| Type | Description | Contents | Abbreviation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Subtitles | Subtitles are any spoken dialogue regardless of the language. They are used by people who do not understand the films native language (eg Japanese person watching an English film). | Dialogue | SUBS |
| Forced Narrative | A subset of subtitles for lines of dialogue that are either in a foreign language or are spoken by a character or subject who mumbles, or the sound recording is very poor. |
These are subtitles that are required in order for the audience to understand the narrative. For example, in an English language film, one character might say a handful of lines in Farsi. | Dialogue | FN | | Captions | Text displayed at the bottom of a cinema or television screen that transcribe the dialogue and narrative.
**Captions are used by people who are deaf or hard-of-hearing as the captions give them both the dialogue and describe the music or specific sound effect cues that are important to the narrative. | Dialogue + sound and music cues | CAPS |
All types of timed-text (Subs, FSubs and Caps) can be either open or closed.
| Type | Description | Prefix |
|---|---|---|
| Open | Visible to all people watching the content. For example in a cinema or on television, OPEN subtitles would be shown ON the screen. | O |
| Closed | Visible only to people within a closed system / Closed to the general audience. For example, in a cinema, CLOSED subtitles are visible only on special devices that audience members can get from the box-office. | C |
Closed Caption device that can be affixed in the cup-holder in a cinema
Forced Narrative subtitles means any subtitles that are required for an audience to see, so that they can understand the narrative. In this film, you need Forced Narrative subtitles in English, for all the spoken Slovene lines.
When naming or describing timed text, you can combine the abbreviations in the format of [Open/Closed][Timed-Text-Type] for example:
Open vs Closed does not imply that the text is burnt-in or not. If you wish to actually burn text into the pictures, then you can request that any of the timed-text types (Subs, FSubs or Caps) be burnt-in.