What Is the Difference Between Captioning & Closed Captioning?

With the advent of television, hearing-impaired consumers demanded captioning.

Captioning, or subtitles, began with silent movie dialogue shown on cards between action sequences. When sound movies, or "talkies," came along, captioning almost disappeared. For decades, captioning was only used as English subtitles in foreign movies.

Open Captioning

Open captioning, or subtitling, usually presents the dialog being spoken by the characters in written format at the bottom of the screen. After the silent film era, the only movies shown with subtitles were foreign language, and even those were increasingly dubbed into an English-spoken soundtrack.

Closed Captioning

Closed captioning cannot be seen unless activated by a remote control menu button. Designed for the deaf and hearing impaired, closed captioning shows more than just static dialog. The dialog will move to denote who is speaking. Other sounds may also be indicated, for instance, musical notes for singing.

Real-Time Captioning

Real-time captioning is used for live events such as news, sports, live music or telethons. Using computer-aided translation, real-time captioning converts the spoken word into printed format, usually white lettering on a black background. Real-time captioning might include dialogue and a factual reporting of events.

References

• The Museum of Broadcast Communications: Closed Captioning
• Film Site: The History of Film -- The 1920s
• Joe Clark: Subtitled Video