How to Run across Amazon Captioning Specs

December 4, 2018 BY ELISA LEWIS
Updated: May i, 2020

Amazon started off selling books. Today, it has evolved into the largest eastward-commerce company in the world, providing its customers with a variety of services such as consumer products, electronics, media, and more.

One of Amazon's many offerings is its online film distribution platform, Prime Video Direct, which allows independent publishers to distribute content on Amazon Prime, home to over 100 million members worldwide. With a paid subscription and cyberspace connection, viewers can stream original and previously aired television shows and films. In order to provide a consistent viewing feel for all viewers, the customer-obsessed visitor requires closed captions for video content submitted to Prime Video Direct. Some viewers may be deafened or hard of hearing, non-native English speakers, or only prefer to watch video without sound. Amazon understands that ensuring a positive viewing feel means all-around all users.

At a company like Amazon, accessibility is at the core of their operations. If you're submitting content to Prime Video Direct, it'southward of import to follow these specifications in order for your caption files to be accepted.

Prime Video Direct Language Requirements

The listing language of a video file should lucifer the location's supported languages. For case, if you're publishing a show or film in the United States, it must take English language audio also as English captions. Keep in mind that captions are currently unsupported for Japanese. However, if y'all plan to publish content in Japan without Japanese audio, you lot must accept burned-in Japanese subtitles and metadata.

I love Lucy captions in English and Spanish

Furthermore, the language of the title metadata must exist the aforementioned as either the sound or explanation language.

Accepted Closed Explanation Files

There are a wide range of closed explanation files content creators can choose from. The post-obit file formats are accepted by Prime Video Directly:

  • SMPTE-TT (RP-2052) with an .xml file extension
  • STL (EBU standard) with a .stl file extension (Spruce Subtitle file format which likewise has an .stl file extension not supported)
  • DFXP Full/TTML (Timed Text Markup Language) with a .dfxp file extension
  • iTT (iTunes Timed Text) files with a .iTT file extension
  • SCC (Scenarist Airtight Caption) with a .scc file extension
  • SRT (SubRip text file format) with a .srt file extension

SRT files are the most mutual caption files submitted to Prime Video Straight. In order for your files to be approved by Amazon, avoid these common SRT file submission errors:

common srt file submissions are unsupported font element attribute, missing sequential counter number, plain text, unbounded style tags, and unsupported characters and emojis

Amazon carefully reviews each caption file submitted to Prime number Video Direct. If explanation files don't run across Amazon's standards, filmmakers will be met with a publishing error. The publishing error does non specify why files are rejected. Instead it will say, "captions are required for all titles published in the U.Southward. and Amazon Prime titles worldwide, except Japan." This could be incredibly frustrating for creators who aren't familiar with producing explanation files. It takes Prime Video Direct ii weeks to procedure files and make them live on the platform. If your files are rejected, you'll waste material valuable time correcting files instead of getting your content to viewers.

Don't waste your fourth dimension! Creating closed captions can be a challenging process depending on the content. Amazon highly recommends using a tertiary-party captioning company to ensure loftier-quality and accurate captions. Be aware that non all professional person captioning companies can guarantee that your file will exist accustomed the first fourth dimension around. At 3Play, however, we provide caption files that see Amazon'southward specs so that you never take to worry. If you are submitting an SRT file, they should ever incorporate these four repeating elements:

  1. A sequential counter number
  2. The showtime and cease times of each frame's on-screen advent
  3. Subtitle text (one of two lines)
  4. A blank line containing no text

Amazon's fourth dimension code format:

amazon time code format - hours, minutes, seconds, milliseconds

  • All the time units must always take two digits, except for milliseconds, which is expressed with three digits
  • Colons must separate the values, except for the comma that is used before milliseconds

Additionally, Amazon recommends submitting popular-on caption files as opposed to roll-upwardly captions. If you submit a file with curl-up captions, Amazon will automatically convert them to pop-on captions. The conversion process adds opportunity for error that can exist avoided but past submitting the file correctly the outset time.

Pop-on captions are generally used for pre-recorded and online video. They about always include sounds effects and other not-voice communication sounds, speaker identification, and accurate grammar and spelling. On the opposite, scroll-up captions are always used for live tv set broadcasting. They are well-nigh always verbatim, and sound effects and other non-speech sounds are rarely included.

Titles Without Dialogue

In that location are many cases in which movies or shows take no dialogue or there'due south an extended period of time where in that location's no spoken content. In cases like these, captions should include a description of the foreground or background sound. Extended silent scenes should be captioned with "[no sound]".

Charlie Chaplin movie scene

Groundwork music should be described as well. If it's just an instrumental with no lyrics, employ descriptive words in brackets to convey the tempo and mood of the song. If the vocal has lyrics, caption the lyrics verbatim. All songs should be introduced with the artist and the song championship in brackets. If the music lyrics are unclear or in a unlike language, be sure to use descriptive language to betoken that information technology'southward unclear to viewers.

Other Specs to Go on in Heed

All timed text avails must beginning with the zero-60 minutes fourth dimension code (i.e. 00:00:00). If it is not formatted this way, it volition offset the caption file and won't display the correct fourth dimension when the video is played. Imagine watching your favorite program and having the captions be out of sync – this wouldn't be an enjoyable viewing experience.

In improver, when creating explanation files for a film or Television receiver show, all timed text assets must be UTF-8 encoded. Prime Video Directly does not support whatever other character encoding other than UTF-viii. Graphic symbol encoding is important so that your viewers can make up one's mind certain characters. Without information technology, it could disrupt the readability of your content.

You may want your text to display like this:
correct character encoding

(Prototype courtesy of the World Wide Web Consortium)

Still, it may brandish like this without grapheme encoding:
incorrect character encoding

(Epitome courtesy of the World Wide Web Consortium)

From the looks of these two images, it's obvious why Prime number Video Directly wants all explanation files to be UTF-8 encoded. With a company that is all nearly their customers, like Amazon, a poor viewing feel is not an selection.

If you have both closed captions and subtitles for your video file, Amazon prefers to receive closed captions/SDH (subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing) over subtitles to improve the viewing experience for viewers with a hearing impairment.

If you are submitting a subtitle file, the following formats are accepted by Prime number Video Direct:

  • DFXP Full / TTML (Timed Text Markup Language) with a .dfxp file extension
  • iTT (iTunes Timed Text) files with a .iTT file extension. iTT is a subset of TTML, version 1.0.
  • SubRip with a .srt file extension

3Play Media meets Amazon'due south specs so that publishers can hands upload their content on Prime Video Direct. We have a squad of professionally trained transcriptionists who ensure closed captions files are 99% accurate – even with difficult content. Allow us do the difficult piece of work for you and so that yous can proceed delivering content to your viewers!

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Get started with 3Play's captioning services today!get started with video accessibility!

Further Reading

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