SCC is a closed caption format, meaning that character limits are automatically set to not exceed 32 character limits. Reading speed is an incredibly important factor when it comes to professional captioning. The shorter the character limits, the more expertise is required to effectively split and time closed captions. 

As if 32 characters wasn’t short enough to work with, for narration and offscreen speech, where italics are often used to aid Deaf and Hard of Hearing audiences, character limits will shrink further to a limited 21 character limit. 

Characters that may seem standard may not be compatible with the SCC format. For example, an ellipsis (three dots) in an SCC file needs to be written as three separate dots. Computer systems and editing programmes will often shrink ellipses into being one character, (… vs …). To the naked eye, these dots are the same, but for the requirements of an SCC caption file, one will function and one will not. 

SCC guidelines may differ depending on broadcaster requirements, but often, speakers and/or narrators may be differentiated by using different colours. These are standard across the SCC format and are typically yellow for narration, white for main characters and most dialogue, and subsequently, cyan and lime green for additional speakers. 

When running through quality control checks for an SCC caption file, spacing is a crucial element to address. Any additional spaces after full stops, or hard returns on subtitles where a blank line is created, need to be addressed and corrected. 

Due to the professional nature of SCC closed captioning, there is often a requirement to export into additional caption formats and/or provide transcripts alongside them. Some of these typically include: 

• Time coded transcript 
• CCSL Combined Continuity Spotting List 
• DSL Dialogue Spotting List 
• SRT closed captions 
• STL open captions 
• CAP closed captions 

So there you have it, a little about SCC Closed Caption Services and how they are structured and work. If you would like your subtitles converted into SCC from various different types then why not contact us today to see what we can offer you, just click the quote button below.