The following table lists closed caption requirements by location:
|
Separate Captions File in Localized Language |
Audio or Captions in Localized Language |
Burned-in Subtitles in Localized Language |
---|---|---|---|
United States | |||
United Kingdom | |||
Germany | |||
Japan |
For example, if you’ve created a movie in English and you want to have German closed captions, here’s how your movie will be impacted in each location:
If you're manually creating caption files without captions software, we highly recommend downloading our sample files. Your captions file must be edited with a text editor that can create plain text files in a UTF-8 encoding. UTF-8 ensures that customer devices will not display unrecognized text characters as random, unreadable symbols.
Closed captions are timed text assets that can be turned on or off and include both spoken dialogue as well as atmospherics for the deaf and hard of hearing. There are many different types of closed caption file formats that you can choose from when creating your captions files. The following closed captions formats are accepted by Prime Video:
English captions are required for all titles published in the United States.
All timecodes contained in a closed captions file must appear in linear (sequential) order.
Subtitles are timed text assets that include on-screen text of the program dialogue (without atmospherics). Subtitles are typically burnt in to the mezzanine, but they can be added as a separate file as well. Like closed caption formats, there are several types of subtitle file formats that you can choose from when creating the files. The following subtitle formats are accepted by Prime Video:
We don't accept silent or ambient titles, however, if your title title has extended scenes with no spoken content, captions should include a description of the foreground or background audio elements. Extended silent scenes should be captioned with [no audio]. For background music, if the music is instrumental (no lyrics), use descriptive words [in brackets] to accurately convey the mood and tempo of music. If music contains lyrics, caption the lyrics verbatim. The lyrics should be introduced with the name of the artist and the title in brackets. In the event that lyrics are unclear or in another language, use a descriptive caption to indicate that to the viewer.
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