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Has anyone done captions for their movie?

"All videos published in the United States must have English captions."
I'm finding out that Amazon Video Direct requires captions. Uggggh!!!!! Always something!
I was surprised to find out that it is a whole ordeal to get captions into your movie. One company charges $7 per minute with a $70 minimum order! That's $630 for a 90 minute movie!

And do they embed captions into the video file or is it a separate file they give you?
 
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I used Distribber for my close captioning; they charge $5.50/minute for clients and $6.00/minute for non-clients; I don't believe that they have a minimum order size. I was not given a separate file - the captioning was part of the file that was submitted to Amazon Prime & iTunes. I don't know anything about the technical aspects though.
 
The only problem is that AFAIK with Amazon you can only upload 12 minutes max. To work around this you could either upload your 90 minute movie into 13 sections OR upload the first 12 minutes, then take that .srt file and manually edit the code, inserting dialog and time information.

I think it's absolutely absurd that Amazon requires captions. A total tree hugging, Liberal move to be "inclusive for all". What percentage of people are hearing impaired? 1/10th of 1%? I won't be able to reach foreign language audiences, but that should be MY choice as a vendor.
 
Mr. Jones, I think it's more absurd and irrational that you wouldn't be willing to take the time to add the captions. Because sometimes a lack of captions makes it hard for even people who can hear just fine to understand your film.

What if your sound work isn't all that good and the dialogue is too quiet in spots? What if the person watching is watching without headphones, they can't turn the film up too high for whatever reason, and so they need the subtitles to hear the dialogue so that when louder more intense scenes come, it doesn't explode with noise throughout the whole house, or car, or public park, restaurant, or where-ever. And it's never a bad idea to clarify what someone is saying when they're using words or saying names that aren't commonly heard.

Subtitles are never for just the deaf or hearing impared, there are plenty of other reasons to have them available. And since Amazon is a global business, even if each region has its own separate store front, it's a fairly sensible requirement on their part, and will only help to widen your audience base.

It's understandably a difficult chore when you're working with a feature length project. But even then, you've spent this long working on it, why not spend a little longer adding captions?
 
The only problem is that AFAIK with Amazon you can only upload 12 minutes max. To work around this you could either upload your 90 minute movie into 13 sections OR upload the first 12 minutes, then take that .srt file and manually edit the code, inserting dialog and time information.

I think it's absolutely absurd that Amazon requires captions. A total tree hugging, Liberal move to be "inclusive for all". What percentage of people are hearing impaired? 1/10th of 1%? I won't be able to reach foreign language audiences, but that should be MY choice as a vendor.


I'm not hearing-impaired, but am always more likely to watch something that has subtitles. I like to know what's being said throughout. The offer of subtitles is a courtesy to the viewers, and they appreciate it.

It's funny that it's Amazon though - a couple of years ago, even the big-budget Amazon original shows on PrimeVideo didn't have subtitles. Total amateur hour.
 
I just finished putting my first subtitles in one of my Amazon videos...one down, 38 to go... I uploaded my subtitles to Amazon 5 times before the "error" message went away. What finally worked was an .srt file, with what is called UTF-8 added to it...every subtitle must be in UTF-8. I found free software unline that converts .srt to UTF-8: https://www.rotatingscrew.com/utfcast-express.aspx
I did the subtitles myself on a cheap Corel Video Studio-6 editor...a horrible learning curve, but I finally got it right.
 
I just finished putting my first subtitles in one of my Amazon videos...one down, 38 to go... I uploaded my subtitles to Amazon 5 times before the "error" message went away. What finally worked was an .srt file, with what is called UTF-8 added to it...every subtitle must be in UTF-8. I found free software unline that converts .srt to UTF-8: https://www.rotatingscrew.com/utfcast-express.aspx
I did the subtitles myself on a cheap Corel Video Studio-6 editor...a horrible learning curve, but I finally got it right.
You should post a page with tips on how to do it.

I'm hoping that I can use YouTube's caption code as my benchmark.
 
Subtitle Workshop SE (FREE) http://subworkshop.sourceforge.net/download.php
URU Works (FREE) http://www.uruworks.net/index.html

UPDATE: I like YouTube's captioning better than the above program. You have to first validate your YouTube account (they text you a code) in order to upload a file longer than 15 minutes. Just upload a blank (black) video file with audio and set it as "private". Then manually type in all of the text. The automatic captioning isn't worth sh**. Then once you're done, you download the .sbv file to your computer. Then go to captions converter dot com and convert that .sbv file to a .srt file, which Amazon requires.

YouTube's captions tool takes a little bit of learning. For example you have to click the text on the left in order to move to the beginning of that spot. In the timeline you can click where there is no text, then drag the timeline back.
 
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