Expanding on the development of subtitling software & timed-text over the year, popularity and trends. History of SubtitleNEXT. Part 2

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Part 2: Expanding on the development of subtitling software & timed-text over the year, popularity and trends

The SubtitleNEXT of 1990 is not the same product that has now evolved into what it is today, but the goals of the creators of the company, helped get them get to where they are now. This evolution eventually led to the present day SubtitleNEXT and NEXT-TT platforms and has grown to fit user needs over time. It has been masterfully refined into the fully-fledged sophisticated renewed versions that are now available and “market-ready”.

Kamen sums up the advantages that the evolutionary process has brought to the present-day systems SubtitleNEXT and NEXT-TT,  “Unlike other tech products that tie up users with single vendor dependencies, we prefer to give our clients the freedom to benefit from a variety of dynamic industry-specific technologies, while retaining the distinct advantages that using a single system brings, such as providing a single place to generate searches and reports even across multiple external systems.”

Kamen runs through SubtitleNEXT’s 2019 version’s key features that make it stand out.

“It provides users with a multi-file synchronous browsing editing feature with a standard and text editor-like experience that can create standard and modern creative subtitles and timed text messaging that adapt to all the latest rules, checks and fix-ups to the subtitles (both text and timing).

RegEx Search and Replace engine has been included to allow advanced search and text replacements, for example one can find all Name Family type names and reverse them to Family Name without explicitly listing all name pairs, nor doing it a pair at a time.

The Hybrid platform called NEXT-TT supports both local and online materials such as subtitles, media and metadata. The latter one gives the same experience as in a web application but with the benefits of a desktop application, and uses all available translation and other tools, in case of a limited web application on terms of the webserver’s provision.

SubtitleNEXT has the flexibility to work with all kinds of timed media from video, audio, presentations, and also supports Live Subtitling with one or two stages of “re-speaking”.

SubtitleNEXT also supports non file-based media and direct video signals such as analogue, digital, and streaming which makes it perfect for all types of live shows and events such as festivals, live gigs, the Opera, theatre, presentations, conferences, seminars – you name it.  Its “automation for airing” feature is also useful for live shows and events with prepared subtitles.

The full set of digital cinema and TTML format features are also fully supported in SubtitleNEXT, including text positions, effects, sizes and colours, styling, looks including user configurable screen layouts that can be personalised to suit the project and user convenience.”

Often referencing a system as “legacy” means that it paved the way for the standards that would follow and that it is tried and tested, solid, trusted and a reliable product that has had time to prove itself to the market.

In the case with SubtitleNEXT, it is evident, it always and still does provide for the users’ needs.

SubtitleNEXT’s impact on Profuz Digital due to its historical role has been a positive one, and Kamen explains why, “To have an established product that the market already believes in, provides a great foundation to build further on even more incredible features that can bring efficiency speed and proficiency to users in a busy environment – for example – development has also included adding new interfaces including web-based, terminal-based mainframe applications, forward engineering approaches and these have greatly improved and influenced  the legacy software and durability.”

Adding, “Technologists understand the importance of sound architecture right from the start. The best systems in place today are those that embraced well-known IT architectural principles.  Poorly designed systems often don’t last, both because they wear out and because their inherent faults invite replacement. Thus, many organisations are rediscovering the value of both their legacy systems and the theoretical underpinnings of those systems.”