On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 11:06 PM, Jim Ellwanger <[email protected]> wrote: > > Adam Bowie wrote: >> It seems pointless somebody else re-transcribing the dialogue when it's >> already been done in the Britain. > > The major issue: it's the BROADCAST that was originally > captioned/subtitled, but the broadcast is not what's being sold overseas. >
I entirely agree. Although providing a bit of additional data along with the tape hardly seems excessive. Even if the UK format for captions is bespoke (there are different formats for analogue and various flavours of digital TV in the UK, so without being an expert I assume there's a standard of some kind from which other versions flow - even the BBC's iPlayer allows captions with some programming on demand). > Issue #2: even if the producers happen to have access to the broadcast > captions, they don't stay intact anyway when the show is converted between > PAL and NTSC. Even given a copy of the original computer file of the > captions, it would take some work to convert -- each caption would have to > be re-timed to account for the difference between 25 frames per second and > 29.97 frames per second. > True enough, but a simple calculation could determine which frames for the re-timed programmes captions come in and out at. > Issue #3: U.K. subtitling conventions are, as I understand it, quite a > bit different from U.S. captioning conventions (a couple of examples: > U.S. captions are now pretty much verbatim, but I'm told that U.K. > subtitles are usually edited to keep to a relatively low reading rate; > U.K. subtitles identify different characters by using different colors, > which is unheard of in the U.S.). > You're right. Most UK captions are dialogue only, and sometimes summarise what the character said a little. And they use multi-colours to indicate different characters speaking - useful when one or more characters are out of shot. That said, in-vision captions for foreign language films never use the multi-coloured system. I appreciate that there are lots of small difficulties, but just find it strange that even providing a text file for the re-captioners to cut and paste from should be impossible. Surely it'd minimise typos, speed up the process, and provide a better service for the hard of hearing (or those that read captions). Adam --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ TV or Not TV .... Smart (TV) People on Ice! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
