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Closed captions vs subtitles: what each term means on a film delivery, open vs closed captions, where SDH and forced narrative fit, and which file your buyer actually wants

By the Fonti Studio post-production team · 19 August 2026

In short: subtitles translate the dialogue for viewers who can hear the audio; closed captions transcribe it in the same language, describe the sound, and ride a separate track the viewer can switch off; open captions are the same text burned into the picture. SDH is the streaming-era name for caption content delivered as an ordinary subtitle file, and forced narrative is the short forced subset every viewer sees. On a delivery schedule, each word names a different file.

Most pages on this question are written by accessibility vendors for people captioning webinars. This one is for the person assembling a film delivery, where the words are a list of files and the wrong one costs a QC round. The distinctions are older than the platforms that use them, and they differ on the two sides of the Atlantic.

The four words, one at a time

Subtitles translate. A subtitle track carries the dialogue in a language other than the one spoken, for viewers who hear the soundtrack and do not understand it. Netflix's partner documentation draws the line there: "subtitles are interlingual timed text assets and SDH/CC are intralingual assets". A subtitle track is condensed for reading speed and carries no speaker labels, because the viewer hears the door slam and hears who is talking.

Closed captions (CC) transcribe. A caption track is in the same language as the audio and built for viewers who cannot hear it: the dialogue close to verbatim, speaker identification where the speaker is not visible, and plot-relevant sound and music described. "Closed" means the text travels as data alongside the picture, decoded by the viewer's device, and switchable. The term is a US broadcast inheritance: captions there have ridden a dedicated data stream since analog television (CEA-608, the Line 21 standard) and its digital successor CEA-708, which the FCC's decoder rules still name as "EIA-708-B: Digital Television (DTV) Closed Captioning". That heritage gives a broadcast caption file its own character limits, positioning habits and formats (SCC above all), none of which look like a subtitle file.

Open captions are the same content rendered into the picture itself: no track to switch off, nothing to decode, nothing a platform can localize or restyle. You see them on festival prints, on social video, and occasionally on a delivered master that should not have them. Open versus closed is purely transport.

SDH (subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing) is what happened when streaming platforms needed caption content without the broadcast plumbing. Netflix's gloss is that SDH is "stylistically and technically the same as subtitles but have the same intended audience and contents as CC", and that it produces subtitles and SDH for its branded content, not closed captions. An SDH track is a normal subtitle file with the speaker labels and bracketed sound cues a caption track would carry; the detail is in our SDH explainer.

One more term sits on the same schedules. Forced narrative (FN) is the short subtitle track that displays even when subtitles are off: plot-relevant on-screen text and dialogue in a language the audience is not meant to understand. It is the forced subset of both, platforms want it as its own file, and it has its own article.

The comparison, in one table

Why Americans and Europeans use different words

The confusion in most delivery threads is geographic, not technical. In the United States, "captions" means same-language text and "subtitles" means translation, because captions arrived through broadcast regulation and subtitles arrived with foreign films. In the UK and most of Europe, "subtitles" covers both: a British or Dutch broadcaster offers "subtitles" or "ondertiteling" to hard-of-hearing viewers, and nobody outside a technical department says "captions." So an American buyer writing "CC" means the accessibility track and may not care whether it arrives as a caption file or an SDH subtitle file; a European buyer writing "subtitles" may mean translation, the accessibility track, or both. When a line is ambiguous, ask: same language or translated, and in which file format?

Which file the schedule actually means

"Subs" in a language other than the audio means a translated dialogue track with the forced narrative events included, in the formats the buyer lists: for a streamer usually TTML in an IMSC profile, the W3C standard written "to be used across subtitle and caption delivery applications worldwide"; for a broadcaster EBU-TT-D or STL; lower down the chain SRT. The format map covers each one.

