Screen Brings 4K Subtitling To IBC

Subtitling pioneers Screen will be bringing their subtitle transmission system PolistreamBLACK to this year's IBC, demonstrating its new 4K & OTT subtitling and SecondScreen triggering capabilities.
Screen's Polistream Black transmission system provides a solution to the problem of poor subtitles in an increasingly HD world.
The company has harnessed the scalability of its Polistream Black system to transmit 4K subtitles in readiness.
Screen's Sales and Marketing director, Gary Glover said: "We were aware during the HD rollout that some broadcasters were focussed heavily on the quality of the pictures and yet had considered less the issue of destroying the content with poor subtitles; with the astonishing quality of 4K it seems to be more of a distraction.
"We strongly feel that if you're going to offer your viewers the extraordinary experience of watching 4K content, then why devalue that experience for the hard-of-hearing or foreign language speakers with subtitles that fail to live up to intended exceptional presentation?"
The Polistream BLACK system from Screen uses DVB Bitmaps at sub-pixel level to generate subtitles, with the decoder technology producing them in 4K.
Mr Glover added: "We know that decoder manufacturers are working on 4K too and so would urge them to talk to us with regards to testing 4K streams."
Most standard web-video players use a simple timed-text file for OTT subtitling (e.g. SRT for YouTube, DFXP for Flash and QuickTime and SMIL for Windows Media Player).
For accurate and consistent presentation of subtitles on web and OTT content, Screen saw the need for a different solution to overcome "potential uncertainties".
The benefits of the Screen OTT web subtitle system include:

• The producer has full creative control over style and position


• Text is clear as it's not affected by the video compression


• It allows the viewer to select the language or turn subtitles off


• It uses standard subtitle file formats


• It can automatically adjust a broadcast version for the web via EDL. Broadcasters can also link their content with connected devices such as tablets and smartphones.

Character and presenter biographies can be activated for instance; advertising around product placement and interactive advert break triggering can all be efficiently employed.
www.screensystems.tv
(IT/JP)