About Subtitles and Closed Captions
Subtitles have several advantages: You can create them within DVD Studio Pro or using
a third-party subtitle authoring application, you can set their font and color, and they can
be displayed by any DVD player. Closed captions offer other advantages.
Subtitles generally provide a text version of the dialogue only—they do not describe any
other sounds that may be in the title (such as a dog barking or a phone ringing). Closed
captions typically include descriptive text along with the dialogue, which makes them
better suited for viewers with impaired hearing.
You can add descriptive text to subtitles and make them more similar to the content of
closed captions, and there are third-party programs that will convert closed captions to
a suitable subtitle format.
Closed captions require a decoder for playback. The decoder can be built in to the
television or it can be a standalone box. Computers typically do not have closed caption
decoders, so they cannot display captions. The font used by closed captions is determined
by the decoder.