Closed Captions and the Netflix Player
The Roku Community website has had a few different threads started to question the absence of closed captions on The Netflix Player, some of them pretty contentious. Roku has described the box as "caption-ready" and deflected all questions to Netflix.
Yesterday, I started the Deaf Movie Club in an effort to promote better accessibility for the hearing impaired. As a first step, I posted in the Roku forum to ask exactly what is required for Netflix to implement user-selectable captions on the Roku box.
Responses were mostly hostile, from people who thought I was starting up another thread on a dead-horse topic; I also got a reply from a customer support person who felt my questions weren't right for Roku. I responded as follows:
Lyndon, thank you for your reply. I was certainly aware of those other threads, I've read them all. Where I did post, you will see that I referred the original posters to Netflix's Community website. That is not the same thing as "starting a thread every other day."
However, the questions I asked up top were never asked in those threads, and these qurstions concern the Player's capabilities. If I can get the answers, we will be in a better position to request that Netflix implement captioning. The questions, again, are:
Are any extraordinary steps required by Netflix to provide caption overlays? (in other words, is transcoding the caption stream from DVD and then embedding that data in a STB-compatible stream a complicated or difficult process?)
Can captions be embedded in the stream and made selectable via software? (so that people who don't want them won't see them?)
I have no doubt that there are people at both Netflix and Roku who know the answers to these questions.
My problem is that, at this moment, and for whatever reason, Netflix has not placed priority on accessibility for the hearing impaired.
If someone from Netflix customer relations were to tell me that "adding captions would be as easy as pie," that puts management in a bad light, so of course they are not anxious to discuss anything about it.
Roku, similarly, has no reason to make its partner appear unsympathetic to the hearing impaired.
That is why I am simply asking you straightforwardly about the technical aspects of implementing captions. I'm not out to make anybody look bad or to play "he said/she said" with the two companies. I just want to better understand how a provider -- any provider -- would supply user-selectable captions in a stream compatible with Roku's STB. (Which I love, by the way, it's a fine product!)
I'm just laying this out here for comment by anyone interested, and maybe (dare I hope?) some answers from Netflix staff?
A kinder voice was just added to the Roku thread:
Caption data would most likely be stored in the streams or a separated data file in the form of the text, along with control code data such as when to place it on the screen, for how long, at and what location (etc.) Basically the same or similar to the way Closed Caption caption data stored. The player hardware and base software is capable of supporting this in some form. As James said, Roku would still have to add the feature support to actually handle the exact method of data delivery and make it work on the application software.
The Roku player could interpret the data and render captions on to screen, or it could pass that along to the TV's Closed Caption decoder, or both. It depends on a lot of issues.
I think it's less likely that the captions would be pre-rendered in to alternate video streams, more like some of the DVDs you mentioned.
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So there needs to be further collaboration between the two companies to bring about a software upgrade that would implement captions. "caption-ready" refers solely to the hardware, it seems. But there's nothing Roku can do unless Netflix determines what sort of implementation they will use.
As a consumer, my question now for Netflix would be, has a method for implementing selectable captions been decided upon?
I hope they will look at the very simple and flexible "subrip" or .srt format, which is non-proprietary.
I'm also hoping that the overlay can be done in the Roku box. Wre have a $2,000 TV, but the closed caps on this set are esthetically gawdawful -- and on the digital channels the caps are very poorly implemented; turning them on causes a big black box, with a line if dialog at the top, to obscure the whole screen. The digital caps are configurable, so presumably there's a configuration error to be straightened out, but damn if I can find it...
Yesterday, I started the Deaf Movie Club in an effort to promote better accessibility for the hearing impaired. As a first step, I posted in the Roku forum to ask exactly what is required for Netflix to implement user-selectable captions on the Roku box.
Responses were mostly hostile, from people who thought I was starting up another thread on a dead-horse topic; I also got a reply from a customer support person who felt my questions weren't right for Roku. I responded as follows:
Lyndon, thank you for your reply. I was certainly aware of those other threads, I've read them all. Where I did post, you will see that I referred the original posters to Netflix's Community website. That is not the same thing as "starting a thread every other day."
