Dutch subtitling styles differ very much from other countries'. We summarize more, making it possible for the viewer to also pay close attention to what's happening on screen, whereas other countries just ram everything in subtitles integrally.
Professional Dutch subtitlers (not fansubbers) generally follow these guidelines:
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Maximum 2 lines
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Maximum line length is not measured in character count, but in the actual width of the text ("
twips"). if there is a character limit, it's generally 42 characters (37 characters for certain TV channels, due to the character limit of Teletext, used to transmit subtitles)
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Minimum duration: 1:10 (= 1 second, 10 frames -- 1,4 seconds for 25 FPS). Sometimes shorter is okay when syncing to shot cuts.
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Maximum duration: 7 seconds in general, but not a hard limit. I.e. don't split perfect subtitles if they're 7,1 seconds.
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CPS: target should be around 11 CPS. The limit is usually 15 à 17 CPS. Of course it's variable due to complexity of the sentence (long words read more easily, difficult wording, etc.). For CPS above 14, it will start to cost the viewer noticeably more effort to keep up with the subtitles ánd follow what's happening on screen, while subtitles should be 'invisible'.
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Gap: 3 frames (120 ms for 25 FPS, 125 ms for 23.976/24 FPS)
- If there's a less than 1 second gap between two subtitles, the first subtitle should be extended until the second one (of course with a 3 frames gap). I.e., the time between two subtitles is either 3 frames ór ≥ 1 second. This leads to consistent 'flashes' of the subtitles. There are exceptions when syncing to shot cuts.
- Use continuation dots (...) for continuing sentences.
- Do not use exclamation marks.
- Try to 'spot' on shot cuts.
See also (Dutch):
http://www.opensubtitles.org/addons/doc ... de_nl.html
https://ondertitelaar.wordpress.com/201 ... /leestijd/
https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2014/03/01/de ... 46-a843623
http://www.pro-test.nl/blog/?p=408
And this is the software that most professional Dutch subtitlers use:
https://spotsoftware.nl/
Way too expensive for fansubbers, of course, but you can learn from it in terms of guidelines, style, technique etc.
There are ways to configure or extend Subtitle Edit to follow the more specific guidelines, such as the line length based on actual text width, detecting shot cuts, maintaining the gap rules, etc. Let me know if you want more details on that.
Hope this helps.