, or fade subtitles in subtitle metadata.

What you can do is embed actual titles as a layer and do it as a graphic effect. But that's baked-in forever.

George, I just understood what you meant when you wrote about video clips.
Although I wouldn't use subtitles myself because I have a huge bank of available titles, why wouldn't you find a way to export you subtitles only and re-import them as a clip to tweak them the way you need ?
If I understood well, it's mainly a matter of turning subtitles into a clip, isn't it ?

Yes Sam, the most obvious way is to use the title tool instead of subtitles.

Subtitles are in its first implementation, and thank you BM for that.
Just some feature requests:
- allow FX to be applied to subtitles
- or be able to drag a subtitle(s) to a video track and turn it into a title, copying the track style in the process

We add a 2 frame fade in and fade out to all of our subtitles. The reason we still finish our films in Avid is partly because in Media Composer a subtitle track is simply another video track with each subtitle treated like it's any other object in the timeline therefore actionable vis-a-vis fades and dissolves. It's also possible to add those fades instantly to all subs at once.

The big problem we run into is that Avid only supports .stl and Resolve only .srt

Feature request idea:

Drag subtitles down on a video track they get converted to a title FX.
Drag a title up to a subtitle track and it gets converted to subtitle.

in nearly 15 years of Color Correction & On-Line work in the broadcast industry. I never seen subtitles that fade in/out.

Hi Hector,

Fading subtitles is not at all uncommon. But we are talking milliseconds here. Seldom more than a 2 frame fade. You don't really see it, but you can feel it and it can give a more smooth feeling. I'm a personally not a fan of fading subs and I always turn it off.

I'm not sure Davinci can do this since Resolve works with .srt files which contain only a little info like TC and italic. But software that uses .xml files like the DVS Clipster or any digital cinema server, have a lot more info to work with and hence is much more powerful.

I've included a small piece of standard .xml subtitle that includes the fade up and down info.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<DCSubtitle Version="1.0">
<SubtitleID>9930e9a7-772a-4576-b18f-7acb35a7b0f1</SubtitleID>
<MovieTitle>title</MovieTitle>
<ReelNumber>1</ReelNumber>
<Language>en</Language>
<LoadFont URI="arial.ttf" Id="Font1" /> <Font Id="Font1" Color="FFFFFFFF" Effect="border" EffectColor="FF000000" Italic="no" Underlined="no" Script="normal" Size="42">
<Subtitle SpotNumber="1" FadeUpTime="5" FadeDownTime="5" TimeIn="00:02:24:156" TimeOut="00:02:27:114">
<Text VPosition="8" VAlign="bottom" HAlign="center" Direction="horizontal">That's good, Charlotte.</Text>
</Subtitle>
<Subtitle SpotNumber="2" FadeUpTime="5" FadeDownTime="5" TimeIn="00:02:31:239" TimeOut="00:02:38:020">
<Text VPosition="14" VAlign="bottom" HAlign="center" Direction="horizontal">Thank you.</Text>
<Text VPosition="8" VAlign="bottom" HAlign="center" Direction="horizontal">Out on the floor, and spread out.</Text>
</Subtitle>

I agree it would at times be handy to be able to convert subtitles into normal "Text Generator text". But mean while you can always burn out just the subtitles on its own. import it. Set the layer to ad. Then cut away the black gaps with no text on. Then you can select them all and add transitions with the normal shortcut.

So I have recently started using Resolve, coming from Premiere Pro, and I edit videos for lectures and sermons where body of text is show on a lower third to allow the viewer to read along, so it varies from 3-4 lines of text at a time, I stumbled on this because even with the new update Davinci Resolve 18.6 subtitles are great but lacking. Tried adding a text, but only shows 1 line, where subtitles allows me to have the amount of lines i need, but cant fade the in/out to fade with the graphics under it, I understand captions / subtitles are crucial as a accessibility tool but would be a cool added function even if its minor. Or even the ability to convert to text while keeping its current state. PPro just gives you more control, especially where the line ends by pushing words to the next senence, hope that gets updated.

in nearly 15 years of Color Correction & On-Line work in the broadcast industry. I never seen subtitles that fade in/out.

Hi Hector,

Fading subtitles is not at all uncommon. But we are talking milliseconds here. Seldom more than a 2 frame fade. You don't really see it, but you can feel it and it can give a more smooth feeling. I'm a personally not a fan of fading subs and I always turn it off.

I'm not sure Davinci can do this since Resolve works with .srt files which contain only a little info like TC and italic. But software that uses .xml files like the DVS Clipster or any digital cinema server, have a lot more info to work with and hence is much more powerful.

I've included a small piece of standard .xml subtitle that includes the fade up and down info.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<DCSubtitle Version="1.0">
<SubtitleID>9930e9a7-772a-4576-b18f-7acb35a7b0f1</SubtitleID>
<MovieTitle>title</MovieTitle>
<ReelNumber>1</ReelNumber>
<Language>en</Language>
<LoadFont URI="arial.ttf" Id="Font1" /> <Font Id="Font1" Color="FFFFFFFF" Effect="border" EffectColor="FF000000" Italic="no" Underlined="no" Script="normal" Size="42">
<Subtitle SpotNumber="1" FadeUpTime="5" FadeDownTime="5" TimeIn="00:02:24:156" TimeOut="00:02:27:114">
<Text VPosition="8" VAlign="bottom" HAlign="center" Direction="horizontal">That's good, Charlotte.</Text>
</Subtitle>
<Subtitle SpotNumber="2" FadeUpTime="5" FadeDownTime="5" TimeIn="00:02:31:239" TimeOut="00:02:38:020">
<Text VPosition="14" VAlign="bottom" HAlign="center" Direction="horizontal">Thank you.</Text>
<Text VPosition="8" VAlign="bottom" HAlign="center" Direction="horizontal">Out on the floor, and spread out.</Text>
</Subtitle>

Is the code like an expression after effects lets you insert into a layer but for Davinci Resolve? curious.

Adding my +1 to this FR. I just had a client request that I add fades to each subtitle in a 5 minute video. Because the subtitles are in a Subtitle track, I can't add these fades.

If I could tell Resolve to convert the Subtitle track into Text+ clips, that would be a simple solution to the problem. But there seems to be no way to do this, as far as I can tell.

Again, this is something that you can do in a single click in Adobe Premiere.