The UK's Digital Production Partnership (DPP) has agreed an industry standard for the exchange of subtitles. Aligned with the EBU’s new subtitle format (EBU-TT), produced in July 2012, the new standard has been created to support UK broadcasters’ requirements for subtitle and audio description script transfer.
EBU-TT at the core
All broadcasters in the UK are required by law to provide access services alongside television programmes, including closed caption subtitles for the hard of hearing and audio description. The DPP, which includes the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Sky, Channel 5, S4C and UKTV, created this specification based on minimal usage of EBU-TT features and extension metadata to support specific workflows such as capture of live subtitles or exchange of scripts used in the production of audio description.
The new standard will allow UK broadcasters and access service providers to move away from legacy formats, proprietary or otherwise, and towards an open future-facing format that can be used to provide subtitles on broadcast television and online. By agreeing this format before making the transition, the DPP is able to lay the groundwork for a common UK interchange format that will benefit all businesses that need to exchange these documents.
All DPP subtitle documents are valid EBU-TT, which is itself based on the W3C TTML recommendation. The format separates the text and its associated display timing from information about that text, such as where it should be placed on the screen, the font style, size and colour, and separate metadata such as whether a given subtitle is describing dialogue, music, sounds effects etc., and the language of the subtitles.
Benefits for all
Companies that manufacture access services authoring and processing tools have a clear target format, which is vital in a historically fragmented marketplace. Broadcasters and distributors similarly will have a lower cost of adoption of this richer format that is not encumbered by the constraints of legacy formats.
Kevin Burrows, DPP Technical Standards Lead and CTO Broadcast & Distribution for Channel 4, said, “This new subtitle standard, encompassing the existing EBU-TT specification, will allow for the display of subtitles on current and future consumer platforms by the UK broadcasters. This will benefit viewers by enabling a consistent viewer experience across their services.”