English Subtitles VS English SDH

[cnowels]

As a person with a hearing impairment, I normally watch my BD's with the subtitles on. I'm just curious about one thing. Some movies have BOTH an English Subtitle option AND an English SDH (Subtitles for the Deaf and Hearing Impaired).

What's the difference?

[kpkelley]

The SDH version includes sound effects in the subtitles, i.e. (music playing),(dog barks),(baby farts), etc.

[mikejet]

Originally Posted by kpkelley

The SDH version includes sound effects in the subtitles, i.e. (music playing),(dog barks),(baby farts), etc.

What movie was that in?

[kpkelley]

Originally Posted by mikejet

What movie was that in?

I was being sarcastic, but probably in almost every episode of Family Guy

[cnowels]

I kind of figured it was along those lines. Thanks for the confirmation.

And I am SO grateful for those studios who include SDH tracks so that I WON'T miss any baby farts.

[dixonhill]

Sadly there are only very rare but excellent examples of what blu-ray is capable of in these particular matters:
Subtitles with different colours per speaker!
Know what I mean?
Person A "speaks" in red letters, person B answers in blue etc...
And furthermore these subtitles are shown at different places on the screen depending
on whether the actor is standing on the left or right or whatsoever.
This is what I'd call a perfect utilisation of blu-rays capabilities!

Unfortunately I don't remember the title(s) right now....

[Banjo]

Honestly, I'll rather just have one colour for the subtitles. I'm deaf and I've watched TV programs where they assign colours to identify the speaker. I don't care for it. I remember watching Life on Mars, the original BBC program on a Canadian channel. They did something like that.

I can follow a movie just fine with a single-coloured SDH track. Plus, not all colours are equally readable. For instance, dark blue and red requires more focus to read compared to yellow and white.

Besides, one of my pet peeves is that they sometimes leave out the lyrics in the SDH track. I know some people claimed it's due to the copyright issues, but that's not true. When you caption a movie, you are supposed to include all of the information including the lyrics. Anybody who caption movies for a living would tell you that.

[gambitz]

I agree. I dont like colour subtitles. It's common in Europe and I assume they are accustomed to it.

North America arent accustomed to it.

I am grateful for CC style SDHs from Sony and Paramount. However, we need to continue our fight for other companies to include positioning with SDHs..

Having all text in the middle can confuse the viewer on who is speaking if two person are speaking rapidly back and forth. Who said what?

This is one of my biggest pet peeve, for this reason, I typically stick with CC if SDH is in the middle, then I use 480i. If SDH is CC style then I use 1080p. It sucks and movie makers please stop making deaf and hard of hearing population suffer and lag behind the general population.

(PS yes I realize this is old post, but I want to put my 2 cents in).

[parallax911]

I am hearing impaired myself (not deaf), and I use plain english subtitles 99% of the time. SDH tracks are fine, but I also think they should be in one color only - and if they are placed according to the speaker, all subtitles should be at the same height and at the bottom of the screen.

The MOST annoying thing I have experienced in relating to SDH subtitles is if they are jumping all over the screen and if they are the only option for subtitles (no plain english and no nothing else).

This has happened on a few blurays which are very important to me: alien anthology (all movies), and Inception. Immensely annoying! Just because the technical possibility is there, does not mean you should use it like a 5-year old kid.

[casspir]

When I see the following texts in the English subtitle of a certain movie, then can that subtitle be considered an English SDH subtitle?:

[train horn]
[man]
[woman]
[blues harmonica]
[static]
[choir singing "Rock of Ages"]

etc.

Thanks!

[Bored Gaymer]

The most awful subtitles I own are with the DROP DEAD DIVA dvds. There is a black box with the white/yellow subs inside. It takes up so much screen-space.

[cnowels]

Originally Posted by casspir

When I see the following texts in the English subtitle of a certain movie, then can that subtitle be considered an English SDH subtitle?:

[train horn]
[man]
[woman]
[blues harmonica]
[static]
[choir singing "Rock of Ages"]

etc.

Thanks!

Yep. Those are good examples of SDH. I certainly choose them when they're an option. Otherwise, it's kind of funny when a character cocks their head with that "do you hear that?" look. Sometimes, the sound is so subtle, I have no idea what they're reacting to.

My wife and I sometimes laugh at the SDH though. [intimidating music]

[casspir]

Originally Posted by cnowels

Yep. Those are good examples of SDH. I certainly choose them when they're an option. Otherwise, it's kind of funny when a character cocks their head with that "do you hear that?" look. Sometimes, the sound is so subtle, I have no idea what they're reacting to.

My wife and I sometimes laugh at the SDH though. [intimidating music]

Thanks!

[The_Donster]

I use subtitles a lot when watching television at night and I have to say I feel sorry for the hearing impaired at times. Because some of the subtitles, be it streaming, television or BD it is just horrible. Now I'm sure they might have additional equipment, but still, damn, get it together.

[Thomas Guycott]

Originally Posted by casspir

When I see the following texts in the English subtitle of a certain movie, then can that subtitle be considered an English SDH subtitle?:

[train horn]
[man]
[woman]
[blues harmonica]
[static]
[choir singing "Rock of Ages"]

etc.

Thanks!