However, the questions I asked up top were never asked in those threads, and these qurstions concern the Player's capabilities. If I can get the answers, we will be in a better position to request that Netflix implement captioning. The questions, again, are:
Are any extraordinary steps required by Netflix to provide caption overlays? (in other words, is transcoding the caption stream from DVD and then embedding that data in a STB-compatible stream a complicated or difficult process?)
Can captions be embedded in the stream and made selectable via software? (so that people who don't want them won't see them?)
I have no doubt that there are people at both Netflix and Roku who know the answers to these questions.
My problem is that, at this moment, and for whatever reason, Netflix has not placed priority on accessibility for the hearing impaired.
If someone from Netflix customer relations were to tell me that "adding captions would be as easy as pie," that puts management in a bad light, so of course they are not anxious to discuss anything about it.
Roku, similarly, has no reason to make its partner appear unsympathetic to the hearing impaired.
That is why I am simply asking you straightforwardly about the technical aspects of implementing captions. I'm not out to make anybody look bad or to play "he said/she said" with the two companies. I just want to better understand how a provider -- any provider -- would supply user-selectable captions in a stream compatible with Roku's STB. (Which I love, by the way, it's a fine product!)
I'm just laying this out here for comment by anyone interested, and maybe (dare I hope?) some answers from Netflix staff?
A kinder voice was just added to the Roku thread:
Caption data would most likely be stored in the streams or a separated data file in the form of the text, along with control code data such as when to place it on the screen, for how long, at and what location (etc.) Basically the same or similar to the way Closed Caption caption data stored. The player hardware and base software is capable of supporting this in some form. As James said, Roku would still have to add the feature support to actually handle the exact method of data delivery and make it work on the application software.
The Roku player could interpret the data and render captions on to screen, or it could pass that along to the TV's Closed Caption decoder, or both. It depends on a lot of issues.
I think it's less likely that the captions would be pre-rendered in to alternate video streams, more like some of the DVDs you mentioned.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
So there needs to be further collaboration between the two companies to bring about a software upgrade that would implement captions. "caption-ready" refers solely to the hardware, it seems. But there's nothing Roku can do unless Netflix determines what sort of implementation they will use.
As a consumer, my question now for Netflix would be, has a method for implementing selectable captions been decided upon?
I hope they will look at the very simple and flexible "subrip" or .srt format, which is non-proprietary.
I'm also hoping that the overlay can be done in the Roku box. Wre have a $2,000 TV, but the closed caps on this set are esthetically gawdawful -- and on the digital channels the caps are very poorly implemented; turning them on causes a big black box, with a line if dialog at the top, to obscure the whole screen. The digital caps are configurable, so presumably there's a configuration error to be straightened out, but damn if I can find it...
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by The Real Uncle Bob on -
I'm not sure what you mean by "back me up".
You've just done it -- anything to rescue me from the all-encompassing vacuum, dude! Now I can breathe again!
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Permalink Reply by Biff on -
Come now Uncle Bob, don't get discouraged. I, and I'm sure others, have been reading this thread. I find it interesting, however I'm not sure what I can contribute to it. Yes, I want captions on the IW. Not only for the Roku but for the computer watching (which I use) as well. I really don't understand why they are not there. If they are getting the feed off of the dvds then most have captions in them already. It makes me wonder if there isn't a simple problem like not having a captions on/off button like a dvd player or tv does. Perhaps Netflix can only either play a feed with captions on or off? Without being able to switch from one to the other? If that is the problem then they simply need two links for each movie, one with caps one without.
Another thought, the guy saying that the Roku would function like other electronics. Why then doesn't the computer easily accommodate captions like a tv does? I could see the possibility that perhaps a program needs to be written that would allow a computer to access the closed captioning in a film. Hmm... a question, I've never had a dvd drive so I've never watched a dvd on a computer, but if you do can you turn the captions on and off? If so then the problem has to be with the IW feed not the hardware. Cause if the hardware shows captions for dvd format it should be able to work for IW as well. I think if you can answer "yes" to dvd captions work on a computer, then you will know for sure that the problem is with the feed not the Roku or the computer.
