Closed Captioning - Movies

Movies

There are several competing technologies used to provide captioning for movies in theaters. Cinema captioning falls into the categories of 'open' and 'closed.' The definition of "closed" captioning in this context is different from television, as it refers to any technology that allows as few as one member of the audience to view the captions.

Open captioning in a film theater can be accomplished through burned-in captions, projected text or bitmaps, or (rarely) a display located above or below the movie screen. Typically, this display is a large LED sign. In a digital theater, open caption display capability is built into the digital projector. Closed caption capability is also available, with the ability for 3rd party closed caption devices to plug into the digital cinema server.

Probably the best-known closed captioning option for film theaters is the Rear Window Captioning System from the National Center for Accessible Media. Upon entering the theater, viewers requiring captions are given a panel of flat translucent glass or plastic on a gooseneck stalk, which can be mounted in front of the viewer's seat. In the back of the theater is an LED display that shows the captions in mirror image. The panel reflects captions for the viewer, but is nearly invisible to surrounding patrons. The panel can be positioned so that the viewer watches the movie through the panel and captions appear either on or near the movie image. A company called Cinematic Captioning Systems has a similar reflective system called Bounce Back. A major problem for distributors has been that these systems are each proprietary, and require separate distributions to the theater to enable them to work. Proprietary systems also incur license fees.

For film projection systems, Digital Theater Systems, the company behind the DTS surround sound standard, has created a digital captioning device called the DTS-CSS or Cinema Subtitling System. It is a combination of a laser projector which places the captioning (words, sounds) anywhere on the screen and a thin playback device with a CD that holds many languages. If the Rear Window Captioning System is used, the DTS-CSS player is also required for sending caption text to the Rear Window sign located in the rear of the theater.

Special effort has been made to build accessibility features into digital projection systems (see digital cinema). Through SMPTE, standards now exist that dictate how open and closed captions, as well as hearing-impaired and visually impaired narrative audio, are packaged with the rest of the digital movie. This eliminates the proprietary caption distributions required for film, and the associated royalties. SMPTE has also standardized the communication of closed caption content between the digital cinema server and 3rd party closed caption systems (the CSP/RPL protocol). As a result, new, competitive closed caption systems for digital cinema are now emerging that will work with any standards-compliant digital cinema server. These newer closed caption devices include cup-holder-mounted electronic displays and wireless glasses which display caption text in front of the wearer's eyes. Bridge devices are also available to enable the use of Rear Window systems. As of mid-2010, the remaining challenge to the wide introduction of accessibility in digital cinema is the industry-wide transition to SMPTE DCP, the standardized packaging method for very high quality, secure distribution of digital movies.