Apple TV Source - List of Closed-captioned movies now available

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List of Closed-captioned movies now available

Written by Luck Kanthatham

Monday, 28 January 2008

As promised, I have posted a list of closed-captioned movies from the iTunes Store. I know it's been a week since I promised this list. I apologize for the delay. The list is just a straight-forward one with just the movie title and the link to that movie on iTunes. It is available under the "Resources" menu located on top of the page. The RSS feed should be availalble later tonight.

There is another exciting news in regards to adding closed captioning to iTunes movies. I have received the following email from my reader, Andy Foster:

Reader and advocate extraordinaire Janice Schacter has kept in touch with the folks at Apple about their support for captioning. She has had some very exciting news from Mike Shebanek, Apple's Senior Product Manager of Worldwide Product Marketing

Mike noted that Closed Captioning playback is included in Apple's QuickTime software, iTunes, and in the latest software for the iPod, and iPhone. Last week at Macwold, Apple announced a new AppleTV that also supports closed captioned playback. The software for the new AppleTV will also be available to existing AppleTV owners as a software update over the Internet.

Now there's also captioned content on iTunes! Apple has also introduced closed captioned movies on iTunes, so you can now buy or rent movies with closed captioning. Here's an example using "The Italian Job". Note the "cc" logo in the last line of the description.

Not every movie on iTunes is closed captioned yet, but Mike said that Apple is continuing to work with the movie companies to add many more titles as quickly as possible.

I know that the list is extremely (and embarrassingly) short as compared to the amount of movies available on iTunes. However, I'm sure that the list will grow exponentially in no time.

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Comments (7)

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written by Kitty , January 28, 2008

I'm glad to see they are moving that direction. My deaf mom loves the technology behind the apple tv, but wasn't going to get one until cc became prevalent on it.

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written by Humberto Abiel Garza , January 29, 2008

What about SAP?
(Second audio programming)
Any news about it?
Is it even supported?

This a feature could very helpful in my house, since my wife and kids prefer watching movies in their natal language, which is spanish.

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written by Luck Kanthatham , January 29, 2008

Humberto, iTunes currently does not support SAP. I don't know if there is any plan for this. I tried doing a search on this but no luck so far.

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written by Ralph F , January 30, 2008

As I just mentioned over at DeafMac.com, this is great news. Lack of captioning has kept me from buying a lot of movies & shows from the iTS instead of getting them on DVD. This might also just nudge me towards getting an AppleTV.

The question remains, though; what about already-purchased movies? Will there be a free upgrade to the CC versions for those of us who have already purchased them?

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written by Luck Kanthatham , January 30, 2008

Good question, Ralph. However, I think that question can be answered best by Apple tech support.

Let's hope that the list will expand quickly soon. I have been checking iTunes every night.

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written by Thierry , March 27, 2008

I don't know much about SAP, but what I can tell you, from my latest research and tests is that you can encode two spoken languages in a movie and switch from one to the other, in iTunes.

I've done this using the great HandBrake (http://handbrake.fr/) application.

Once you have chosen the two languages and finished encoding the movie, just add it to your iTunes library and read it.

In the CONTROLS menu, you'll see an AUDIO & SUBTITLES item with a sub menu allowing you to choose from the languages encoded in the file. The languages are even clearly labelled (in my case, I can choose between Enflish and French).

It works during playback and you switch at any time, as often as you like.

My only regret is that this function only works in iTunes and is not recognized by the iPhone / iPod Touch and these devices only read the first language encoded.

My other problem is that I would like to take advantage of the Closed Captioned ability of iTunes and the iPhone / iPod Touch to allow my children to turn on french subtitles in case the english is too difficult for them.

BUT even if I finally found an application that can extract the subtitles from my DVD into .srt files, I could not find a free (or at least reasonnably priced, ie. not costing hundreds or even thousands of dollars) application that will add these to the video file in the right format so that iTunes will recognize it.

The only working solution I've found is using the same HandBrake to encode the subtitles in the video directly. But it "burns" the subtitles into the images, so it can't be turned off (obviously) and it's not very elegant or pretty.

Any one has a solution (usable on a Mac, of course) to transform subtiles (namely a .srt file) into embedded CC inside a video file ? That would make my children's day. And certainly a lot of people's too.

Don't hesitate to contact me if I can help you with the aforementioned procedures or if you have more informations.

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written by Thierry , March 27, 2008

(follow up)

I'm sorry, I forgot to give you the name of the application that transforms DVD subtitles into .srt files.

It's D-Subtitler that can be found there : http://www.objectifmac.com/dsubtitler.php

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