Apple TV Captions
John Gruber (2024, Mastodon):
This made me think there has to be a better way to toggle captions than manually swiping and clicking on the Apple TV remote touchpad.
Turns out there are two better ways:
If you use the Control Center Apple TV remote control on your iPhone, there’s a dedicated “CC” button.
In tvOS, go to Settings → Accessibility → Accessibility Shortcut, and set it to “Closed Captions”. Now you can just triple-click the Menu/Back button on the remote to toggle captions. (On older Apple TV remotes, the button is labelled “Menu”; on the new remote, it’s labelled with a “<”.)
[…]
You can also toggle captions using Siri on the remote: “Turn on captions” or “Turn off captions” (or use the word “subtitles”). And the coolest feature: “What did he/she/they just say?”, which rewinds 15 seconds and temporarily turns on captions.
I meant to post this at the time. In the interim, Apple added a feature in tvOS 18 where pressing Back will automatically show subtitles until you return to to the original play position.
Netflix today announced that it is introducing a new subtitle option that only shows subtitles for spoken dialogue, aimed at those who don't need captions, but prefer to watch movies and TV shows with the subtitles turned on.
According to Netflix, nearly half of all viewing hours on the streaming service in the U.S. happen with the subtitles or captions on, which is why it is debuting the new setting.
Some of this is probably for accessibility reasons or because of situations where you can’t turn on the audio. But, also, it seems like newer movies and shows are not mixed well.
Traditional closed captions are still available, of course. Those are labeled “English CC” whereas this new option is simply labeled “English” (or whatever your preferred language is).
[…]
The performance style of actors in current TV shows and movies is more naturalistic and less elocutive than it once was, so characters are more likely to speak softly. Streaming services compress the audio more vigorously than is common in physical media, which can cause problems with intelligibility.
I’m not sure I buy this compression explanation. How much bandwidth could they be saving on audio compared with what the video’s using?
And it would be amazing if they better aligned text appearing to when lines are delivered. I'm kind of annoyed when my reading is ahead of what's happening in the scene. 😬
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And could they please add more options for customizing subtitle styles on tvOS? More fonts please!
The "What did they say" idea was good enough that I scripted it into my preferred media player years ago. Pressing h (for "Huh?") jumps back directly to the previous subtitle position and enables them for a few seconds. Shift H does the same but enables them forever.
I am real curious where the workflow has gone wrong such that we now have the problem that a lot of shows are too dark to the point where we can't see them and voice is so low and mumbly that we can't make out what most people are saying.
And yet the BBC iPlayer app on AppleTV *still* doesn't support subtitles! From an accessibility point of view, I just don't understand how the BBC have been allowed to get away with that.
Also, I couldn't agree more with ProfessorPlasma. Why is it that I have to have subs on almost all the time now? I was starting to think it was an age thing, but my kids do it too!
Re: compression: I also doubt data compression plays a role here, but perhaps the author could be referring to _audio compression_, the process of adjusting the mixing of audio channels. IIRC in a well-done job the channels will be mixed according to how much air there is between the speakers and the audience (i.e. it'll differ between a large theater, a small room, and headphones), and an inappropriate mix will result in awfully loud explosions and muffled talk.
I have the most recent version of the AppleTV remote and the < button takes me back to the Home Screen. Doesn’t turn CC on or off
I'm one of those people who likes captions to be on, even though I have no hearing problem. It lets me follow dialog when other people are talking in the room, and sometimes helps me understand what a character is saying when he's speaking too quietly or with a thick accent.
But I don't need or want to see captions to tell me that there's "dramatic music" or "sounds of thunder" or "door closing" or other things that the deaf would find important.
On some DVD/BD discs, you have the choice - you can select "English" or "English SDH". But most only have one (usually SDH).
I applaud Netflix for deciding to make both available. I hope others will follow suit.
Yes finally, dialog only captions! No more music descriptions etc. Though it can be handy sometimes when the sound carries meaning.
As far as the audio goes, for one I've noticed that streaming services don't care that you don't have 5.1, you're getting the 5.1 mix and if you don't have a center channel speaker you aren't going to hear any dialog at more than a whisper. They simply don't send the plain stereo mix to anything. Netflix did for a while on some shows have the option to specifically select the stereo audio channel and it's far more audible.
Pretty sure this is what the Boost Dialog setting in Apple TV is doing, just boosting center channel.
