REQUIREMENTS AS TO STANDARDS AND PRACTICE APPLICABLE TO CRAWLS AND CAPTIONS IN TELEVISION PROGRAMMES

IN TELEVISION PROGRAMMES

SUBSIDIARY LEGISLATION 350.20

REQUIREMENTS AS TO STANDARDS AND

PRACTICE APPLICABLE TO CRAWLS AND

CAPTIONS IN TELEVISION PROGRAMMES

22nd March, 2007

GOVERNMENT NOTICE 263 of 2007.

The title of these requirements is the Requirements as to

Standards and Practice applicable to Crawls and Captions in

Television Programmes.

Introduction

1.1

These Requirements as to Standards and Practice have

been made by the Broadcasting Authority in virtue of article 20(3)

of the Broadcasting Act, Chapter 350 of the Laws of Malta.

1.2

The regulation of crawls, captions and rolling credits is a

problem that has been bothering regulators for quite some time and

not pertaining to local broadcasting but also to many countries.

Credits scroll vary quickly sometimes at speeds that sighted

viewers can hardly follow. There is an increasing tendency in

television advertising to produce visually enigmatic commercials

which omit the verbal identification of the product.

General Requirements for Crawls, Captions and Rolling

Credits

2.1

Basic Text Display

2.1.1 Subtitle legibility studies result in the following

requirements

i.

Teletext characters should be displayed in double

height and mixed (upper and lower) case;

ii.

Words within a subtitle should be separated by a single

space;

iii. To aid readability, text can be justified left, centre or

right depending on speaker position;

iv.

The standard punctuation of print should be used.

Punctuation gives valuable clues to syntactic structure

and must be carefully displayed in order to be

effective. One means of enhancing the effectiveness of

punctuation is by the use of a single space before

exclamation marks and question marks, after commas,

colons, semi-colons and mid-subtitle full-stops, on

both sides of dashes (but not mid-word hyphens),

before opening brackets and inverted commas and

after closing brackets and inverted commas.

2.2

Text Height

IN TELEVISION PROGRAMMES

2.2.1 TV tube screens vary in size and are measured

diagonally. In teletext services there are only 24 rows of text per

page in each screen and each row has only 40 characters. Whatever

the size of the screen, these parameters cannot be exceeded - the

number of rows cannot be increased and neither the number of text

characters in each line. In teletext services 10% of the screen all

around the teletext page, [i.e. 20% of the screen’s height and 20%

of the screen’s width] is not available as opposed to 5% in normal

TV layout which is taken up by the TV-set’s frame around its tube.

2.2.2 This results in a teletext page which uses only 80% of

the screen layout divided into 24 rows where each row is 3.33% of

to tal screen size. Th e be st w ay of sett in g t ext h eigh t is b y

determining this as a percentage in relation to screen size for both

types of TV-aspect ratios.

2.2.3 In a 32-inch (81.3 cm) wide TV screen, its dimensions

are 19.2" (48.8 cm) height by 25.6" (65.0 cm) in width. Setting a

text standard size of not less than 3.3% of screen size would equal

to a text height of 0.64" [1.6 cm] text.

2.3

Colour

2.3.1 The majority of text-background colour combinations

are not satisfactory for subtitling, being insufficiently legible. The

most legible text colours on a black background are white, yellow,

cyan and green. Use of magenta, red and blue should be avoided on

a black background. Of the combinations with coloured

background, the most legible are blue on white, white on blue, red

on white, white on red, cyan on blue and blue on cyan. Of these,

white on red, white on blue and cyan on blue are preferable.

2.4

Formatting

2.4.1 A maximum subtitle length of two rows is

recommended. Three lines may be used if it is felt confident that no

important picture information will be obscured. The normally

accepted position for subtitles/crawl is towards the bottom of the

screen, but in obeying this convention it is most important to avoid

obscuring "on-screen" captions, any part of a speaker’s mouth or

any other important activity. Certain special programme types carry

a lot of information in the lower part of the screen (e.g. snooker,

where most of the activity tends to centre around the black ball)

and in such cases top-screen positioning will be a more acceptable

standard. Subtitles should be displayed horizontally, and ideally,

each subtitle should also comprise a single complete sentence.

2.5

Timing and Synchronisation

2.5.1 It is crucial that crawls are displayed for a sufficient

length of time for viewers to read them. The crawl presentation rate

for pre-recorded programmes should not normally exceed 140

w o r ds p e r m in ut e . P re s e n tat io n rat e s w il l dep e nd up on t he

programme content. For example, real-time subtitling

documentaries where the speaker is not on screen, or chat shows

which have a higher text complexity than drama.

2.6

Leading and Lagging

IN TELEVISION PROGRAMMES

2.6.1 The target point for synchronisation should be at

naturally occurring pauses in speech-sentence boundaries, or

changes of scene. However, there are bound to be cases where this

is either impractical or inapplicable. Recent research indicates the

following

i.

Monologue Material: For hard-of-hearing people

viewing programmes which consist of mainly of

monologue, research has shown that perfect

synchronisation is not an absolute necessity and delays

of up to six seconds do not affect information

retention. The same is true of leading subtitles

(providing that the first subtitle of a long speech is in

synchrony). It should still be recognised, however, that

some viewers use subtitles to support heard speech and

will require synchronisation. Therefore, the technique

should not be over-used.

ii.

Dramatic Scenes: For drama and programmes with

continuous changes of shot, subtitles which lag behind

dialogue or commentary by more than two seconds

should be avoided.

2.7

Shot Changes

2.7.1 Besides the general recommendation for subtitle/speech

synchronisation, there are certain other aspects of the television

picture which influence subtitle timing. Subtitles that are allowed

to over-run shot changes can cause considerable perceptual

confusion and should be avoided. Eye-movement research shows

that camera-cuts in the middle of a subtitle presentation cause the

viewer to return to the beginning of a partially read subtitle and to

start re-reading. In practice, it is recognised that the frequency and

speed of shot changes in many programmes present serious

probl em s fo r th e sub ti tl er. A sub ti tle sho uld , th ere fore, b e

ìanchoredî over a shot change by at lease one second to allow the

reader time to adjust to the new picture. Shot changes normally

reflect the beginning or end of speech. The subtitler should,

therefore attempt to insert a subtitle on a shot change when this is

in synchrony with the speaker.

2.7.2

General rules for dealing with camera-cuts are as

follows

i.

Avoid inserting a subtitle less than one second before a

camera-cut and removing a subtitles less than one

second after a camera-cut.

ii.

Attempt to insert a subtitle in exact synchrony with a

camera-cut.

2.7.3 Camera fades and pans do not produce the same

perceptual effect as camera-cuts, and accordingly need not

influence the subtitler in the same way.

2.7.4 Major scene changes can cause the same problems as

shot changes within a scene. A particular difficulty arises when a

speaker ’s last line in a scene, especially a vital punch line, is

IN TELEVISION PROGRAMMES

followed instantaneously by a scene change. In this case, the

subtitle should be removed before the scene change to avoid visual

confusion.

2.8

Voice Overs

2.8.1 Where a voice-over is used, the person reading out a text

should do so in such a way that the viewer can comprehend the

exact meaning of such text and the voice-over is not read at such

speed as to make it unintelligible to the viewer.