In praise of subtitles

[skyscraper101]

One big difference I notice between the US and the UK is how live TV does captions, and the way the subtitles are displayed. The US tend to go with roll-up captions with the UK going for pop-on.

Generally I prefer roll up, because its easier to read but you never see it here. Instead you get this blocky teletext style, per-word-display which I personally find harder to read and less fluid.

Different Types of Closed Captioning

Wondering which of the different types of closed captioning is right for your media? Learn the difference between pop-on, roll-up, and paint-on captions.

www.3playmedia.com

 

[scifisam]

Yeah, I've seen it. But "live" isn't live, if you know what I mean. The Beeb used to, possibly still does, use it for anything due out in less than 24 hours. And yeah it has a human reviewing it, but they're under the gun and mistakes almost always get in.

I'd meant to add earlier about DVD/Bluray... Absolutely fucking infuriating to have the option for French and Spanish subtitles, but no English ones because - hey, movie's in English so why bother?

Sorry, but you haven't seen unedited ASR for broadcast TV dramas, unless you work in that job. Maybe you do and I missed it.

The BBC don't have a 24 hour policy for live subtitles.

Here are the current guidelines for subtitles for the BBC. They are similar to other broadcasters. Streaming services are different for the legal reasons MrsFran outlined above.

Ann - yeah, that is mostly how it works right now (changes are afoot). It does mean that a lot of sports shows can be brilliant for players' names, and then suddenly the commentators will start referring to a former match or something, and the ASR renders the names in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways.

 

[Orang Utan]

Yeah, I’ve noticed that the most frequent transcription errors seem to be of names/brands. Which is often more amusing than annoying tbf

 

[Epona]

As someone who relies on subtitles, I can confirm that AI/Automated Subtitles have always been shit and remain shit.
Just for clarity, I am not physically deaf, I have auditory processing disorder which means I struggle to understand speech.
I miss about half of the words that I can hear, unless I am supplementing that with lipreading or subtitles.
If I start watching something and there are no subs, or it's not a decent job, or it appears to be AI generated, I'll just watch something else as it's more trouble than it's worth - and I'm not even completely deaf.

EDIT: Sorry, just realised I pretty much repeated what I said on an earlier post in this thread in 2021. Ah well, it still stands
ALSO: "Just turn on the YouTube subtitles if you can't hear it" - how to say you don't have a hearing problem without saying you don't have a hearing problem, because if you did you'd know they were shit.

 

[Orang Utan]

Youtube subtitles are mostly a worthless endeavour

 

[Orang Utan]

Fair play to subtitlers/caption-writers’ sense of humour though:

 

[Chz]

Youtube subtitles are mostly a worthless endeavour

Millions and millions into ML research and a near limitless amount of compute and that's the best they can do?

The prof who does this sort of thing told me it's all about vocabulary and proper names. If you can restrict the both of them, you can get 98%+ accuracy. But that's still fucking up one word in fifty.

 

[scifisam]

Millions and millions into ML research and a near limitless amount of compute and that's the best they can do?

The prof who does this sort of thing told me it's all about vocabulary and proper names. If you can restrict the both of them, you can get 98%+ accuracy. But that's still fucking up one word in fifty.

98% would be pushing it, even for a standard American accent with one person speaking slowly with no background noise. Change any of those factors (and often none of them apply) and the accuracy drops even lower.

 

[pogofish]

Auto subtitling just rose to the occasion with Scots and gave us this cryptic sentence at work:

"You give it a push and it will come on and in a couple of rooms and freeze a local MacGruber box."

Do we need to seek-out MacGruber boxes?

 

[T & P]

While subtitles provided by TV channels and streaming services are undoubtedly much better than the likes of YouTube, very often there is still a lot of room for improvement in some cases. Not all of them do it, but several providers are really shit at synchronising the subtitles with the footage on the screen, and show the subtitle dialogue a couple of seconds ahead of what’s happening. Which fucking spoils things for me, at least sometimes.

 

[Elpenor]

Watched a documentary on iplayer about Welsh rugby, some terrible subtitles whatever was being used to create them was clearly finding the best fit word if the people talking had RP accent not a sth wales one

 

[Orang Utan]

While subtitles provided by TV channels and streaming services are undoubtedly much better than the likes of YouTube, very often there is still a lot of room for improvement in some cases. Not all of them do it, but several providers are really shit at synchronising the subtitles with the footage on the screen, and show the subtitle dialogue a couple of seconds ahead of what’s happening. Which fucking spoils things for me, at least sometimes.

Aye, the only tv shows I watch without subtitles are quiz shows as you sometimes read the answers during the questions being read or just before the answers are given. I just have to miss the odd question or answer instead.
That must be a minefield to negotiate though as it would require split-second timing and of course people read at different speeds, so there’s no perfect way to present subs.

 

[Chz]

You can't win with quiz shows if you're trying to be competitive with the contestants, because even having the question on screen at the same time it's being read allows you to process it faster than the people on screen can. Though I'll take my unfair advantage when watching University Challenge, because I need it.

 

[WouldBe]

I don't use subtitles but captions can be annoying particularly when they put up long foreign (place) names and don't give you long enough to work out what it is.

 

[Wookey]

Have to admit I struggled with All of Us Strangers at the cinema as Paul Mescal’s accident was very tricky to decipher

My friend explained it to me as we were leaving, and when I finally understood what had gone on I did do a stifled cry on the escalator, from sadness and grief.

Also, Paul Mescal.

 

[Pickman's model]

My (work) laptop started putting up live captions which went over the existing subtitles and were also too small to read. To disable them had to go to settings in chrome and then accessibility. Took several days to work this out, now you have the answer immediately

 

[Chz]

Watched Synecdoche, New York blu-ray the other night. 2008 film. No fucking subtitles and Hoffman mumbles his way through the whole thing.

 

[barlimo]

Watching SHOGAN at the moment, nearly all of it needs subtitles for the Japanese speaking parts. Worst subtitles I've ever seen, very small and they flash on and off so quickly I have barely time enough to read them. For such a large production you would have thought they would have taken much more care.

 

[Orang Utan]

They are sometimes a bit superfluous: