Closed captioning not appearing in video files

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Level 1

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Closed captioning not appearing in video files

I've been working on producing a number of videos intended to be used as content in an iPad app for a Self-Guided Museum Tour which is under development by a non-profit Museum I work for. Many of the videos are intended to have closed captions for the hearing impaired.

Videos are being produced with Adobe Premier CC and exported as Quicktime .mov files with embedded closed captioning. These files play in all instances but in most of them, including the current IOS and Mac OS systems, the closed captioning is not visible. Tests indicate:

Closed captioning IS visible when the .mov file is played on Quicktime Player 10.3 on a Mac running OS 10.8.5 in all instances.

Closed captioning IS visible when the .mov file is played on Quicktime Player 10.3 on a Mac running OS 10.9 as long as English subtitle is enabled.

Oddly, closed captioning IS visible the .mov file is played on an old copy of Quicktime Player 7 running OS 10.9.5 as long as "show closed captioning" is enabled.

Closed captioning IS NOT visible when the .mov file is played on Quicktime Player 10.3 (with subtitles either off or automatic) on a Mac running OS 10.9.5.

Closed captioning IS NOT visible when the .mov file is imported into an iPad Air running IOS 8.1.1 and played with Safari using the built-in IOS video player. This is my target destination for the project and is critical.

Since the .mov file does contain an embedded closed captioning track (verified as track 3), the problem does not appear to be with the file or how it was created. The problem appears to be with the video player supplied by Apple in the most current versions of both OSX and IOS. In light of Apple's long-standing priority for accessibility this result is surprising.

Need help if anyone can help figure out how to make closed captions work with the IOS video player.

iPad Air, iOS 8.1

Posted on Nov 20, 2014 2:28 PM

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Answer 1

traveler.rfa Author

Level 1

5 points

Nov 28, 2014 7:46 AM in response to traveler.rfa

Problem solved with a little help from a Senior Apple Tech Support person.

Essentially, what has to be done in the current versions of both OSX and IOS is to configure the playback device's accessibility settings beforehand:

IOS 8.1.1

Settings–General–Accessibility–Subtitles and Captioning–turn on "Closed Captions+SDH"

OSX 10.9.5 and OSX 10.10:

System Preferences–Accessibility–scroll down to Captions and click on "Prefer Closed Captions and SDH”

You can also change the font style for captioning from these menus.

Once done, a small caption icon that looks like a text bubble on the bottom of the screen when videos are loaded, now has a third option besides "Off" and "Automatic". If the video being played has captioning embedded it may read something like "English CC", as it does in the case of my Premier CC-generated, embedded closed captions. Once that is selected, the captions play properly. [Note that in IOS 8.1.1, the caption icon only appears when a video is played in full screen mode.]

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