From: Scott Martindale <[log in to unmask]>

Subject: Re: #10469.1 (!) Close Captions (sic.) for films

Date: January 15, 2016 at 9:59:26 AM CST

To: LLTI <[log in to unmask]>

There are a number of issues here. 

First, the difference between closed captioning and subtitles is largely irrelevant today. With a proper captioning stream, you can convert this to an srt/vtt file and them apply the appropriate styling to it (to use the classic subtitle style or to have the closed box that defines closed captioning. If you're using Macs in a labs, you can make this adjustment in your accessibility preferences (screenshot attached). If you're doing a streaming option, you can also style the VTT stream using HTML5 specifications: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Apps/Build/Audio_and_video_delivery/Adding_captions_and_subtitles_to_HTML5_video#Styling_the_displayed_subtitles

Second, Michael had a typo, the site is: http://www.opensubtitles.org/ (with an "s").  But thanks to him for sharing the great comments and suggestions. 

Third, when using sites like this, you should always view the entire video to make sure that the subtitles stay in sync with the video. You can use Subtitle Edit 3.4.10 (http://www.nikse.dk/subtitleedit/)  to resync the subtitle tracks. This is the best piece of software. You can specify keystone points at the beginning and end of the video and then it will resync all of the subtitles to account for drift in compression / codec timing differences. 

Finally, sometimes subtitles never existed. In these cases it will fall on institutions such as ourselves to create the subtitles using whatever resources we have. To this end, I again recommend Subtitle Edit as software in a league of its own in terms of ease of use. If you have a budget for employing student workers, you might be able to have them help with some of this work. 

Best of luck with your captioning pursuits! 

-Scott

LRC Director 

University of Vermont

Southwick Bldg. Room 200B

Burlington, VT   05405

(802) 656-7856

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