Guide to Timed-text in DCPs

There are some core definitions and concepts that should be learnt in order to fully understand implementation of timed-text assets in D-Cinema.

Definitions

Open vs Closed

• In the context of DCPs, Closed Captions are a metadata track that plays silently as the movie plays. If an audience member has a captiview device in their cupholder, or the captiview glasses, then they can access this feed and view the captions.
• Open Captions means that the captions are visible on the screen.
• Open does not infer that the captions are burnt in or not burnt in, just that they are visible to the entire audience on screen.

💡 Handy tip for remembering the difference: Closed means its ‘closed’ to the general public. Open means its ‘open for all to see’

Subtitles vs Captions

• Its important to distinguish that Captions are not the same as Subtitles: Captions contain subtitles AND descriptions of the audio cues for people who are deaf or hard of hearing.

Forced Narrative, aka FN

• Forced Narrative subtitles means any subtitles that are required for an audience to see, so that they can understand the narrative. In this film, you need Forced Narrative subtitles in English, for all the spoken Slovene lines.

Assembling for broad distribution

Now we apply the above rules to a distribution ready DCP in the way outlined below. With the  process below, the OV DCP can be used for broad distribution, as the timed text can be translated into any required language because there is no burnt in subtitles on the picture track.

DCP OV EN-EN-CCAP

Picture Track = No burnt-in subs/text

Sound Track = 5.1/7.1/Atmos + Audio Description

Timed-text Track 1 = Forced Narrative Subtitles tagged as Open Subtitles (OSUB) so they display on-screen

Timed-text Track 2 = Captions, tagged as Closed Captions (CCAP) so they play onto the captview devices

Supplemental VF-1  EN-EN-OCAP

Picture Track = Referencing OV

Sound Track = Referencing OV

Timed-text Track 1 = Captions, tagged as OSUB so that they display on screen.

⚠️ Its important that you tag the forced narrative, and open captions as OSUB. This s counterintuitive as there are formal tagging options defined in the specifications for OCAPS however the OCAP tag is not fully implemented across all manufactures of d-cinema equipment. The guarenteed way to get your captions to play on screen is to tag them as OSUB.

Where do I go now?

There are a number of vendors in Australia who can create Version Files for your DCP, or modify existing DCPs to include your captions. Some of our favorites are Silver Trak Digital Digital and Access Media.

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