Subtitles

Subtitles are timed text displayed over video showing what is being said, primarily for viewers who can hear the audio but need or prefer text — translations, muted playback, noisy environments.

Subtitles differ from closed captions in intent: captions serve viewers who cannot hear and therefore include sound effects and speaker identification, while subtitles assume the audio is available.

Delivery is either a sidecar file (SRT, VTT) the player renders, or text burned permanently into the video frames.

Related terms

Closed captionsClosed captions are timed text that can be turned on or off by the viewer, written for deaf and hard-of-hearin… Burned-in captionsBurned-in (or hardcoded) captions are rendered into the video frames themselves during export, becoming pixels… Subtitle timingSubtitle timing (spotting) is deciding when each caption appears and disappears — synchronized to speech onset…

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