I could send the stuff out to the vendor we use for closed captions, but since most of what I produce is fully scripted (corporate type stuff) it just seems wrong to take the script, send it out, pay $ and have the txt file come back... seems I should be able to do it easily myself,

so... today I tracked down freeware DivxLand Media subtitler (http://www.divxland.org/subtitler.php)

operates quite easily, but I'm having issues with overlapping timecode so getting the resulting file into Encore 2.0 isn't working quite right. Pretty sure it's me at this point since I am just trying to get it setup properly.

Anyone use this program or any other? gotta love the ease of use, just load the file, bring in the script, hit play, and click an hold the apply button whiel the audio is running, and then release when done, repeat for each caption. (getting the right number of characters in each line has taken a bit of time, but that's minor)

Does anybody know of any similar programs for a Mac and DVD Studio Pro?

Nothing yet, but I would use the free Subtitle Workshop if I had to.

spherico software makes an app called title exchange that can use xml to convert titles in FCP into a subtitle file for DVD SP. http://www.spherico.com/filmtools/

I was blocked from the media subtitler forum at work yesterday (filtered for gaming) but visited last night, and it appears my issues with importing into encore are a slight "bug" Media subtitler doesn't do "pro" timecode, in other words its not frame based so when imported into Encore it goes to change the timecode to frame based and thus overlaps and winds up deleting a bunch of subs. it was back in 05 that a poster found a work around, exporting the sub file as SAMI, then using Subtitle workshop to convert to Encore. I haven't tried it yet myself, but will later today.

interestingly the moderator said it would have to be fixed in later versions, but this was 05, and I believe they have come out with a newer version since then, but I have the latest version and its not fixed.

I like the workflow in media subtitler, just watch/listen and click. Part of my objective is to get away from re-creating the script just in order to create subtitles. the workaround may do it.

update: created a new subtitle file in Media subtitler, saved as SAMI, opened in Subtitle workshop, saved as Encore (txt) imported into Encore (2.0) looks fine, but cannot save the project. it just hangs. I saved before I imported the subs, worked okay, imported subs, played fine, try to save project and it just hangs, 4 tries now, and a reboot and same result.

a project for tomorrow. :(

well it apparently wasn't hanging, it just took 18 minutes to save the project! I tested with three manually made subtitles on Friday and it took longer than expected to save the project, so I did it today with the full subtitle file, infreakcredible, nearly 20 minutes to save a project that has no menus, one video track, one audio track (video is about 14 minutes long) and one subtitle track. new Dell PC 3.00 Ghz, 2.99Gz dual core proc and 2.0 Gb of ram ( for the life of me I thought I had told IT I wanted 3 Gb of RAM) opening the project seems to take forever as well... workflow is gonna slow down a heck of a lot