About fifteen years ago I remember staying awake all night to write the English subtitles on my first feature film, in Final Cut Pro. This was so I could make the deadline for a film festival.
I barely knew what I was doing back then. Today, I know a whole lot more. In this guide I wanted to simplify the process for aspiring filmmakers who have to subtitle their films for actual distribution – to cinemas, streaming or YouTube.
So let’s get started!
What are Subtitles and Captions?
Imagine you’re watching a thrilling foreign film – in a language you don’t understand.
Enter subtitles or captions or timed text. This is on-screen text that faithfully transcribes or translates dialogue and relevant audio cues. Subtitles and captions ensure you catch every plot twist, joke, and dramatic reveal, no matter the language barrier.
Subtitles also come to the rescue when actors mumble, accents baffle, or sound effects overshadow speech.
We’ve all seen subtitles and captions at some point. Subtitles are “titles” (text) at the bottom of the image (the “sub” in subtitle). Captions are explanatory text.
Both are basically explaining something, or making something clear, and the only thing they are expected to explain or make clear is audio. What’s shown, the visuals, are not the job of subtitles or captions. They always refer to the audio.
What’s the difference between Subtitles and Captions?
Why are there two words? It’s stupidity, if you ask me, but at least there are clear definitions.
- Subtitles: Textual representations of dialogue and relevant audio information, typically used to translate spoken language into the viewer’s language.?
- Captions: Include dialogue and non-speech elements like sound effects and speaker identifiers. Captions, basically have another standardized name – Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (SDH). SDH Captions aid viewers who are deaf or hard of hearing.
What’s the difference between closed and open captions?
When you deliver your film to a distributor or streaming service, you have two choices – burn-in the subtitles or captions in the film itself, or provide the captions as a separate file.
Closed Captions just mean viewers can activate or deactivate captions if they wish.
Open captions, or burned-in captions, or forced captions, are forever written into the image. The viewer has no choice but to see the captions throughout the film.
There are times when distributors want open captions, but most services prefer closed captions. You need to be ready for both.
Closed captions are prefered because we want to have the best audience experience possible. The other advantages are:
- You can change it without having to render and deliver the entire movie again.
- The font, size, etc., can be changed by the viewer. In closed captions, you don’t get to choose the font or size.
Do you really need to make Subtitles or Captions?
You don’t have to, if you don’t want to. For example, if you are publishing your film to YouTube, you could completely ignore subtitles or captions – as long as you are okay with the consequences:
- Deaf and hard of hearing individuals won’t be able to watch your film.
- People who don’t understand the language won’t be watching your film.
However, if you are distributing your film to a foreign territory, you can’t do it without subtitles. The distributors and streaming platforms just won’t accept your film. They have strict guidelines, some of which we will cover below.
What should I make for my film: subtitles or closed captions?
In today’s distribution environment, you need to create both of these:
- Subtitles
- SDH Closed Captions
- In as many languages as you can afford, or is demanded by the distributor or platform.
Here are a few frames that show you the difference:
Rules for Subtitles
This is simple. Subtitles only show what’s spoken by someone (humans) or something (robots, animals, etc.) in the film, whether visible (actor on screen) or not (narrator, off-screen, etc.).
If it’s spoken, it’s in the subtitle.
Rules for SDH Captions
Here you need to add more. You still have subtitles, but in addition you also explain or highlight important sound and music cues. Here are the important rules in a nutshell:
1. Sound effects and music are enclosed in square brackets:
[Huge bang] [Heavy metal music plays].
2. Two people speaking in the same caption must be displayed with hyphens on different lines:
– [First Person] Hi there!
– [Second Person] Get out of my face.
Netflix requires no spaces after the hyphen, like this:
-[First Person] Hi there!
-[Second Person] Get out of my face.
3. The same rule applies to sound effects or music as well:
– [Gunshot]
– [Pop]
Notice the use of hyphens even for sound effects.
4. If you need to break to a second line, you can use </br>. Some services will honor it, others will ignore it and wrap around when the character limit per line is reached.