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Permalink Reply by The Real Uncle Bob on
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excellent avatar, that.
There are a number of caption formats that work on computers, including dvd-style subtitles, but you have to install appropriate video filters before any will work.
As a fan of Asian horror, I've done a lot of downloading of films for which there was no US dvd release -- either multilingual hobbyists had created subtitle files out of the goodness of their hearts, or countries with loose copyright regulations would export dvds of questionable authenticity with (sometimes terrible) English subs.
I was sufficiently into it that I often cleaned up the English and syntax on some existing subtitles using a GREAT freeware program called Subtitle Workshop., which can save a subtitle file in over 50 different formats. I've used OCR software to convert the bitmap images used for DVD subttles into textfile subtitles, it takes maybe 15 minutes to do, but you can spend hours proofreading the result and still miss a glitch or two, like a number 1 mistaken for the lower-case letter L. but nobody notices an error like that, anyway.
One full-time worker who knows what he's doing could convert maybe a dozen or more subtitles a day, but one proofreader could get maybe 2 or 3 subtitles "ready for prime time" in a shift, and that work would have to be double-checked by a quality control person watching the film in real time, making notes about final adjustments in timing, spelling, grammar, etcetera. So, depending on salaries and benefits, each sub could cost a few hundred to produce,
OTOH, if I were hired as a freelancer to do it, I could charge maybe $100 for both conversion and proofing, Netflix would still need to do quality control, though.
Hmmmm -- 10,000 x $100 = $1,000,000
That may have something to do with our captionlessness.
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Permalink Reply by Watson on -
I think it's a good thing you bring upo these issues, UncleBob, so appropriate pressure can be put on Netflix. But there are many obstacles for them.
Netflix would need to decide whether to use a text stream (as closed captioning does) or a bitmap screen (as DVD subtitles do). I would encourage not the .srt or other text stream format, but instead a bitmap: for sources on DVD with subs, it cuts that $100/title conversion cost down to literally 5 minutes worth of setup to run a program to extract the bitmaps from the DVD. And since probably only on average 500 subtitle frames are needed per movie, the efficiency of text is relatively insignificant (a 90 minute movie has at least 135,000 frames).
Here's another reason .srt is a bad idea: it's limited to pure text to be displayed at the bottom of the screen. If you are going to create a whole new system for displaying captions, why limit yourself? A lot of fansubbed Anime has much more sophisticated subbing, e.g. subs for signs in the background of a scene.
Back to obstacles that need to be worked out: when a DVD has both a closed-caption stream and a subtitle bitmap stream, which do you use? And you probably need to support conversion of both, if only one is available on the DVD. And if Netflix uses "off the shelf" tools to encode the instant watch stream from the DVD, those tools need to support captioning / subtitles, and noone here knows if they do.
But the big reason I think Netflix doesn't support subtitles/captioning is that Microsoft tools don't, and Netflix doesn't want to expensively "roll their own". If I try to watch an .avi with subs using Windows Media Player, I need an external open-source program such as DirectVOBSub to render the subs. There is lots of freeware which can do so, but Microsoft is so inertial that last I checked they still don't. Just like the Mac willl be supported when Microsoft DRM for the Mac is ready, I think it's quite possible captioning and subtitling is waiting for Microsoft.
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Permalink Reply by The Real Uncle Bob on
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You make some great points, thanks for all your insight!
You make a great argument for the bitmap stream -- especially with regard to cost and ease of implementation. I'm inclined to agree, but I wonder how readable such subs will be at the lowest bandwidth (0.5mbps), whereas characters generated at the destination will be equally clear at all bandwidths. If this is not an issue, then I would concede this point.
Since the subrip format is non-proprietary, it could be adapted and extended if Netflix needs something more than "pure text to be displayed at the bottom of the screen." I don't think the same is true of most formats that provide special formatting effects, though there may be one or two that are also GPL'ed.
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Permalink Reply by TehTech on -
1.) Netflix Currently has closer to 10k of instant watch titles. And the engineering staff is all of roughly 20 people, at 3 - 4 movies in 1 shift, lets assume that Netflix puts its current weekly increase of IW titles on hold to incorporate Subtitles.
