Confirmation in regard to adding Closed Captioning to an existing DCP.

[Carsten]

There is no way (or at least none that I know of) to switch subtitles on or off for DCI players during playout. Software players of course can do it, but the DCI players in cinemas do not have that option. Once you start to play an OV or VF that has subtitles, they will show to the end with them being visible. Some players allow to disable subtitles, but then it's a global setting.

All cinemas today get DCPs with a version that has not subtitles, and another version that does have subtitles. The way to switch between the two is to stop playout of one, and start playout of the other.


OCAPs can be done in two ways: One is burning the text into the image. They will always be visible. The other version is to create them as timed-text or PNG, in that case, they will be rendered at playout time. Unless the burn-in uses very sophisticated methods to create the image, an audience can't tell the difference between burn-in and timed-text.


Some players (Doremi/Dolby) allow to play CCAPs as OCAPs (on screen). If configured to do so, the player will direct CCAPs to the screen, if no OCAPs are present. This is possible because the captions are timed text and not burn in, so the player is able to decide where to direct the text for playout - CCAP glasses/CCAP display, or screen.

[clownshoe]

Thanks for this rundown, Carsten.

Really helpful for me, moving forward.

All the best.