5. Only a maximum of two lines per caption are allowed.
6. If you need to break a sentence, you can use three dots: Hey… You don’t use commas or semi-colons at the end of a line to break it (you can use commas in the middle), you use three dots or nothing at all. E.g., Netflix recommends if the break is less than two seconds, don’t use anything. If it’s more than 2 seconds, use an ellipsis (…).
7. You use a dash/hyphen at the end to indicate a break in the speech: Wait, don’t-. Netflix needs two dashes, like this: Wait, don’t–.
8. If you’re starting mid-sentence, use an ellipsis: …be a wrong turn.
9. Smaller numbers are spelled out: Ten, Twenty, etc. Years and larger numbers can be numerals: 50s, 2.5 billion, etc.
10. Specific songs are in quotes in brackets: [“Beat it” plays]
Some people use a double hyphen but it’s not mandatory unless specifically a part of the specifications.
Technical Rules for Subtitles and Captions
This is where many subtitles fail QC. The sad part is different distribution platforms might have different numbers for each of the following parameters, and you’ll have to adjust your subtitles accordingly.
Here are the most important specifications for timing and character count:
- Subtitles start on timecode: 00:00:00:00 (hh:mm:ss:ff). The last two numbers can also be three numbers for milliseconds (ms).
- There is always a maximum character limit per single line. On average it’s about 42 or 43 characters, including spaces. If the dialogue is over it, you can continue over to the second line, which also has the same limit.
- Usually, if the dialogue has less than 43 characters, you should keep it on a single line. You don’t use the second line unless you cross 43 characters, or if two people are speaking, or there are two sound effects in the same caption.
- The characters per second is important, because the higher it is, the faster the viewer will have to read. The typical size is about 20-25 characters per second, but it could be lower or higher. E.g., children’s programs can have a much lower value.
- How short is a caption allowed to be? Can you flash a caption for just a frame? No. Captions should last for at least 600 milliseconds (or another number). This is an easy rule to break, because when you adjust the timings of subtitles you also break what’s before or after it.
- How long can one caption last on screen? Typically the maximum allowed is about 7 or 8 seconds, but it could change as well.
- Usually captions should appear very close to when it is actually spoken, within 10 frames or so, and must disappear similarly after the dialogue is over.
- Subtitles and captions are centered horizontally at the bottom of the frame, but never cut off.
- You must deliver the captions in the file format demanded. Even though the most common is SRT you also have XML or PNG, etc. The software you use must be able to output to the format you need.
What about foreign languages or non-Latin languages?
Some of the rules are relaxed. This is because the software or hardware people use to QC subtitles might not be so strict for non-English languages. E.g., Chinese words can’t directly equate to English words of character counts, and so on.
How do you ensure you meet technical requirements for subtitles?
What are you supposed to do? Count each character? No, you use software.
Let me give you a real world example. I used Davinci Resolve 18.x to create captions and subtitles for my movie. Resolve has settings that allow you to change the timing, font, etc.
At the time of this writing, though, the resulting captions don’t really pass QC as far as timing is concerned. When you export subtitles to a sidecar file, the font, italics, color, etc., don’t matter.
Fortunately, there is a free software you can use, called Subtitle Edit. It allows you to change and fix common issues in the least painless way possible:
It will highlight every error based on the settings you’ve selected so you can fix them on the fly. It also has other features but that’s beyond the scope of this article. It’s a great piece of software for most languages and can handle any requirements.
When the software can’t find any more issues you’re good to go.
There is still one final step, and that is: Watch your movie with the captions turned on to make sure everything is correct. Don’t just assume the software will do its job.
Sometimes software will make compromises, especially with line or caption breaks, that don’t make sense. Sometimes the captions extend over the next shot, and that distracts from the viewing experience. You need to adjust and fine tune until it’s just right.
As you can imagine, subtitling isn’t a joke, especially when you have to deliver in multiple languages and formats to different services. I’ve found there isn’t one universal standard for subtitles or captions, and that makes it something you need to pay attention to.
Even if you’re not delivering for a theatrical distribution or streaming platform, you need to pay attention to subtitles because it affects the viewing pleasure of your audience. Good subtitles allow the audience to enjoy your movie. Bad subtitles will stand out and turn them off.
Bottom line, creating effective subtitles is crucial for filmmakers aiming to make their films accessible to a global audience.
I hope you’ve found this guide useful!
