The EBU Group on Subtitles in XML has created the EBU-TT format, which provides a W3C TTML based way to exchange and archive subtitles. EBU-TT is a follow-up for the well-known EBU STL format.

Subtitling is used extensively by broadcasters, both for foreign-language subtitling and as an access service to help people with a disability access television programmes. The creation of subtitles has long used stand-alone file formats, including the well-known EBU Tech 3264 ('EBU STL') and many proprietary formats.

EBU Timed Text (EBU-TT)

For today's IT-centric world, EBU Tech 3264 is out-dated and limited in terms of functionality (e.g. the characters which are supported). At the same time new distribution platforms, such as subtitling for online applications, ask for an XML-based format. Added to that broadcasters are switching to fully file-based (e.g. MXF) operations.

These are the three main reasons which have pushed the EBU group to develop an XML-based format for use in subtitling production and exchange, based on W3C's Timed Text Markup Language (TTML) v1.0. The new spec is called EBU-TT (EBU Tech 3350 - v1.0) . An XML Schema is available to help developers implement EBU-TT.

Current focus in the EBU Group is on providing a mapping guide for creating EBU-TT files from EBU STL files. This will be published as EBU-TT part 2.

Live Subtitling

Work on supporting Live Subtitling has started too. Over 40 requirements have already been gathered. The Live Subtitling work is referred to as "EBU-TT part 3".

More information

See the page dedicated to EBU-TT for more information, or send an e-mail to: subtitling@ebu.ch