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5 Low-Cost Ways to Provide Closed Captions for VOD Streams

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I recently had a conversation with Hugh Murphy, product marketing and development manager for 成功 magazine, about the publication’s captioning process with 牧师. The majority of the magazine’s content is video on demand (VOD)—or subscription video on demand (SVOD)—and hosted on YouTube. While YouTube doesn’t automatically handle the creation of captions, you can upload and/ or create captions using YouTube’s account tools. 借助牧师和3Play Media等服务, you can upload videos and purchase transcriptions of your audio as sidecar files to associate with the video file during playback.

The conversation with Murphy gave me the impetus to review the captioning options for both live and-on demand content. 在美国.S., there are multiple federal regulations that can impact your video content and distribution, 特别是在可访问性要求方面. It’s beyond the scope of this column to review Section 508 and FCC requirements, but I advise all my clients that intend to grow large libraries of video content to explore their obligations under local and national laws. (Note that there is a distinction between closed captions and subtitles, 为了本专栏的目的, 我主要指的是隐藏式字幕.)

As most of my work with video solutions architects revolves around HLS content distribution and streaming media servers like Wowza Streaming Engine or Red5 Pro, I am most familiar with integrated server-side techniques for including closed captions. There are multiple ways to provide closed captions with your video:

  • Sidecar WebVTT(网络视频文本轨道)文件: Captions are stored in a separate text file with WebVTT formatting, 哪个指示字幕的开始和停止时间. The video player loading the stream also loads the sidecar file for the language(s) provided.
  • 综合CEA-608/708字幕: Apple HLS can deliver captions using the same CEA-608 (Line 21) captions provided with TV broadcast streams. Newer digital TV transmission uses CEA-708 captions. If your VOD or live programming already has CEA-608 or -708 captions, you’ll likely be able to reuse them over Apple HLS or DASH. 字幕被注入H.264个清单块的SEI消息.
  • iOS WebVTT: An HLS manifest can also reference a separate captioning manifest that refers to the text tracks associated with a video stream. Unlike the integrated captions discussed in the previous bullet point, 这些标题在H之外处理.264块. 用于iOS上的多语言支持, you may want to explore using WebVTT manifests instead of integrated captions.
  • 3GPP定时文本: MP4 files can embed captions as separate tracks within the actual file. Not all web browsers and/or players will be able to read the timed text tracks, but most server-side streaming solutions can extract these tracks and convert to the caption options mentioned previously.