What it checks
Every line of every subtitle is measured on its own. A line longer than the profile's maximum produces one issue, reported with its subtitle number and line number.
How it is measured
CueNorm counts visible characters as grapheme clusters: what a viewer perceives as one character counts as one.
- Spaces and punctuation are counted.
- Line breaks are not counted.
- Accented letters count as one character, whatever their encoding. The Polish
ąis one character, even though EBU-STL stores it on two bytes. - Styling (italic, underline, colour) does not change the count.
Bytes are never counted. Physical teletext constraints (40-cell rows, text field size) are a different concern from this editorial rule.
Parameters
| Parameter | Type | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
max |
positive integer | Maximum visible characters per line |
Example
With max: 36:
Nie wiem, czy to jest dobry pomysł, naprawdę.
This line has 45 characters, so the report shows Line 1: 45 characters (max 36).
The profiles shipped with CueNorm declare this rule as a warning, whatever the output format: players are often more permissive than the destination's style guide, and some broadcasters accept longer lines. A profile requiring strict compliance declares the rule again with severity: error.
How to fix
- Split the line at a natural phrase boundary, within the profile's maximum number of lines.
- Shorten the wording (condense the translation).
- If the text fits on the allowed lines but is badly distributed, a layout-only reflow (
REFLOWtransformation, when the profile allows it) can rebalance the lines without rewriting them.