49 THE OTT FILES Subtitling
choices about their online marketing budgets. Will there really be a decent ROI if every bit of short video promotion is also going to require subtitles? “The prohibitive cost and the perceived difficulty in adding subtitles to the various versions of content have historically been a stumbling block, but this isn’t necessarily the case anymore. New ways of working mean adding subtitling can be a relatively simple process. “Automation can be seen as a money saver, but it’s not always as accurate as you’d like it to be, so having a human intervention within the workflow is essential. Those commissioning subtitling should demand a two-stage QC process, where the work is reviewed by another professional subtitler before it is signed off. “Subtitles don’t need to look like an old teletext service anymore, detracting from the carefully crafted look of the content they’re running over. Dynamic subtitling is a form of subtitles that eschews traditional fonts at the bottom of the screen and uses large, bold fonts that align with the style of the content and interacts with the content as it plays out. These dynamic subtitles are now becoming more and more common as advertisers realise consumers are frequently viewing their videos without speakers or headphones.” Petch admits that the possibilities in AI and machine learning are very attractive, but given their relationships with some of the top content producers in the world, there are limits to how much DMS can use them. “Although this is an exciting and useful (especially for live content) tool, AI requires online access. The content we work on is sensitive and secure and always kept offline, away from internet connections which means human oversight is still very important to us. Additionally, dynamic subtitles which use unique fonts, fades, positioning and layouts are not something currently possible in an automated workflow. “It’s very easy to make bad subtitles, both standard and dynamic, but to get it right and to enhance the value of your content experience is the challenge. If you get this right, you’re suddenly opening yourself up to an entirely new audience.”
ALEXANDER GRAM JENSEN (LEFT) AND ANDERS BREDGAARD THEUSEN The pair came up with the idea for SubReader as part of a school project
like blind or deaf people. The group of dyslexics is way bigger, so it has a much bigger impact than other areas where they might be implementing solutions.” TEACHING AN APP TO READ Getting software to read subtitles correctly isn’t as easy as having your mom do it. “The first problem when you do spoken subtitles is knowing exactly when to read the titles aloud. We’ve built a modular platform that can be adapted to cinema servers or the servers for broadcast or streaming service. SubReader’s platform can then synchronise spoken subtitles with the content the viewer is watching. Then our platform combines all that different information and streams it down to our app which reads out on your device.” SubReader is built as a standalone app that interoperates with various content platforms, but the company can provide a white label platform as well for any content owner that wants to do their own version of the app or integrate it into their own service. When a SubReader user is watching a service, such as Netflix, on a PC, the user only needs to sign into the SubReader app once to link it to their Netflix account. From then on, every time Netflix is used, it will ask whether or not the user wants to hear the subtitles read aloud. The subtitles are read using whatever speech app is on the device, such as Siri in the case of iOS or the Google assistant voice. “For dyslexics, it’s actually preferable to use these device voices. They are often used to that monotone voice reading out various kinds of text. When they get the
sound and image from the video, they don’t really notice the speaking voice reading the subtitles – it kind of merges into the actor’s voice. That’s the response we’ve gotten – that the users, after ten minutes of a movie, don’t notice it.” Currently, the team is looking to expand the platform to encompass other accessibility needs, including different opportunities for blind or deaf people. The positive feedback on SubReader has been unambiguous. “We can see from our data that people watch way more content now than they had done before, especially after we launched the streaming service,” notes Jensen. “But people are actually telling us that it’s a whole new world for them. Before, they may have watched a foreign movie or two, but they haven’t understood any of it, and that’s made them refrain from watching them again. But now that they have the opportunity, it’s the first time that they’ve been able to laugh at the same time as their friends or cry at the same time as their friends. We’ve actually had people coming out of the cinemas crying because now they can watch movies with friends.“
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