Timed Text

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Definition

“The Timed-Text specification should covers all necessary aspects of timed text on the Web. 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, retrieved 13:02, 27 September 2007 (MEST)).

TT is quite a complex format, but in some contexts (e.g. Flash captioning) understanding of a small subset will do.

Typical applications

According to [1]:

  • Subtitles of movies on the Web (foreign languages)
  • Captions for people lacking audio devices or having hearing disabilities
  • Karaoke
  • Scrolling news, credits rolls
  • TickerTape, marquee, "crawls"
  • Text overlay
  • TelePrompter

Related formats and software

Timed Text is supported to various degrees by various software, e.g.

There is also an interaction with other formats, e.g.

TT in Flash CS3

Here is an example from the Using Timed Text captions in the Flash CS3 Documentation:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<tt xml:lang="en" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2006/04/ttaf1"  xmlns:tts="http://www.w3.org/2006/04/ttaf1#styling">
  <head>
   <styling>
      <style id="1" tts:textAlign="right"/>
      <style id="2" tts:color="transparent"/>
      <style id="3" style="2" tts:backgroundColor="white"/>
      <style id="4" style="2 3" tts:fontSize="20"/>
   </styling>
  </head>
  <body>
   <div xml:lang="en">
    <p begin="00:00:00.00" dur="00:00:03.07">I had just joined <span tts:fontFamily="monospaceSansSerif,proportionalSerif,TheOther"tts:fontSize="+2">Macromedia</span> in 1996,</p>
    <p begin="00:00:03.07" dur="00:00:03.35">and we were trying to figure out what to do about the internet.</p>
    <p begin="00:00:06.42" dur="00:00:03.15">And the company was in dire straights at the time.</p>
    <p begin="00:00:09.57" dur="00:00:01.45">We were a CD-ROM authoring company,</p>
    <p begin="00:00:11.42" dur="00:00:02.00">and the CD-ROM business was going away.</p>
    <p begin="00:00:13.57" dur="00:00:02.50">One of the technologies I remember seeing was Flash.</p>
    <p begin="00:00:16.47" dur="00:00:02.00">At the time, it was called <span tts:fontWeight="bold" tts:color="#ccc333">FutureSplash</span>.</p>
    <p begin="00:00:18.50" dur="00:00:01.20">So this is where Flash got its start.</p>
    <p begin="00:00:20.10" dur="00:00:03.00">This is smart sketch running on the <span tts:fontStyle="italic">EU-pin computer</span>,</p>
    <p begin="00:00:23.52" dur="00:00:02.00">which was the first product that FutureWave did.</p>
    <p begin="00:00:25.52" dur="00:00:02.00">So our vision for this product was to</p>
    <p begin="00:00:27.52" dur="00:00:01.10">make drawing on the computer</p>
    <p begin="00:00:29.02" dur="00:00:01.30" style="1">as <span tts:color="#ccc333">easy</span> as drawing on paper.</p>
    </div>
  </body>
</tt>

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