Subtitles on OTT Platforms - Ensuring Consistency across Broadcast and IP Platforms

Ever more content is being delivered over IP connections and viewed on non-broadcast devices such as tablets, mobile phones and computers. Yet the position of standards to enable the effective delivery of subtitling on such platforms is confusing to say the least. Proprietary implementations are commonplace leading to inconsistencies that can mar the viewing experience, in the worst cases this can lead to a complete absence of text. — This paper assesses the challenges involved in presenting broadcast quality subtitles on web video players, compares some of the methods currently used to deliver timed text on to the screen, proposes a workable solution for current implementation and looks to the evolution of standardisation in the near-future with WebVTT and the ISMC and EBU-TT variants of TTML.

Published

2015-07

Content type

Original Research

Keywords

Subtitles, subtitling, captions, closed captioning, timed text, TTML, ISMC, WebVTT, OTT

DOI

10.5594/M001616

ISBN

978-1-61482-955-3