Re: TT and subtitling

John's definitions are slightly different than those used in North America:

>Sorry, in subtitling the start of presentation of a subtitle is referred to
>as its on-air (or in-cue), the time at which the subtitle is removed from
>display is the off-air (or out-cue). 

Here, we use in-time and out-time (or erase time), although the effect is the same.

>On-air and off-air are probably more
>correctly used when talking about Open subtitling (where the subtitle is
>burnt in to the video image prior to transmission) - 

At some point, the working group must adopt a standard definition of "caption" vs
 "subtitle" to prevent international confusion.  What John is calling subtitles is what
 we call captions:  the textual representation of speech and non-speech information
 (such as sound effects) in the same language as the audio.  Captions are for deaf and
 hard-of-hearing people, and can be closed (viewable with a decoder only) or open
 (visible to everyone, no decoder necessary).  

In NA, subtitles are a textual translation of the audio into a different language. 
 Subtitles are for hearing people; as such, they don't always contain the information
 required by deaf or hard-of-hearing viewers, such as sound-effect cues.

Geoff Freed
WGBH/NCAM

Received on Monday, 3 February 2003 09:35:33 UTC