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videoFK
Participant
July 10, 2021
Question

Closed Captions for documentary festivals?

  • July 10, 2021
  • 2 replies
  • 1717 views

Dear Community,

 

I am working on a documentary I want to submit to film festivals. In their regulations, they say that they need english subtitles (closed captions).

Our documentary is shot in UHD 25p PAL.

Do you have any experience with subtitle formats at documentarys, and can you tell me, which of the different options for subtitles I have to choose?

Thank you in advance!

 

Theo

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

Warren Heaton
Community Expert
Warren HeatonCommunity Expert
Community Expert
July 13, 2021

Rev.com

 

Affordable and you can download just about any type of subtitles file format in existence (and there are a lot).

    Brandon Loshe
    Brandon Loshe
    Legend
    July 11, 2021

    Hi Theo,

     

    Did they give you any specifications on what types of closed captions they want delivered? There are a couple of ways to deliver subtitles (closed captions).

     

    Do they want the subtitles burned into the video, or as a sidecar file? Premiere Pro/Media Encoder can export closed captions as a sidecar file (a seperate file) when you go to export your video under the Captions tab in the Export Settings Window. If they specifiy what type they want (for example, .mcc, .xml, or .srt), then you can export the captions according to their specs from Premiere Pro.

     

    A third way to deliver the captions is to have them embedded into the video file. This is where the video file as the closed caption data embedded into the file. Unfortunately, Adobe does not support this in very many video types. OP1a I believe is the only option that gives you the option for embedding.

     

    Let me know if you have any other questions. Subtitles and closed captions are pretty confusing at first.

      V
      videoFKAuthor
      Participant
      July 12, 2021

      Hey Brandon, thank you very much!

      Here are the regulations:

      "In case of selection we encourage you to (also for English spoken films) provide English subtitles, Closed Captioning and/or Audio Description where possible."

       

      I chose the option open captioning - because we will use this font, are there any wyas to change this back?

      Stan Jones
      Community Expert
      Stan JonesCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      July 12, 2021

      I don't think this is enough information for you to make your decisions. Are they asking for a DPM type file or what?

       

      You say festivals plural - is it possible that different ones will have different standards?

       

      The description, "English subtitles, Closed Captioning and/or Audio Description where possible." is pretty wide open - "and/or"?

       

      It will matter whether you are working in PR 2021 with the new, and very different caption workflow, or a previous version. In PR 2020 and earlier, you could not change an Open Caption stream to another type. (There's a workaround.) In PR 2021, you can. 

       

      You can also embed captions on PR export in Quicktime files, in addition to the mxf  op1a that Brandon mentions.

       

      Stan

       

       

       

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