Subtitle the Internet

This blog is all about closed captioning and Subtitling Internet video.

More About Me...

As a deaf person I was getting frustrated with the lack of closed captioning and subtitles on Internet video. So I did some research and a lot of trial and error. I cna now watch just about any Internet video with Subtitles such as Movies and TV episodes. Read this blog and you'll be able as well.

Another Tit-Bit...

Read my Watch almost any Internet Video with Subtitles (Movies and TV Episodes) post and you'll learn how to watch almost any streaming TV show or movie with Subtitles.

What are subtitles and Closed Captions?

There are a lot of misconceptions between subtitles and Closed Captioning. Some people think that is the words that show on the screen is in the same language as the video then it's a closed caption. But if it's a different language then they are speaking on the video then it's a subtitle (Example: watch a Japanese movie and the text shows what they saying in English).

While it's true that a video translated to another language is usually a subtitle rather then a closed caption. That really isn't the main difference between the two.

First of all you can usually see the difference between them. Closed captioning is usually white text with a black background and the text is often positioned under the person who is speaking those words such as you see in this image.
On the technical side there is a different format and coding to produce each. But we really don't need to go into all that now. I'll go into more detail on this below.


Subtitles are usually just plain white text (sometimes other colors such as yellow) but they don't have the black background behind the text.

The above image also illustrates one of the other main difference between subtitles and Closed Captioning. Notice that this image contains the word {{Screaming}}. Closed Captioning is mainly intended for the hearing impaired so they will display not only what they say on the video but also the sounds that are heard. Subtitles don't generally include sounds. They mainly only display the spoken word on from the video.

Some subtitles do show sounds though. This is a rather new thing. We didn't see subtitles that show us what sounds are made on videos until recently. If you happen to have a DVD collection check out their Special features on the cover of the DVD. Some will say "Subtitled" and others will say "Subtitled for the hearing impaired". The later one that was made for the hearing impaired will usually contain the sounds to the subtitles.

What do we use for Internet video then? Closed Captioning or Subtitles?
As I explained above there are differences between subtitles and Closed Captioning but they are pretty much the same thing and are used for the same purpose. In other words it's up to the person who creates the subtitles to include the sounds along with the spoken words or not. So for Internet video all we need to learn about are subtitles.

Subtitles are actually a very simple text file. It tells the video player what text to display and when yo display it. Here's an example.

1
00:00:32,000 --> 00:00:35,620
This is Armed Forces radio
reporting from London.


2
00:00:35,670 --> 00:00:37,750
Today, Supreme Allied
headquarters


3
00:00:37,790 --> 00:00:40,710
reported American combat troops
and aircraft

The above is the first 3 lines of the movie Saints and Soldiers. It means that it'll show this text at 32 seconds into the video and the text will display for 3.620 seconds then stop displaying.

1 (This is the first subtitle to appear)
00:00:32,000 --> 00:00:35,620 (This tells is when to start and stop this line displaying)
This is Armed Forces radio (This is what the first line will say).
reporting from London.

Subtitles files end with the suffix .srt or .sub. For example: moviesubtitle.srt or moviesubtitle.sub.

You can download the subtitles to just about any movie or TV show from the Internet. They are completely legal to download by the way so have no fear about that. My favorite sites to download subtitles from are opensubtitles.org subscene.com and for TV shows try TVsubtitles.net.

0 comments:

Post a Comment



 

Subtitle the Internet