I talked to my brother's best man. He is deaf, his wife is not.

I talked to them about SDH in subs. He dislikes stuff like
- [action packed music]
- [engine roars] => if you see the smoking tires and the car
- [dark music]

He asked me: "What the hell is >dark music<?"

He asks his wife questions about the plot, though.

Example: It's night. Someone shoots at the hero. The hero dives to the ground to protect himself, while the bullet hits a metal plate above him.
=> The SDH doesn't say [bullet hits metal]
So he asks his wife: "Is he dead?"
"No, the bullet hit a metal plate."

His wife said: "We also have to consider persons who are hearing impaired, like old people. They know what [dark music] means, because they could hear at one point in their life."

What do I want to tell you?

If you have a precious movie, consider describing off-screen text.

Example: If Gianna Dior is stuck in the doggy door and she gets a slap on her ass (which you can't see), describe it like this:



[Ryan slaps her bare ass with his hand]

Since one can see her reaction, no more words are necessary.

Totally agree with what is said here. +1.
And that movie sample is gold ^^;

In reply to truc1979:

Totally agree with what is said here. +1.
And that movie sample is gold ^^;

I agree.

I recently found a subtitling chart for the deaf and hearing-impaired for French TV.
The most interesting part is :

- avoid oversimplifying a sentence,
- always use a dash to indicate a change of speaker.
- place the subtitle close to the sound source,
- respect a color code:
White, when a character speaks on-screen
Yellow, when a character speaks off-screen
Red, for noise indications (not induced by the image)
Magenta, for musical indications (by default, indicate the singer's name and title)
Cyan, for inner reflections or voice-over comments
Green, for foreign-language transcriptions
- use parentheses to indicate whispers and asides.
- use capital letters when the text is spoken by several people or for certain acronyms.

Of course, color in an srt may cause problems in some video or TV players.

I will test this with my Smart TV.

Thank you very much, Lion!

Very interesting...

It must be remembered that SDH is "Deaf or Hearing Impaired". Not everybody that uses subtitles is deaf, a great many of us fall under "hearing impaired".

Now many of the tags used in SDH will likely make no sense if somebody has been deaf all their life, but those of us that did at one time have good hearing or now have degraded hearing do know what many things sound like.

That is why a great many movies will have both conventional subtitles with only the dialog, then SDH for those that do want to see things like that.

When I make subtitles, I tend to only concentrate on dialogue because I know 99% are not hearing impaired at all, they primarily want dialog for translation.

In reply to Freejack:

I talked to my brother's best man.

His wife said: "We also have to consider persons who are hearing impaired, like old people. They know what [dark music] means, because they could hear at one point in their life."

I shortened that in my first post. The discussion about

[dark music]
[rising music]

took very long. We could not really tell him what "rising" means in this manner.

When a hearing person would ask me, I would show "Bolero".



It is a Classic with rising music ... quite literally and constantly.

I do not criticize SRT-files, which lack SDH, but even though my hearing is still good (do TVs still make a high-pitched noise like in the 90-ies?), I love the subs powered by Louis3rd. He always uses the names of ppl who speaks currently. And I took that from him. Example:

https://www.avsubtitles.com/subtitles.php?subid=24222

Ricks talks in the background most of the time. But sometimes Cam adds questions.

https://www.avsubtitles.com/subtitles.php?subid=24222

===
I already had a threesome.
- [Rick] Was that recently?

[Cam] With two guys?
Yes.
===

Then you know which person said what. It definitely helps in porn. Why?

Porn often is not scripted in Web-Scenes, which sometimes results in
- stuttering,
- two people talking at the same time,
- not answering a question
- and so on.

You would not find these dialogues in Hollywood movies, as the script or director would prevent them from being misleading. And I can't remember a "professional" movie where three ppl are talking at the same time and you do not understand a single word.

And some of my favorite male and female performers do stutter from time to time ... and that's totally fine, because it often adds authenticity, but it is a nightmare to do subs for a movie like

===
I, I, I know, like, I guess,
you are very beautiful.
===

... so, if I could tell male/female talents what to do: "I know, like, I guess" all these words are forbidden in your scenes. :-)