TAKE 1 STYLE: CC for US Broadcast

This product is suitable for broadcast videos being shown in the US.
These requirements adhere to FCC regulations for closed captions. If you are broadcasting in the UK, please
enquire about our Ofcom compliant SDH files.

Default specs
Category Default spec

Max characters per line Line 21 captions: 32

Streaming: 42

Vertical line limit Two lines maximum

Reading speed Adult: 21 CPS

Children: 17 CPS

Minimum gap between subs Line 21 captions: 0 frames

Streaming: 2 frames

Push /pull to/from shot 5 frames

Maximum duration 7 seconds

Minimum duration 5/6ths of a second:

24fps: 20 frames
25fps: 21 frames
30fps: 25 frames

SFX Included - [explosion]

Music Included - [rock music plays]

Speaker Identification [Rob] - only used when cannot

be visually identified.

Text display

Category Default spec

Formatting Italics included - See below for details

Background Excluded

Colour White text

Alignment Centered text at bottom, raised when important visual information or a

speaker’s mouth would be obscured by the caption.

1
Transcription style
Dual Speakers
Two speakers in the same subtitle are marked with a hyphen, no space, at the beginning of each
line. One speaker per line. For example:
-Hello, David. How are you?
-Hello, Steve. I’m great!

The same Method is used to distinguish between SFX that come from different sources. For
example:
-[explosion] OR -[explosion]
-[police sirens wailing] -[Rob] What was that?

Dialogue treatment
● Dialogue is written verbatim
● False starts are indicated with a double hyphen--
● Paraphrasing will be utilised only if necessary to reach appropriate reading speed.
● Interruptions are indicated with a double hyphen and no space before: “Hello, How are--
Stop!"

Grammar
● Copyrighted works (e.g. film, song and book names) are formatted in quotes
● The ellipsis: Sentences that trail off or contain a pause of over 1 second can be marked
with an ellipsis
● Speech from the same speaker continuing after an interruption or long pause is indicated
by an ellipsis in both subtitles. For example:

Caption 1: Caption 2: Caption 3:

Hello, how… Hello ...are you?

● Acronyms are written without periods, e.g. CIA

● Quoted dialogue will be “encased between quotation marks”. If the quote goes over
multiple captions, quotation marks must be used at the start of every caption and only use
closing quotation marks at the end of the very last caption

Italics
● Italics used to indicate:
○ The narrator.
○ Dialogue through a device. Eg. phone or TV
○ To emphasize words in speech. Eg. It was mine.
○ When a speaker is talking but out of scene

Numbers
● All percentages are written as numbers and symbols – 1%, 25%, 800%
● Measurements are written as numbers and symbols – 110cm, 13st, 27km
● Numbers zero to ten are written as words, 11 and above as numerals

2
Timing
● Captions will be synced to the start of speech (or within 3 frames if necessary) unless this
disrupts the push/pull requirements.

Songs
● All audible song lyrics should be captioned, unless it interferes with dialogue
● Song titles are in quotes, when widely known. For example,
[“Hey Jude” by The Beatles playing]
● Song lyrics are enclosed with a music note (♪),at the beginning and the end of each
subtitle
● Lyrics are italicized
● Formatting of lyrics should be as follows:

♪ Hey jude, don't make it bad

Take a sad song and make it better ♪

Dealing with unknowns

● Dialogue is marked as [indistinct], in lowercase, when we are unsure of dialogue.
● Dialogue is not to be censored
● If a word has been bleeped in the audio then it should be captioned as [bleep]