<aside> ✋🏼 This is a guide for timed-text vendors working for Post Lab IO.

Please read the Explantion of Subs, Caps and Forced Narrative to understand our use of terminology before reading the rest of this guide.

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• If the film contains Forced Narratives subtitles then Post Lab IO will supply you all the FN subtitles as a SRTs (usually in Reels).
• We will need all the rest of the subtitles and captions added to the supplied forced narrative.
• We will need these converted into the below formats across the three categories as outlined below.
• For both format types, we require position data to be encoded into the supplied formats so that the timed-text does not intersect with any on-screen text.

Deliverables

In cinema, this will be displayed ON-SCREEN / OPEN. | | Fully captioned (32CPL) | ❌  | ✅  [Reels] | Fully captioned should mean ALL forced narrative/foreign language AND all hard-of-hearing subtitles and sound descriptions.

MAX CHARACTERS PER LINE: 30 MAX LINES PER EVENT: 3 | This is used for the DCP Closed Caption track which has a 30 Characters Per Line across three lines limit. This version will be displayed on devices like the Captiview. | | Captioned MINUS Forced Narrative | ✅  [Continuous] | ❌ | *It has ONLY the sound descriptions. ie just the content in brackets eg (Mellow music plays on the radio) | This is used for certain OTT platforms which do not support the forced display of Forced Narrative subtitles. These OTT platforms will host video which has burnt-in forced narrative, so if someone wants captions, they will be displayed over the top of the burnt in subtitles. Hence, we only need the captioned component or else they will overlap. | | Forced narrative ONLY | ❌ | ✅  [Reels] | It has JUST the forced narrative / foreign langnuage subtitles. | This is used in the DCP to display the Forced Narrative, and its used on OTT platforms which support the forced display of Forced Narrative aubtitles. |

See more

Timed-text in DCPs Best Practices (Subtitles/Captions)