In a move that will be welcomed by deaf viewers, the BBC has announced that it has begun trialling subtitles on its live channels on BBC iPlayer.
It has long been a source of frustration for deaf viewers that only pre-recorded, on demand programmes have so far featured subtitles when viewed online, so this is a major breakthrough.
That said, it’s clear that this is a trial, and the subtitles don’t look quite right just yet. We’ve just tried out BBC1 via the iPlayer, and this is how the subtitles currently look:
The BBC press release says:
In a first for any major video on-demand service in the world, the BBC has begun trialling subtitles for live channels on BBC iPlayer. To date, subtitles have only been available for on-demand programmes.
The trial, currently available on PC and Mac computers* will allow deaf and hearing-impaired viewers to watch more BBC TV programmes wherever and whenever they want. The BBC will test and improve the feature over the coming months before it is rolled out to BBC iPlayer’s app for mobiles and tablets – and over time to Connected TVs.
With almost 2m programmes a day or 20% of all on-demand programmes watched using subtitles on BBC iPlayer – there is already huge demand for this feature to be extended to live content too.
Gareth Ford Williams, head of accessibility for the BBC said: “The BBC is already a world-leading provider of accessible services– but we know there is always more to do. We want to ensure our content and services are accessible to everyone – and this trial will give viewers who are deaf or hearing-impaired access to even more programming than ever before.”
Dr. Roger Wicks from Action on Hearing Loss said: “We welcome this breakthrough from the BBC, which is a huge step in the right direction for full accessibility for people who are deaf or have a hearing loss. Our Subtitle It! campaign has been working towards increasing online broadcasters’ use of subtitles on online content and we’re delighted that the BBC is leading the way by trialling this new feature.”
The trial subtitles are available on the following channels:
BBC One HD http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/live/bbcone?area=england
BBC One Northern Ireland (HD) http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/live/bbcone?area=northern_ireland
BBC One Scotland (HD) http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/live/bbcone?area=scotland
BBC One Wales (HD) http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/live/bbcone?area=wales
BBC Two (HD) http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/live/bbctwo
BBC Four (HD) http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/live/bbcfour
CBBC (HD) http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/live/cbbc
CBeebies (HD) http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/live/cbeebies
BBC News (HD) http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/live/bbcnewsFor access to subtitles on BBC Two in Wales, Scotland and N. Ireland go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/live/bbctwo?area=england or select England from the ‘Change location’ menu.
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Sue
July 28, 2016
I’m probably being very thick….but I thought you could only watch ‘catch up’on iPlayer. How do you watch it live and why would you need to?
Helen Mellor
July 28, 2016
Really hope it works – it is a source of frustration for my 14yo daughter that the subtitles don’t work on the live shows, particularly Strictly! We find subtitles don’t work properly on live shows watches on catch up either.
Linda Richards
July 28, 2016
It should be made clear that the BBC do not provide the subtitles themselves. This – as are all their ‘access’ services – is sub-contracted out to external firm Ericsson (formerly known as Red Bee Media.)
New developments are good but I wish the initial and key provision of subtitles for both live and pre-recorded programmes were significantly better than they currently are.
I’d also much prefer more investment work into a +1 channel option for the BBC channels. This was mentioned as ‘coming soon’ but hasn’t materialised. Is there any update on this?
Mr Gareth Ford-Williams
July 29, 2016
The live channels on on the iPlayer can be accessed by clicking on the ‘Channels’ link at the top/middle of the homepage. Not all are subtitled yet as there are still a lot of technical challenges we haven’t yet overcome. The list of links provided in the press release (see above) will take you directly to the HD channels that are supported.
This isn’t the technical solution we will be using in the longer-term as it has been built see if we can seamlessly connect the TV subtitle distribution systems, which have one set of technologies and standards, with the online world, which have a completely different set of technology standards. Not all the metadata, the information that determines the; size, font, position, layout etc. of the subtitles have been retained, hence the rather odd appearance. The good thing is that this type of prototyping helps us test the system and understand where problems are so we can identify the changes necessary in the design of the next version.
BTW Ericsson are contracted by the BBC for our broadcast and iPlayer first subtitle content however the work on improvements in quality and distribution online is either a joint effort by the BBC and Ericsson or part of the BBC’s R&D or product development teams.
Ericsson also have their own programme of improvement. For example their new Subito software: http://www.ericsson.com/broadcastandmedia/what-we-think/blog/the-challenges-of-live-subtitling/
There have also been changes implemented by Ericsson and the BBC that have impacted positively on the quality of subtitles on live programmes, with as many as possible news packages being subtitled in advance of broadcast, and when interviews or live links etc are reused during the day and were first broadcast with live subs, they are then re-subtitled as pre-recoded. The upshot of this is that BBC News is now a mixture of live programme and some pre-recorded packages, which lowers the risk of live subtitling errors within the programme.
I’m not going to give any spoilers away but hopefully there are some more announcements coming soon on projects that will improve the quality further. There is an ongoing programme of work in this respect and there are projects focusing on; improvements in live subtitle quality, distribution of subtitles by IP, subtitles in VR (that don’t give you motion sickness), subtitling in games, subtitle quality monitoring, subtitle generation for off-broadcast content and subtitle design.
The problem with doing innovative stuff is that it doesn’t always work perfectly first, second, third… time. This is why it has taken so long to get the live streamed subs this far on iPlayer. No-one has done this successfully before so we have no other service to learn from and it really isn’t as technically straightforward as it seems.
To give you an idea of some of the work that is ongoing, here are some of the more recent publicly available BBC’s research papers on the subject:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/projects/live-subtitle-quality
http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2015-01-subtitles-in-an-ip-world-1
http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/publications/whitepaper295
http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2014-10-tvx2014-short-paper-enhancing-subtitles
There’s also the development of EBU-TT-D, a universal technical standard for subtitling. Both technical groups that have developed this (@ European Broadcast Union and World Wide Web Consortium) have been co-chaired by the BBC. This standard will enabled more subtitles to be delivered on more platforms in the future, with the potential to do new and cool stuff to improve the user experience.
https://tech.ebu.ch/news/2016/01/timed-text-subtitling-receives-e
I hope this gives you all a bit more insight into the scale of work being undertaken by the BBC and its partners.
Arthur
August 8, 2016
Actually, BBC is not the first. Since a half year the Dutch national broadcasting firm NPO provides live subtitling in the NPO app.