i think it would be really useful if the BBC made available the subtitles for their TV shows via the /programmes pages (or any other accessible, searchable API).
If these were publicly available then it would 1) save the BBC space and transcoding time/effort in creating multiple streams for the iplayer with subtitles on. A single video stream with optional subtitles can be made available and they player/user can chose whether or not to display them. 2) it would allow people to display subtitles to there *personal* copies of BBC content. Personally I would love to see a xbmc script that would automatically grab and save the subtitles for any BBC content it finds. This would work great for the xbmc iplayer script as i do not believe the iphone files have subtitles available yet. i dont really have a preference as to the format of the subtitles, apart from xbmc being able to play it. As a useful side effect to this (assuming the subtitles were stored a text rather then image-based format) the transcripts of the shows would also be searchable. This would be a great way of searching through the BBCs archive. What do people think? - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
