Now Offering Accurate and Affordable AI-powered Captioning & Transcription

Oftentimes, when I give my clients caption files for their DVD Authoring Systems they encounter problems and call me with questions on how to insert the caption file. In today's blog, I am going to specifically talk about .scc files being used in Apple's DVD Studio Pro.

Steps for importing an .scc file into DVD Studio Pro: 

• Select Outline tab > Tracks folder > Track1 > Select Other tab (in Inspection window) > Select Choose > locate .scc file > Select Okay.

Either field 1 or field 2 will be populated, but most likely not both.

• DVD Studio Pro > Preferences > Encoding > MPEG-2 SD > Select desired timecode in the start TC field > Check or uncheck the Drop frame box accordingly.

You must let your captioning company know if your project is in Drop, Non-Drop, FILM, PAL, et cetera.  Most captioning companies' default time code is Drop frame.

• Highlight the actual video content/track on the timeline > Right-click the timecode directly to the right of the yellow play head and purple chapter marker > Select Zero-Based Timecode or Asset-Based Timecode.

I strongly recommended that all timecode options (there are many) be changed to zero-based so that the captioning company can create a file that corresponds to these settings. The captioning company will probably need to have the exact timecode of the first word spoken on the video so they can match their caption file to your project.

To view captions from your computer using a DVD player:

• Open DVD Player > Preferences > Features > Closed Captions > On

I recommend that you burn a closed-captioned DVD and play it out of a DVD player, viewing it on a TV. Viewing the captions from your computer will sometimes not display captions accurately, if at all.