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The difference between subtitles and captions

07.13.2016 by Hayley Rollason //

A small difference that can affect your video strategy

You can’t read a video marketing article or listicle without it mentioning the importance of captions and subtitles and it is understandable to see why. They are an easy way to make your video content accessible to everyone; the hearing impaired, international audiences, and the thumb-scrolling viewer who doesn’t have the attention span to activate the sound on an autoplay video, I’m not belittling the thumb scroller here – I am guilty as anyone (learn more about the rise of Designer Subtitles and how to make the most of them). It means that video creators, more and more, are forced to provide captions and subtitles if they want the best possible chance of their content gaining traction and engagement.

Blog title: the difference between Subtitles and Captions

Subtitles tend to refer to the text on a screen that translates the video content into a different language. Think of the classic yellow or white sans-serif with a black stroke.

Example of the classic yellow subtitles in Italian
Example of the classic yellow subtitles in Italian

Captions, on the other hand, tend to be used to help the hearing impaired enjoy video content. Used primarily on television, think tele-text,  they are usually formatted as white text on a black box, and are delayed by a second or two. You can read more about captions and the pros and cons of its two subcategories in my post; Open Versus Closed Captions.

Example of classic white on black closed captions
Example of classic white on black closed captions

While it might seem like I am toying with semantics here, this difference can be important in navigating your video distribution platform, communicating with your video production team and ensuring that your content is fully accessible to your audiences.

Categories // Motion Graphics, Social Media, Video Marketing, Web Video Tags // captions, closed captions, designer captions, facebook, facebook video, instagram, instagram video, open captions, subtitles, tele text, transcription, twitter, twitter video, vimeo, youtube

Designer Subtitles

07.10.2016 by Hayley Rollason //

How autoplay is changing the way we look at subtitles and captions

You can’t read a video marketing article (or listicle) without it mentioning the importance of captions and subtitles and it is understandable to see why. They are an easy way to make your video content accessible for everyone; the hearing impaired, international audiences, and the thumb-scrolling viewer who doesn’t have the attention span to activate the sound on an autoplay video (I’m not belittling the thumb-scroller here – I am guilty as anyone).

Designer Subtitles

It means that video creators, more and more, are forced to provide captions and subtitles (you can read my post about The Difference Between Subtitles and Captions to learn more) if they want the best possible chance of their content gaining traction and engagement. As captions and subtitles have become necessary creators have started getting creative. Before progressing let me clarify that we are specifically discussing open captions here as they allow for a designer touch, being rendered into the footage – you can read about the Open Versus Closed Captions to learn more about the differences, pros and cons.

With the widespread adoption and embrace of businesses and brands using online video and in turn autoplay, soundless video the opportunity has arisen for brands to redesign captions and subtitles. This offers audiences another, albeit small, way to be exposed to their brand, but I think cleverly designed captions do more than just project colours, font and logos onto audiences. They portray a sophistication and understanding of your audience’s viewing/online experience, they tell your audience that you aren’t “doing social” for the sake of it or “doing video” for the views – you take the platform, your content and fan engagement seriously.

Stylised text is not a recent occurrence in film, Woody Allen’s 1977 Annie Hall used subtitles to highlight what the characters are thinking and throughout the last couple of decades the film and television industry has seen enormous growth in the use stylised subtitles to take on another textual element, texting. Being creative and using the context of your video to introduce text, whatever the purpose, will keep the audience engaged with your content and able to get the most out of it.

This video explores how texting and the internet have been represented in film and how it has changed over the years and whilst it doesn’t directly speak to subtitles it does illustrate how creatively integrating text can be seamless. Enjoy!

Categories // Motion Graphics, Social Media, Video Marketing, Web Video Tags // autoplay video, captions, closed captions, facebook video, instagram video, open captions, subtitles, video marketing, youtube

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