I just started making my first subtitles and I have a question I would like to ask some experienced people.

It's going to be shown on the big screen, 16:9, I have found the perfect font size, using calibri font, but now I have the biggest of questions.

How much % of the screen (horizontally) should the subtitles take.




Thanks for your help =)

Sanos

Turn on your title safe guides. For some applications they still require you to maintain 4:3 safe titles, but if it's on a single big screen, you would probably be safe with titles inside the 16:9 safe area.

At the top right of the viewer click on the small switch and select 'Show title/action safe zones'. Two yellow boxes should appear on your screen. Now just make sure all your titles stay inside the smaller box and you're good to go.

Actually, now that I look I notice that the 4:3 safe 'tick mark' guides that we only just got in FCP 6 or 7 are missing again. Leaps and bounds, this application. Leaps and bounds.

Jude did explain the way to do.
Some additions here.

The title safe area is 20% off the bounds of the full screen. Depending on delivery this might be considered or not.
You also may have a look at the "how many characters per line restriction" some delivery specs require.

Depending on the amount of subtitles and languages you need, FCPX could be the worst NLE on the world - tho the options you got with text are pretty good.
If you got Motion you can build your "Title Safe" text effect easily.

But as said, for a bigger amount of subtitles FCPX is not the best idea -- not that legacy FCP had been good, but you got more options because it had some more I/O features.
There are applications out there to do easy subtitling (also in collaboration with others for translation). Unfortunately FCPX won't work with any of these (at this time) when it comes to file based work.
So make a good plan for your workflow.

Some workflow tools for FCP [www.spherico.com]
TitleExchange -- juggle titles within FCS, FCPX and many other apps.
[www.spherico.com]

Besides all other comments...

There is no real answer about size.
Common is to use a condensed font.
If it is for projection on a large screen, make them way smaller than if it is for a normal TV.
Rule of thumb, for SD on TV you have to fight the space in amount of characters...
It used to be 42 chars on a line max, but nowadays you can relax that to about 46 to 50
Note that not all chars are equally wide!
(eg, 5 chars on both line)
WWWWW
iiiii

try the following text, it should easily fit in your safe area:

This line should be about the maximum of text.

But again, for the big screen things are different, the titles could be half the size.
(SD won't permit that, as you have not enough resolution to create readable text, but on HD it's doable)

For Anderas:
If FCPx can work with QT's with Alpha, the render engine from Subbits can output that.
After that it is simple, although of course not editable anymore...


hth,

Bouke
www.videotoolshed.com

FCPX can work with alpha.
And it's not a problem to use SubBits to create high quality subtitles. The "won't work" thing I mentioned is that you can't import an XML or EDL into FCPX for timed subtitles.
If there are only a few of them it's no problem, but imagine you got just only 100 (most people I know got way more) and do import the rendered subtitle files.
Then you have to figure out by hand the "place" where each title has to be positioned -- that's ridiculous, imagine you got about 600 with a standard docu and imagine you have 3 or more languages. So one better shouldn't use FCPX - beside the "timing time" the browser will be a nightmare to handle.
I got a customer here who will go to 35 mm laser print. So he has to handle the rolls with subtitles. It's no fun in any NLE. But with FCPX it's kinda "Mission Impossible".

One option is to render all subtitles into a long movie which matches the storyline -- but that's no fun as well.

Andreas

Some workflow tools for FCP [www.spherico.com]
TitleExchange -- juggle titles within FCS, FCPX and many other apps.
[www.spherico.com]