On-screen text has been around as early as 1903 with what was known as intertitles. Intertitles were pieces of text that were printed on paper and filmed. These intertitles were shown between sequences.
The first subtitles that appeared on video were in 1909 in silent films. Then in 1929, the first sound film named “The Jazz Singer” was released with subtitles in French.
Since then, subtitles have grown worldwide and are used in almost every video streaming service we know of. In today’s age, there are more different on-screen texts than just subtitles.
They have slight differences and are meant to solve different problems. Today we’ll explain what these types are and how to identify them.
What Are Closed Captions?
Closed captions are text that appears on the bottom half of the screen of any kind of video. This text is always in the same language as the original content and can appear in movies, TV series, news, etc.
The interesting thing about closed captions is that they not only include the dialogue of the speakers in the video but also any background noises that are present in the scene of the video. For example background music or a car crash.
The reason for this is closed captions are meant to help people with hearing disabilities understand the audio of the video.
What Are Subtitles?
Subtitles are very similar to closed captions. They’re also pieces of text on the bottom half of any type of video. They’re meant to help the viewer understand the audio portion of it.
As opposed to closed captions, subtitles are not meant to help people with hearing disabilities. Instead, they’re meant to help people understand the dialogue of a video in a different language.
In other words, subtitles act as a translation for the viewers. For this reason, there’s no information about background noises or the context of the scene. Only dialogue.
Ever Heard About Open Captioning?
There’s a third type of on-screen text that you might have heard of, open captioning.
Open captioning is very similar to closed captioning. They’re both intended to help people with hearing disabilities understand the video.
The only difference is open captions are automatic. In other words, open captions can’t be turned on or off by the viewer.
This type of captioning is very typical in news and morning shows. In which the option to toggle the captioning is not available. Therefore the automatic captioning is controlled by the TV program itself.
Final Thoughts
With a variety of video streaming services growing each year, on-screen text is essential to compliment the video portion of streaming video in various ways.
Whether it’s movies, TV series, or sports games there are many cases in which on-screen text can be not only useful but even necessary for some viewers.
Closed captions are essential for people with hearing disabilities to be able to enjoy their favorite content. Subtitles are perfect to distribute content around the world and make sure everyone can understand regardless of the audio’s language.