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Unfortunately, only a small minority of video recorders are capable of recording subtitles so before buying one make sure it is one of those that does.
Subtitles are provided on programming on our on demand service Channel 4 Streaming available via the app on a range of devices.
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Subtitles for on-demand content are supported on the Channel 4 Streaming website, the iPhone and iPad app, the Android app, YouView, Playstation, Xbox, Roku, Amazon Fire, Freeview Play, Freely, Samsung devices and on our content available on Sky and Virgin. Subtitles are supported on live content for all platforms with the exception of Samsung and XBox.
Subtitles are also available on downloads on the iOS and Android apps.
99.9% of the content on the C4 Streaming service has the subtitles feature.
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Our aim is for the listings to be as accurate as possible and we do not want to disappoint our viewers. We send out a list of the programmes we intend to subtitle to the magazines, newspapers, television electronic programme guides and text services. The information we supply to the listings organisations is up to date when it is issued and should be accurate. We also issue updates when there are schedule changes.
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When a show is live or completed very close to transmission, it is not possible to prepare the subtitles in advance. To provide subtitles on live programmes (or on programmes completed very close to transmission), we employ a technique known as broadcast stenography or stenocaptioning.
Stenography is a type of machine-written shorthand based on phonetics, as used to record proceedings in courts and for parliamentary committees. Our stenographers employ the same technique, with the difference that the shorthand outline is translated by computer and transmitted instantly to air. Our stenographers are very experienced, but when writing previously unseen material at speeds of up to 240 words per minute, some mistakes are inevitable. They may occur because a word may come up that has not been fed into the stenographer’s dictionary, in which case the computer will supply a "phonetic" translation.
Sometimes the speed at which they work makes it inevitable that a finger will be in the wrong place, and a simple word will translate as something completely different. Mistakes may in fact represent only one finger error or “typo”. We also use speech recognition technology to provide live subtitling. A speech subtitler listens to the commentary and "re-speaks" it into software which recognises the speech and translates it into subtitles. Speech recognition produces a different range of errors to stenography as the software attempts to "make sense" of the sounds it hears, so instead of seeing phonetic translations, words may appear out of context.
The average person speaks over 240 words a minute and although this is fine for the average listener, it is much too fast for anyone reading subtitles, especially with a picture to watch at the same time. Subtitlers, therefore, have to reduce the number of words that are said so that the subtitles can be read in the time it takes the speaker to say them. They must also synchronise the subtitles with the soundtrack and make it clear who is saying what. In order to achieve all of this, it is sometimes necessary to edit the soundtrack and careful yet quick decisions have to be made about how best to do this.
With all this in mind, a small delay between the words spoken on screen and the subtitles appearing is inevitable. We aim to keep this delay as short as possible, but it is often more noticeable on an unscripted programme such as Big Brother where often several people are talking at once. Subtitles on live programmes are therefore not precisely synchronised with the soundtrack, as you may expect in pre-recorded programmes. Our live team constantly work towards eliminating errors and consistently achieve extremely accurate results across a wide range of programmes. However, live programming presents some of the biggest challenges to live subtitlers and some mistakes are unfortunately inevitable.
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Where time allows us to prepare subtitles in advance, we aim to edit the subtitles to a comfortable reading speed that allows viewers time to read the subtitle and still have time to look at the pictures. When programmes are live, or are completed very close to transmission time, we do not always have time to edit the text to a comfortable reading speed. On these occasions, if the text were to be presented verbatim in blocks, each block would flash on and off too quickly to be read. In this situation, we use the word-by-word or "scrolling" format for presenting subtitles. This technique allows verbatim subtitles to be shown in a way that, although very fast, are not so fast as to be impossible to read.
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Our aim is for the listings to be as accurate as possible and we do not want to disappoint our viewers. We send out a list of the programmes we intend to subtitle to the magazines, newspapers, television electronic programme guides and text services. The information we supply to the listings organisations is up-to-date when it is issued and should be accurate. We also issue updates when there are schedule changes to ensure the Electronic Programme Guide is as up-to-date as possible. Very occasionally, we are not able to subtitle the programmes we had hoped to. This may be due to a number of reasons such as technical problems or the unexpectedly late delivery of a programme. We do appreciate that this causes great disappointment.
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On iOS and Android, content can be watched with Subtitles where a speech bubble icon is displayed.
Most of the content on the C4 Streaming iOS app has the subtitles feature, including on demand and live content.
Programmes can be filtered by a ‘Subtitled’ option within the Search function and within each programme category.
Unfortunately, we are currently unable to offer subtitles if you are casting using Chromecast, but we are looking into this.
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Content can be watched with Subtitles where a speech bubble icon is displayed. Subtitles are activated by selecting this icon.
If the speech bubble icon is not displayed, this means that there are no subtitles available for that programme. However, 99.9% of the content on the C4 Streaming website has the subtitles feature, including video on demand and live content.
Programmes can also be filtered by a ‘Subtitled’ option within categories.
Unfortunately, we are currently unable to offer subtitles if you are casting using Chromecast, but we are looking into this.
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For pre-recorded programmes, subtitlers edit the speech and make a careful decision about where to place the subtitles on the screen in order that no vital part of the picture is hidden. However, because the visual images that programme makers use tend to fill up the whole screen, there are inevitably occasions when the subtitles, wherever they are placed, end up covering a part of the picture that a viewer might wish to look at. We generally place our subtitles at the bottom of the screen because they are less obtrusive there and it is at this level that they are most comfortably read. However, for some programmes we deliberately choose to place the subtitles in a different position to avoid covering vital information. We do aim to avoid people’s mouths so that viewers who lip-read can do so. However, subtitles can appear at slightly different levels depending on whether you are watching on analogue, DTT or satellite.
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We provide subtitles on Channel 4HD and E4HD on Freeview, Sky and Virgin.
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