Originally Posted by cnowels

Yep. Those are good examples of SDH. I certainly choose them when they're an option. Otherwise, it's kind of funny when a character cocks their head with that "do you hear that?" look. Sometimes, the sound is so subtle, I have no idea what they're reacting to.

My wife and I sometimes laugh at the SDH though. [intimidating music]

Years ago DreamWorks caught a huge amount of flack when they released the Ghost in the Shell sequel Innocence on DVD, and the only English subtitles were an SDH track.

[cnowels]

Originally Posted by The_Donster

I use subtitles a lot when watching television at night and I have to say I feel sorry for the hearing impaired at times. Because some of the subtitles, be it streaming, television or streaming it is just horrible. Now I'm sure they might have additional equipment, but still, damn, get it together.

That's actually Closed Captioning, which is different from Subtitles. But yeah, it is horrible!

[casspir]

Originally Posted by cnowels

That's actually Closed Captioning, which is different from Subtitles. But yeah, it is horrible!

What's the difference between close captioning and subtitles? Why do they use close captioning, what is the purpose of it? It is indeed horrible.

[cnowels]

Originally Posted by casspir

What's the difference between close captioning and subtitles? Why do they use close captioning, what is the purpose of it? It is indeed horrible.

I'm sure others could explain it better. All I know is what I've picked up from looking into it myself.

But close-captioning is obviously used for live shows like the news. That's where you can actually see them hitting the backspace to correct what was typed.

But CC can also be pre-recorded and put on DVDs. In fact, the DVD seasons of Farscape have CC, but not subtitles. The TV or DVD player has to have a CC decoder to be able to display them. They come in via Line 21 or something like that.

The interesting thing is that CC can not be used if you're watching a Progressive-Scan input source. I guess because the Line 21 is used for image data in Progressive mode.

When I watch Farscape, I have to turn my DVD players Progressive-scan off, so that I can get the CC.

It's all kind of weird. Nowadays, subtitles have all but replaced CC on media, except via broadcast TV.

[Klapaucius]

Is anyone else frustrated by the lack of optional plain non-sdh or hearing impaired English subtitles? As a non-native speaker I often prefer to leave the subtitles on, especially if the soundtrack is cluttered or dialogue unclear. However, I find sdh subtitles distracting to the point that I can't tolerate them. Coming from a country where foreign language films are regularly subtitled I'm used to the intrusion of text for dialogue, but its an altogether different matter when sound effects and music are described or speakers are identified. It distracts from the visuals and can be alienating [♫ suspenseful music ♫].

I can watch a film with no subtitles at all (especially with headphones) but my girlfriend's English isn't as good as mine and she likes to have subtitles on so as not to miss anything. If an English language film is only available with English sdh subtitles I have to rip it to my computer and try to find or make plain subtitles for it, which is incredibly time consuming.

As I remember it in the early days of my DVD collecting (more than ten years ago) films often had BOTH plain and sdh English subtitles available. This would seem like a marginal production cost, and I bet there's demand for both. So why doesn't a company like CRITERION (ahem) offer both options for their lavish blu-rays and dvds. For me watching something like Days of Heaven or Walkabout and having the sound effects or music described is very distracting and detrimental to the visual impact of the film.The seemingly increasing lack of choice has bothered me for a better part of a decade, and has resulted in many unwatched movies sitting on the shelf waiting for me to try to fix the problem on my computer.

I assume this would be an issue especially for non-native speakers.

ps. I don't want to undercut the need for subtitles for the hearing impaired, so it seems plain we should demand both.

[jscoggins]

Originally Posted by Klapaucius

Is anyone else frustrated by the lack of optional plain non-sdh or hearing impaired English subtitles? As a non-native speaker I often prefer to leave the subtitles on, especially if the soundtrack is cluttered or dialogue unclear. However, I find sdh subtitles distracting to the point that I can't tolerate them. Coming from a country where foreign language films are regularly subtitled I'm used to the intrusion of text for dialogue, but its an altogether different matter when sound effects and music are described or speakers are identified. It distracts from the visuals and can be alienating [♫ suspenseful music ♫].

I can watch a film with no subtitles at all (especially with headphones) but my girlfriend's English isn't as good as mine and she likes to have subtitles on so as not to miss anything. If an English language film is only available with English sdh subtitles I have to rip it to my computer and try to find or make plain subtitles for it, which is incredibly time consuming.

As I remember it in the early days of my DVD collecting (more than ten years ago) films often had BOTH plain and sdh English subtitles available. This would seem like a marginal production cost, and I bet there's demand for both. So why doesn't a company like CRITERION (ahem) offer both options for their lavish blu-rays and dvds. For me watching something like Days of Heaven or Walkabout and having the sound effects or music described is very distracting and detrimental to the visual impact of the film.The seemingly increasing lack of choice has bothered me for a better part of a decade, and has resulted in many unwatched movies sitting on the shelf waiting for me to try to fix the problem on my computer.

I assume this would be an issue especially for non-native speakers.

ps. I don't want to undercut the need for subtitles for the hearing impaired, so it seems plain we should demand both.

I agree that the cost is marginal or even non-existent. If you look at some of Warner's early Blu-rays (such as Harry Potter 5), they have both "regular" German and Italian subtitles as well as German and Italian SDH.

Criterion's subtitles are problematic for other reasons. Some movies have subtitles except for when the characters speak English. However, the actors speak with such heavy accents that subtitles would be helpful.