MCF format: Support for modified audio/video/subtitles rather than simple deletion

[luke-jr]

Sometimes it may be sufficient to modify audio, subtitles, and/or video. If the film is not in an understood language, for example, it can be trivial to change the words slightly rather than muting. Perhaps for video modifications, some subset of the ASS format can be used (or maybe move MCF to ASS entirely? but that's a big change)

[ocram]

Thank you very much!

As you can see in the specification, the MCF format is already based on WebVTT (and thus SRT), which are two other subtitle formats. For that reason, and from a brief look at the ASS format, I’m not sure we would gain much from a change of the underlying format.

When it comes to blocking subtitles in movies, sure, this is something we should talk about. As documented in the “Channels” section of the specification, we already allow for video, or audio, or both to be blocked. So this is definitely something that is built in. It’s just that subtitles have not been included so far.

The reason why subtitles are not a “channel” yet is that everything had been intended to be independent of the language or release that you watch. So we want to describe that, at a certain position, there is unacceptable language in your movie, and so you would block audio, and if you had subtitles enabled, you would block that as well. But we didn’t necessarily want to segment the filter lists by the specific release, so that the English version has other filters than the Chinese version.

As for “modified” rather than deleted, is alternative (rewritten) subtitles what you had in mind? An alternative (text-only) description of the blocked content could be useful in general, because you may want to know what you are missing out.

What do you think?

[luke-jr]

For that reason, and from a brief look at the ASS format, I’m not sure we would gain much from a change of the underlying format.

The benefit would be in the markup of video-blocking stuff. It's also possible to just use this markup in the current WebVTT wrapper, but might be "ugly" to do so.

But we didn’t necessarily want to segment the filter lists by the specific release, so that the English version has other filters than the Chinese version.

That seems inherent? After all, the Chinese version might not have a cuss, and if it does, it probably wouldn't be at the same times as the English cuss.

As for “modified” rather than deleted, is alternative (rewritten) subtitles what you had in mind? An alternative (text-only) description of the blocked content could be useful in general, because you may want to know what you are missing out.

Yes. For example, one subtitle I have changed in Clannad episode 6, was replacing "I bet he's back on his feet and flirting with another girl." with "I bet he's back on his feet and causing trouble."

[ocram]

The benefit would be in the markup of video-blocking stuff. It's also possible to just use this markup in the current WebVTT wrapper, but might be "ugly" to do so.

Got it, thanks. This makes sense, but is out of scope for this project right now. Blocking the entire screen is all we will support for now. While markup that goes beyond this would certainly be useful, it would also add a ton of complexity, and make it much harder for contributors to annotate content.

That seems inherent? After all, the Chinese version might not have a cuss, and if it does, it probably wouldn't be at the same times as the English cuss.

To be honest, so far, we have mostly worked with translations among Indo-European languages, where the sentence structures have always been quite similar and the problem never really came up.

So for some translations, e.g. a Chinese version of an English original, a separate filter may be necessary after all. But only for audio, because the video content is certainly the same, unless you have a different cut or release – which can happen, of course, and must simply be tracked separately.

Yes. For example, one subtitle I have changed in Clannad episode 6, was replacing "I bet he's back on his feet and flirting with another girl." with "I bet he's back on his feet and causing trouble."

I think we can do this. For blocked video or audio, we will provide the possibility to enter an alternative text (which you must be able to localize), e.g. for your example: “John Doe: «I bet he’s back …»” This text could then be displayed when the content is blocked, and if there are subtitles for that position, it would just override the subtitle.