this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2024
44 points (87.9% liked)

Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

54500 readers
695 users here now

⚓ Dedicated to the discussion of digital piracy, including ethical problems and legal advancements.

Rules • Full Version

1. Posts must be related to the discussion of digital piracy

2. Don't request invites, trade, sell, or self-promote

3. Don't request or link to specific pirated titles, including DMs

4. Don't submit low-quality posts, be entitled, or harass others



Loot, Pillage, & Plunder

📜 c/Piracy Wiki (Community Edition):


💰 Please help cover server costs.

Ko-Fi Liberapay
Ko-fi Liberapay

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

For this one show (John Oliver) I download, I always get ALL CAPS and poorly synced subtitles. The text seems OK, but it's barely usable because very off-sync. I'm curious: where do these subs come from?

top 10 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 45 points 8 months ago (1 children)

if it's a tv show it could be that they come from the tv signal, those usually are all caps and poorly synced because it's tech from the 80s

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Oh that "teletext" thing I guess, I get it. I remember using subtitles from this source in France in the 90s, and it was never that off sync. I guess the way they're ripped may make the offsyncedness worse.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I only saw American closed captions on live TV almost two decades ago but the quality was much worse than the European teletext. In my country the teletext subtitles had small caps, italics and colors to identify who's talking instead the American ones, I'm guessing because they were introduced a few years earlier with a more primitive tech, were always behind and not exactly accurate to what was spoken, like if someone was typing them on the fly

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

well actually!

Teletext is a british invention, and the basis for european television caption.

the US system is based on the european one, and it's likely that the reason for the difference on the captioning is something other than the tech. f.ex that in US it's less common to use cc or smth, or that the cc was made live, i.e. during the broadcast, like a fotball match or smth.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 months ago (1 children)

closed captions from the live tv broadcast

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

This, right here. Live Closed Captions are often a fair bit behind the actual video, because when it comes to accessibility it's more important to get the text right than to get the timing right.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Why not both?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The subtitles could be for an alternate release of the show that is either offset by a fixed amount or runs slightly faster or slower.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Nah, because it's like no text for 30 secs, then "3 lines per second" (faster than you can read), then more or less synced, then again too slow/too fast. That teletext explanation someone else gave is more plausible. I cannot believe that the original are that bad, so my guess is that the way they're ripped has issues.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

I just saw in the airport someone watching "Gilmore girls" on Netflix and it had ALL CAPS English subtitles. They also seemed out of sync, the mom was speaking with no subs under her figure

So a source of those poor quality subs might be Netflix that just trusted broadcast subs