Assuming they actually did 4 movies per person, that would mean it would take them 125days of straight encoding before this actually was prepared.
On top of this 125 days, you have to put into account the time it would take to do this will "All" the movies; somethign commonly overlooked. Netflix has 4 different video qualities for each film (500, 1000, 1600, and 2200kbps) So even thought its only 10k titles currently, they are actually hosting closer to 40k videos, thats 475days straight.
Netflix cares about the minority as they do the majority. They just last month decided to keep a feature that was causing them strife because the minority got vocal, there is Logically no reason why netflix would like to Not have CC for any customer who wanted it, it's all a matter of being able to get it to work and make it effective and easy, the whole Instant Watch Service is still less then 2 yrs. old, I'm sure if you bought a lawn mover when it first came out you demanded they put a motor on it just like I did, but it didn't happen immediately, Patience is a key factor you Have to take into account when trying to understand how this whole feature will grow. It will be painful, annoying and slow at times, but it's all for the overall picture, and that is obviously to make all customers happy.
2.) As for the FCC comment, FCC can't get involved. because as stated in the TOS when you sign up for Netflix. Instant Watching is free, so though they may classify as a Multi Channel Provider they don't receive any of there revenue directly from Instant Watching, until such a time, FCC can't make demands.
3.) Patience Patience Patience =D
-Tech.
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Permalink Reply by Adrian on -
I'm sorry I can't be more helpful, but I agree with 3.) above... Patience.
There is a lot of work to do, it all takes time and resources. We are working on getting the first generation of Set Top Boxes out (Roku, Xbox, LG, etc.) and Mac support, while also ramping up the number of watchables by something like 1000 per month (12000 now, up from 10000 in late May).
There is a clear workaround for people that need subtitles, that is part of the service we provide. Its the same workaround that people who want 5.1 surround sound and higher definition pictures and alternate language soundtracks and bonus content can get. We will send you a DVD....
The combination Netflix offers is a full featured service based on DVD, and a subset of features and content based on streaming. Over time features and content will be added to the IW service, but for now, its a subset.
Adrian from Netflix
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Permalink Reply by Andrew Bell on -
How about providing a separate stream with the captions embedded if the user has chosen some captioning preference? Then you don't need to worry about caption decoders for multiple different platforms. It should be a trivial license issue to get permission to do it from the rights holders, so the cost is encoding time and storage. You could even make them look nicer (subtitle quality) than most captions.
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Permalink Reply by ColdOne on -
That approach would be way too expensive considering the very small number of customers for whom this is a major issue. It's also a waste of resources in the long-term since captions/subtitles will be available at some point in the not too distant future.
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Permalink Reply by The Real Uncle Bob on
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though they may classify as a Multi Channel Provider they don't receive any of there revenue directly from Instant Watching
They make all of their monry from subscriptions.
Since you can't access IW streams without subscribing, it would be hard to argue that the streams are actually "free." You don't pay "extra" for each DVD you rent, but you cannot argue that the DVD rentals are free.
However, the practical issues in providing captioning, enumerated above, and below in Adrian's post, should be sufficient to prevent any FCC action for the time being. But if Netflix doesn't display at least an intention of accomodation for the hearing impaired, the FCC will inevitably receive complaints, and it will be the gpvernment's call whether to become involved.
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Permalink Reply by Denver Dave on -
We enjoy the Roku / Netflix player, but the absence of closed captions if a major obstacle for us. These days it seems that almost everyone has closed captions VHS, DVDs, TV - why not the NetFlix player?
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Permalink Reply by Steven Jones on -
I don't go to Netflix anymore, because of no closed captioned supporting in instant streaming.
Directv On Demand, video streaming does supports closed captioned. I love it and suggest that you get Directv. Now, Directv add PC video streaming from your box with DVR thru laptop or desktop. It supporting closed captioned. Awesome! I assumed that Netflix who against hearing impaired. They will lose lot of customers like me. I have been Netflix customer when that company starts.
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