Spot Software

Frequently Asked Questions

Upgrading from Spot 4

Do I need a new dongle if I upgrade from Spot 4 to Spot 5?

No, you don't. Your old dongle can be updated to work with Spot 5 via email.

How does the dongle update process work?

After receiving your order confirmation email, follow these steps:

Download the file ddchange.exe from http://www.spotsoftware.nl/downloads/spot5/ddchange.exe.

Run ddchange (make sure your Spot 4 dongle is connected to your computer before doing so).

Copy the information shown in the ddchange window (right-click the list and select "Copy All Information") and send it to upgrade@spotsoftware.nl. Do not click any buttons yet.

An email will be sent to you containing an update code. This code should be entered in the "Enter update code here" field.

Click "Make changes to dongle" and your dongle will now work with Spot 4 and Spot 5.

I get error 118 when running DDChange.

You have clicked the "Make changes to dongle" button without entering your update code in the "Enter update code here".

Is my product key the same as my dongle update code?

No, they are two separate things.

Your product key is used to activate your copy of Spot. You are only asked for it when you run Spot for the first time.

The dongle update code is required to update your Spot 4 dongle so it will work with Spot 5. You will receive this code after completing step 3 of the dongle update process (see above).

General

I get a connection error when trying to run the trial version.

The trial version of Spot requires an active Internet connection, so make one exists before launching the program.

The program appears to stop responding after I enter my product key

It may take up to 60 seconds for Spot to verify your product key. If you receive a "Connection timed out" message or the program appears to freeze, there may be a remote connection problem. Cancel the product key request and restart Spot.

The spell checker isn’t working

Spot uses Microsoft Word to spell check subtitles so if a version of Word is not installed on your computer, you cannot use the spell checker or the thesaurus.

If you do have Word installed and the spell checker is still not working, make sure you have the correct language selected in Spot’s language bar above the video window.

I can’t type in capitals

Select Tools, Options, Checks, Auto Check and turn off the "Correct two initial capitals" option.

I can’t raise subtitles using Ctrl+Alt+Up/Down

If nothing happens when you press Ctrl+Alt+Up/Down, then another program on your computer, usually the software installed by your graphics card, has most likely hijacked the key combination. You need to find out which program is the culprit and then change or disable the key sequence.

Spot adds a space between letters in abbreviations such as U. S. A.

Select Tools, Options, Checks, Auto Check and turn off the "Insert space after punctuation" option.

How do I set a fixed number of characters per line?

Select "Set Characters Per Line Width" from the Subtitle menu. Setting a figure of 36, for example, will ensure that only a maximum of 36 characters are allowed per line. Note that as the only way to set the maximum number of characters per line is by using a fixed width font (i.e. a font in which each letter shares the same width), Spot will change the current screen font to Courier New. This will not affect the target broadcast font.

There is a more elegant approach that lets you keep Arial 16 as the edit font. Change the edit line width to a figure that sets the CPL value on the status bar to approximately 36 (e.g. 5000). Because Arial is a proportional font, this does not guarantee that you won’t be able to type more than 36 characters in a line but it will prevent it from happening most of the time. As you work, keep an eye on the two line length indicators above the current subtitle: if they turn red, one of the lines in the subtitle is too long. When you’ve finished working on your file, a "Too many characters in line check" (or switching to Report view will pick up any warnings you may have missed.

How do I tell Spot where to store my backups?

Spot creates the backup folder for you. You manage all the backups from the Options, Auto Recover window.

I can’t find the recut or master recut windows

The recut and master recut windows have been combined into a single Offset window. You can access it from the Cues menu or by pressing Ctrl+J.

Arabic text is displayed left to right when exporting bitmaps with a kerning value greater than 0

This is a known Windows GDI bug. Set kerning to 0.

Video and audio

I selected the wrong frame rate when I opened a video file

Click the small black arrow on the right of the "Open media file" button on the video toolbar, select "Delete video format flag" and then reopen the video.

A video file won’t open/plays erratically/is out of sync with the audio

Although it’s possible that the video file you are trying to open is corrupt, a more likely explanation is that your system does not have the correct video decoders installed and therefore cannot render the video correctly. The default decoders installed by Windows will not let you play back MOV or MPEG-2 files, for example, and may cause problems when attempting to play other video formats, such as WMV or MP4. To work around this problem, installed a good quality decoder such as ffdshow and configure it to decode the most common video formats. There are several diagnostic tools available on the Internet, such as GraphEditPlus, which will help you identify the decoder which is causing the problem.

Subtitles in the video preview window are boxed

If you are running Spot on Windows Vista or Windows 7 and have not selected the "Use VMR9 to render subtitles" option in the Video, Preferences window, navigate to the Spot install folder, right-click the file spot.exe, select Properties, then turn on the option "Turn off desktop composition" on the Compatibility tab.

How can I increase the size of the video window?

The video window is automatically resized whenever you change the size of Spot’s main window. If you maximise Spot, you will maximise the video window.

Encoding

The encoder doesn't work
If you are encountering problems when encoding, try one of the suggestions below.

If you have the VobSub DirectShow filter installed on your computer and it is set to autoload, this might be preventing the source video from connecting to the encoder. Turn off autoloading in VobSub.

One of Spot's encoder library files (PictureMixerPXT.DLL and VideoConverterPXT.DLL) may be missing or unregistered. To register a DLL file, open it with regsvr32.exe in the Windows\System32 folder.

Select the option "Show filters" in the Advanced Encoder Settings window. When you start an encoding session, this will pop up a list displaying the various codecs and filters that are used to encode the video. Check that the list contains the two files mentioned above and does not reference VobSub.

Select (or deselect if selected) the option "Force RGB32 colour space" in the Video, Preferences window.

I get error 62 when trying to encode
The encoder is in an unknown state. This may occur immediately after aborting and then restarting an encoding session. Click OK to dismiss the error message and click Encode to begin encoding.
What is upsampling?
Upsampling is a technique used during encoding to increase the size of the source video to match the target resolution with no obvious loss in video or, more importantly, subtitle quality.
To try to explain this better, imagine you are encoding from a 320x240 MPEG-1 video and want to output the result in PAL 720x576 format. Because the subtitle font size is determined by the source video size, you will have to use a small font in order to stay within the safe area. When the encoder resizes the source video to 720x576, your small subtitles (which will not look particularly pleasant to begin with) will be stretched by the same amount. The two images below show the video before and after encoding.

With upsampling enabled, the source video is rescaled to the target size before the subtitles are overlaid on the video. This means that the size of your subtitle font is determined by the size of the target video and, as a result, no subtitle resizing occurs.

My encoded video doesn't contain subtitles

There are two reasons why subtitles may not appear in your encoded video.

When you created the subtitle stream, the baseline for the subtitles was set to a value greater than the height of the source video. For example, if you are encoding a 320x240 source video and outputting at 720x576, your subtitle positioning must be based on the source video size and not the target video size. Note that the reverse if true if you have upsampling enabled.

Encoding from 320x240 to 720x576 without upsampling: baseline must be less than 240.
Encoding from 320x240 to 720x576 with upsampling: baseline must be less than 576.

Your subtitles have been timed against the timecode in the source video. If the in cue for the first subtitle in your file is 10:00:02:00, the subtitle may be in sync with the source video when rehearsing in Spot but will not be encoded in the target video as it is only marked for display after ten hours and two minutes. To stop this happening, either a) select "Auto-offset subtitles" in the Advanced Encoder Settings window before encoding (you must have the source video loaded in Spot's main window for this to work); b) time your files starting at 00:00:00:00; or c) offset the timing of your subtitles.