Subtitling the News Channels

New thread... I think it's got legs:

I was in my gym, they have BBC News on the telly but play music through the sound system, so they have the subtitles switched on on the TVs.
I know when subtitling is done live it can lead to mistakes, and do they sometimes employ Speech Recognition software to throw the subtitle on the screen?

My favourite this week is the leader of the Labour Party being subtitled as Head With A Band.

Live subtitling ain't easy - the most accurate way to do it is with stenographers, but training them ain't cheap - so the preference generally to do it with 'respeaking'. This is where a subtitler listens to the programme output on their headphones, then repeats what they hear (and also speak punctuation, etc) into text-to-speech software. It's not the most accurate, but it does mean that the vast majority of programmes can be subtitled.

I know someone who was once a subtitle researcher for Red Bee - her job was to go through the running order for live shows and find the hard-to-spell words. She took great pride in knowing where the hyphen went in Sven-Göran Eriksson so that the subtitler for Football Focus could just say "macro 1" and not have to worry about it.

Still though, Ofcom have been looking into the quality of live subtitles, and are suggesting improvements. The idea of delaying live programmes by 30 seconds so there's time to get the subs right hasn't gone down very well with broadcasters, but there are presumably some situations (Airport Live, say?) where that might be feasible. There's also scope to improve on late delivery programmes like Have I Got News for You, which are currently subtitled live. Their latest statement on the issue is at http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/consultations/subtitling/statement

Wouldn't go down well with viewers either - live should be live. Any safety net for whatever reason defeats the point.

On Sky News the subs are often relayed slightly ahead of the presenter's voice, suggesting that the subtitling may be linked with the autocue? I'm not sure, but either way it's quite comical how mistakes can still be made with such old technology in 2013.

How close to the wire are programmes like HIGNFY finalised? I wonder if the kind of technology YouTube has where a transcript can be supplied and it will cut the text into chunks and synchronise it with the speech on your video could be used to speed up adding conventional subtitles?

This article says that Sky News use the respeaking method (it's 5 years old, however): http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/features/charlies-subtitle-diary.shtml

Close enough that they book a line from the edit facility to playout, in case it needs to be played out live from the suite. More often than not, a tape is delivered on time.

Subtitling a prerecorded programme in the normal way takes a while, it's not something that's done on the day. Years ago HIGNFY on a Friday used to go out with a single subtitle saying that the Sunday repeat would be subtitled.

Incidentally when I worked in pres they used to turn up with the tape about an hour before it was due on air.

Yes, I remember that there used to be a method of doing subtitles that was half way between live and prepared. They'd have the script of the programme but hadn't spaced them out yet so would do that bit live, feeding them out as they were said

This is suitable for things like news where there is a script, however they have to be careful of last minute changes - if the script changes on the newsroom system and the autocue doesn't sync then is easily spotted, but if the subtitler, who is elsewhere does not get it then it might not get spotted.

Also it does depend on the reporter putting their script into the system, something they are either lax at doing through laziness or can't because they're on location

As a subtitler, I can tell you it very, very often is done on the day and sometimes completed within an hour of TX.

Thanks for that, i was exaggerating a bit!


Although I assume the process has sped up since I was involved in such things. What time would an episode of HIGNFY have to be delivered for it to have proper subtitles (timecoded, file delivered) ready for 9pm?


How are they done these days? I assume you're not sent a tape with BITC any more?

Back in the 90s, subtitle files were delivered on a 3.5" floppy disc, one disc per programme, which would be loaded along with the transmission tape and the subtitles were inserted according to the timecode being read off the tape. Using the discs live to air was replaced with a file-based delivery system in around 1996/7ish, although the discs were still delivered to pres as a backup.

There was an unfathomable panel which we as operators were supposed to be able to nudge subtitles back into synch if there'd been a last-minute edit of the programme or if the TC that the subtitler had worked from differed from the TC actually on the TX tape (this happened more than it should have done!). The nudge panel allowed you to add or subtract hours, minutes, seconds and frames as an offset between TC and Subtitles file. A few seconds out was ok, but you needed a degree in pure mathematics to work out the offset between some files. On occasions you'd be nudging subtitles live to air, literally watching off-air to see if your nudge had made things better or worse!! Sometimes it was easier to abandon subs and put out an apology subtitle.

For live news programmes these days, the subitlers have access to the scripts (for studio links and VTs) as soon as they're written but there are times when they have to work completely live.