Subtitles for Foreign Films Question

[moviegeek1992]

I've never rented a foreign film from iTunes. Do some or all of them have options to disable the subtitles?

[steve_dave]

The subtitles can be set to Auto or English under the Subtitle menu screen during playback.

[ManOfTheForest]

Originally Posted by moviegeek1992

I've never rented a foreign film from iTunes. Do some or all of them have options to disable the subtitles?

It depends on the movie.

As best I can tell from from experience if the movie has several subtitle languages there is an OFF option but when English is the only subtitles offered it is ALWAYS ON.

[moviegeek1992]

That doesn't sound too great then. I know there are certain blu-rays than have burned in subtitles but for the vast majority of other movies the subs can be turned off. I think that's also the case for Amazon Prime Video. Will have to rent a forint movie on iTunes to test it.

[ManOfTheForest]

Originally Posted by moviegeek1992

That doesn't sound too great then. I know there are certain blu-rays than have burned in subtitles but for the vast majority of other movies the subs can be turned off. I think that's also the case for Amazon Prime Video. Will have to rent a forint movie on iTunes to test it.

I haven't rented or bought a non-English language film from iTunes in quite some time because of Netflix but I'm sure I have provided the correct information.
If you scroll to the bottom of the movie description it provides all the available subtitle languages and whether the text is ALWAYS ON.

It has not occurred to me before but now I am curious myself as to whether ALWAYS ON is the same as burned in subtitles on a disc.

AppleTV has the ability to customise the subtitle language so does that apply to Always On text? I'll have to check tomorrow.

[Rik1138]

I believe iTunes will display subtitles, by default, that match your chosen language settings. So, if you set English as your native language, and you watch a French movie, English subs will be on by default.

You _should_ still be able to manually turn them off...

If you can't, you can set your Apple TV (or iTunes) language setting to French, and that should prevent the Eng subs from coming on. Kind of a round-about fix, but if you really don't want to see them, and it insists on forcing them on, that might be the only solution...

This is all assuming they aren't burned... I don't think iTunes does that much anymore, but it's always possible.

Originally Posted by ManOfTheForest

It has not occurred to me before but now I am curious myself as to whether ALWAYS ON is the same as burned in subtitles on a disc.

That's a possibility, gonna have to look myself. I know when you deliver a video with burned in subtitles to iTunes, you have to declare in the metadata that it has burned in subs and what language they are. That might be why they require that...

[cuau_cg]

It's very rare when iTunes put english burned subtitles. When they do they specify: "Always On". But I dare you to find some title like that, it's not very common.
I can remember Stranger by the Lake to have burned english subs.

[ManOfTheForest]

Error

[ManOfTheForest]

Originally Posted by cuau_cg

It's very rare when iTunes put english burned subtitles. When they do they specify: "Always On". But I dare you to find some title like that, it's not very common.
I can remember Stranger by the Lake to have burned english subs.

I can't speak as to the percentage or rarity of them but there a lot of Always Ons.

[Fiffy]

Originally Posted by cuau_cg

It's very rare when iTunes put english burned subtitles. When they do they specify: "Always On". But I dare you to find some title like that, it's not very common.

Two examples in my collection are the French film Le Samourai, and the German TV show Deutschland '83 (the latter doesn't even say "always on" on the store page, so you can't necessarily rely on that either).