At IBC 2014, the EBU technical group on subtitling is organizing a short series of visits to subtitling equipment vendors. The visits are designed for participants to learn about the state of the art in subtitling equipment and to sync with manufacturers on current standardization efforts. Simply drop an e-mail to: [email protected] to receive the schedule.
EBU-TT-D
Earlier this year, the EBU published EBU-TT-D (Tech 3380) , a format for the distribution of subtitles. The XML-based EBU-TT-D format is a low-complexity way to combine subtitle text, styling, timing information, and positioning details to allow implementers to provide users with a subtitle experience at least as good as that on current TVs, regardless of the platform on which they are watching the content.
EBU-TT-D takes into account expertise from users, distribution parties, hybrid TV organizations and CE manufacturers. It builds on the EBU-TT subtitle format for production interchange and archiving (EBU Tech 3350). Both specifications are derived from the base W3C TTML specification. They strongly constrain the feature set of TTML to make it easier for decoder/renderer implementers to add subtitle overlays to video without the complexity that is present in TTML to support other scenarios.
Going live
Current focus of the EBU work is on live subtitling. A new specification is being developed that will support the functionality needed for live authoring and contribution of high quality subtitles, such as hand-over and timing information to allow for onward distribution and archiving. Group participants are also contributing to the ongoing DVB work on a new format for broadcast UHDTV subtitling.