Timed Text

Timed Text refers to the presentation of text media in synchrony with other media, such as audio and video.

Typical applications of timed text are the real time subtitling of foreign-language movies on the Web, captioning for people lacking audio devices or having hearing impairments, karaoke, scrolling news items or teleprompter applications.

Timed text for MPEG-4 movies and cellphone media is specified in MPEG-4 Part 17, and is also referred to by RFC 3839.

The W3C is developing a Timed Text (TT) specification that covers many aspects of timed text on the Web. It has been adopted as a W3C Recommendation.

The issue of developing an interoperable timed text format came up during the development of the SMIL 2.0 specification. Today, there are a number of incompatible formats for captioning, subtitling and other forms of timed text used on the Web. This means that when creating a SMIL presentation, the text portion often needs to be targeted to one particular playback environment. This poses an issue for creating interoperable SMIL presentations. Moreover, the accessibility community relies heavily on captioning to make audiovisual content accessible to a hearing-impaired audience. The lack of an interoperable format adds a significant additional cost to the costs of captioning Web content, which are already high.

Timed Text enriches the user experience for services involving timed text, and is seen as an important stimulus for instance in the usage of captioning and subtitling. The organizations willing to work on Timed Text include vendors of streaming multimedia technology, web browser companies, representatives of the accessibility community, caption content producers and consumer electronics companies.

The following is an extract from the English closed captioning file, in SubRip format, for the 1916 Krazy Kat Bugolist film.

1
00:00:22,000 --> 00:00:27,000
I'll teach thee Bugology, Ignatzes

2 
00:00:40,000 --> 00:00:43,000 
Something tells me

3 
00:00:58,000 --> 00:00:64,000 
Look, Ignatz, a sleeping bee

External links

• full list of Timed Text files at Wikimedia Commons
• W3C's Video in the Web Activity Statement
• The W3C Timed Text homepage
• Also see DAISY Digital Talking Book standard