Caption timing

[treeowl]

Is it just me, or is FOX really bad at timing captions? It seems a lot of times the captions flash by so fast no one could ever read them, and they aren't even synchronized properly.

Comments

[inoru_no_hoshi]

Live broadcast captions are never synchronised properly. It's a source of never-ending frustration and amusement (frustration especially when they re-show something at a later date, and they couldn't be assed to synchronise the captions. ARGH).

I can't actually speak to whether FOX is bad with captioning in general though, as I don't have a TV/etc here, but. :(

[treeowl]

Long delayed response: I basically never watch live-captioned programs, both because live captions are horrible and because I generally prefer to read my news in the paper or online. I also never voluntarily watch Fox news. So I'm really only referring to shows where there is no excuse for bad captions.

Side notes having nothing to do with Fox:

1. If some bits of the show/film are subtitled because they're in another language, it's rather annoying to have the captionist copy the subtitles into the captions.


2. If people are speaking another language and it isn't subtitled, it's NOT OKAY to put a translation in the captions, and it's also NOT OKAY to just type something stupid like speaking in native language. If you don't know how to transcribe that language, find someone who does!

[brigittefires]

I actually appreciate when they have the captions a couple seconds behind, because I don't use them all the time. When they have them synchronized in such a way that people deem "properly," they are totally useless to me because they are gone before I recognize I need to read them and then try to do so.

[brigittefires]

This of course has no bearing on them flashing by so fast as to be unreadable, that's clearly not the part I'm commenting on.

[treeowl]

Obviously the correct thing is for them to be timed the way most people consider correct, but for every TV/cable box/DVD player/whatever to allow you to insert a time offset for the captions. By the way, if you want to watch on your computer, I'm pretty sure VLC actually lets you do this. Of course, you'll have to dig through its 1.5 bazillion options to find it...