[whatwg] Forced subtitles

[Silvia Pfeiffer]

Hi Jonathan,

All of what you're saying is indeed how it would work.

The existing mean of publishing subtitles and the developer choice to add a
@default attribute on a track that a developer wants activated by default
is not affected by a new @kind=forced. You can still do all the things that
you're taking about. @kind=forced kicks in only if neither the developer
nor the user has made any explicit choice about which track to activate.
Also, Eric's suggestion to activate the forced subtitle track that equals
the language of the video seems to meet your suggestion.

Silvia.



On Tue, Apr 16, 2013 at 7:25 AM, Jonathan Garbee <jonathan at garbee.me> wrote:

> I think it should be up to the developer to chose the default subtitles
> they want. What if someone is trying to localize a page, and the default
> subtitle is always English when they want Spanish? If not specified, the
> default subtitle should be the language specified of the page or video.
> But, if a specific subtitle language is told to the browser it should use
> that.
>
>
> On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 7:35 PM, Eric Carlson <eric.carlson at apple.com
> >wrote:
>
> >
> > On Apr 11, 2013, at 3:54 PM, Silvia Pfeiffer <silviapfeiffer1 at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > I think Eric is right - we need a new @kind="forced" or
> > @kind="forcedSubtitles" value on track elements, because they behave
> > differently from the subtitle kind:
> > > * are not listed in a track menu
> > > * are turned on by browser when no other subtitle or caption track is
> on
> > > * multiple forced subtitles tracks can be on at the same time (see
> > discussion at https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=21667 )
> > >
> > > I only wonder how the browser is meant to identify for which language
> it
> > needs to turn on the forced subtitles. If it should depend on the
> language
> > of the audio track of the video rather than the browser's default
> language
> > setting, maybe it will need to be left to the server to pick which tracks
> > to list and all forced tracks are on, no matter what? Did you have any
> > ideas on this, Eric?
> > >
> >   I believe it should be the language of the video's primary audio track,
> > because forced subtitles are enabled in a situation where the user can
> > presumably understand the dialog being spoken in the track's language and
> > has not indicated a preference for captions or subtitles.
> >
> > eric
> >
> >
> > >
> > > On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 4:08 AM, Eric Carlson <eric.carlson at apple.com>
> > wrote:
> > >
> > >  In working with real-world content with in-band subtitle tracks, I
> have
> > realized that the spec doesn't accommodate "forced" subtitles. Forced
> > subtitles are used when a video has dialog or text in a language that is
> > different from the main language. For example in the Lord of the Rings,
> > dialog in Elvish is subtitled so those of us that don't speak Elvish can
> > understand.
> > >
> > >  This is only an issue for users that do not already have
> > subtitles/captions enabled, because standard caption/subitle tracks are
> > expected to mix the translations into the other captions in the track. In
> > other words, if I enable an English caption track I will get English
> > captions for the dialog spoken in English and the dialog spoken in
> Elvish.
> > However, users that do not typically have subtitles enabled also need to
> > have the Elvish dialog translated so subtitle providers typically
> provide a
> > second subtitle track with *only* the forced subtitles.
> > >
> > >   UAs are expected to automatically enable a forced-only subtitle track
> > when no other caption/subtitle track is visible and there is a
> forced-only
> > track in the same language of the primary audio track. This means that
> when
> > I watch a version of LOTR that has been dubbed into French and I do not
> > have a subtitle or caption track enabled, the UA will automatically show
> > French forced subtitles if they are available.
> > >
> > >  Because forced subtitles are meant to be enabled automatically by the
> > UA, it is essential that the UA is able to differentiate between "normal"
> > and "forced" subtitles. It is also important because forced subtitles are
> > not typically listed in the caption menu, again because the captions in
> > them are also in the "normal" subtitles/captions.
> > >
> > >  I therefore propose that we add a new @kind value for forced
> subtitles.
> > "Forced" is a widely used term in the industry, so I think "forced" is
> the
> > appropriate value.
> > >
> > > eric
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
>