Viewing Captions (Subtitles) in PC media players

Windows media player, Real player, and Quicktime players can all show text captions along with an audio or video clip.However, they may not be on by default, and finding the option to turn them on where available can be hard to find.

It's really just a case of knowing where to look, so below you can find graphics of each player, showing you how to turn on captions (subtitles) for presentations which include them. All the clips on CaptionKit, naturally enough, have captions !

Read how to switch on Captions in :

• Real One Player
• Quicktime 6 Player
• Windows Media Player 10
• Windows Media Player 9
• Windows Media Player 7
• Windows Media Player 6.4

Real Player / Real One player

Real One Player (A Real Networks media player) can display captions in two ways. You can get a presentation with captions saved with it, or as a separate file (a SMIL file).

CaptionKit uses the second technique, which doesn't require you to turn on captions - they are displayed automatically. However some sites use Real Player's built in caption system for accessibility.

When using the built in caption system, you can enable captions from the menu with the following steps : Tools » Preferences » Content.

1. From the Real Player menu, Choose 'Tools'
2. Next, pick the Preferences item (Screenshot 1)
3. In the preference page (Screenshot 2) choose Content
4. Now you can see the option for 'Show subtitles' - check this box
5. There is also an option for 'Supplemental text captioning' - check this box as well.

 

Apple Quicktime player

Unlike other players, there is nothing you need do for Quicktime to display captions where they are provided. Text tracks as part of an Apple .mov file, are displayed by default along with the video.

As for Real Player, CaptionKit creates the alternate SMIL file format along with a Quicktime text file, which guarantees the captions are always visible.

Also with Quicktime you may be able to search the text track as it plays. Of course you can also do this on CaptionKit by searching the hypertranscripts provided on this site.

 

NEW - Windows Media Player 10

Windows media player 10 has a the same keyboard shortcut as player version 9. Hold down the Shift + Ctrl + C buttons to quickly turn captions on or off.

To enable captions from the Media Player menu instead, you can choose

Play » Captions and Subtitles » On if available

These options are illustrated in screenshot 3, below. If a file is currently playing, you can select from multiple subtitle languages where provided (see screenshot 4) using

Play » Captions and Subtitles » 'English (or other language) Captions'

In all other respects, Windows Media 10 is the same as Windows Media 9 for captions. Please note that in Windows Media Player 10, you will need to turn off hardware acceleration when viewing captions in full screen mode.

 

Windows Media Player 9

Windows media player 9 has a quick keyboard shortcut. You can hold down the Shift + Ctrl + C buttons to quickly turn captions on or off. This is called a toggle - press these keys once when you have clicked on the player, and it will turn captions on, do this again to turn them off.

To enable captions from the Media Player menu instead, you can choose

Play » Captions and Subtitles » On if available

These options are illustrated in screenshot 5, below. Player version 9 has the same way of resizing the caption area as Player version 7.

 

Windows Media Player 7

In our opinion, Microsoft made the selection of subtitles in Media Player 7 far too difficult. There doesn't appear to be a keyboard shortcut to do this. So, from the Media Player menu, you can choose

View » Now Playing Tools » Captions

1. Now Playing Tools (includes equaliser, captions, visualisations
2. Select Captions. Make sure 'Show Equalizer and settings' is also selected
3. Also, make sure 'Show Resize Bars' is selected
4. Finally, you can change the size of this area by dragging the resize bars to full lines of captions can be displayed.

 

Windows Media Player 6.4

Older systems, especially windows 98, may still have Windows Media player 6.4 installed. This offers the simplest way of turning on captions !

1. From the Windows Media player menu, Choose 'View'
2. Now, pick 'Captions', and the option will become enabled.
3. The captions for presentations will appear in the area labelled 3, in Screenshot 5 below.

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