"CC" from a US broadcaster or a network-owned streamer usually means a caption file in the broadcast sense, most often SCC carrying 608/708 data. "CC" from an international distributor or a streaming platform almost always means an SDH subtitle file; the Netflix Branded Delivery spec lists no caption format at all, and subtitles, SDH and forced narratives are all delivered as TTML under its Localization, Accessibility and Dubbing Branded Delivery Specifications.

"SDH" means one same-language subtitle file authored to the platform's style guide; "forced" or "FN" means the separate short track; "burned-in" on a schedule is a warning sign, not a deliverable.

The mistakes that bounce a delivery

Translation subtitles sent where captions were required. A buyer asks for "English CC" on an English-language feature; the vendor delivers the English subtitle template built for translators. It has the dialogue, so it passes a glance; it has no speaker labels, no sound description, and it is condensed rather than faithful. Against the FCC's accuracy standard, which expects captions to match the spoken words and include "speaker identification and sound effects", it is neither a caption file nor an SDH file; it is a translator's source document, and the QC report says so.

Open captions on the master. A video master arrives with English text burned in, often because a festival version was reused. Platforms will not take it: Netflix's spec requires the final master "without burned-in subtitles", with separate subtitle files and a forced narrative track for on-screen text that needs translating. A burned-in English card cannot sit under a Dutch FN cue. The fix is a textless master from the post house, which is why this is better caught at intake than at QC.

A broadcast caption file sent to a streaming platform. The reverse: a good SCC from a US broadcast run is forwarded to a platform whose spec says TTML or IMSC. SCC is a 608-era format, frame-based and limited to a 32-character row; converting it is not a rename, and a careless conversion drifts out of sync or drops characters the way any frame-based conversion can. If the spec lists IMSC 1.1, deliver IMSC 1.1, validated against that spec. The Netflix subtitle requirements are the most demanding public example and a fair proxy for the rest; our free subtitle validator checks an SRT against them before you upload.

Where the law comes in

Two pieces of legislation explain why the accessibility track moved from optional to assumed. In the United States, the FCC's rules under 47 CFR Part 79 require distributors to caption nearly all new English and Spanish television programming, and the rules that followed the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 extend that to "full-length video programming" delivered over internet protocol after it aired on US television with captions. In the European Union, the European Accessibility Act (Directive (EU) 2019/882) brings "access to audio-visual media services" into scope, with member states applying the rules from 28 June 2025. It writes no subtitle spec; platforms turn the obligation into a schedule line that says SDH. On both continents a feature without a same-language accessibility track has fewer places it can go.

Common questions

What is the difference between closed captions and subtitles?

Subtitles translate the dialogue into another language for viewers who can hear the audio; closed captions transcribe it in the same language, add speaker identification and sound description for viewers who cannot, and can be switched on and off. US usage keeps the words apart on that line; European usage lets "subtitles" cover both.

What are open captions?

Open captions are captions burned into the picture, so every viewer sees them and nobody can switch them off; closed captions travel as a separate data track the device decodes on demand. Open captions suit a festival screening or a social clip; a platform delivery master should be textless, with every text track as a separate file.

Is SDH the same as closed captions?

In content, nearly; in file, no. Both carry same-language dialogue, speaker labels and sound cues for viewers without access to the audio. Closed captions in the strict sense ride a US broadcast caption stream (CEA-608/708, typically an SCC file); SDH is the same information authored as an ordinary subtitle file, which is what streaming platforms ingest.

Do I need closed captions or subtitles for my film?

Usually both, for different reasons. Translated subtitles open territories; a same-language accessibility track (CC for US broadcast, SDH for streaming and international) is what regulation and platform policy now expect; a forced narrative track covers on-screen text and foreign lines for every viewer, including viewers of a dub. Read the buyer's schedule for the exact file per line.

What does CC mean on Netflix?

On Netflix the entry labelled "English [CC]" is the same-language accessibility track, which on the platform is an SDH subtitle file rather than a broadcast caption stream; Netflix's partner documentation says subtitles and SDH are produced for its branded content, not closed captions, and that the two labels get used interchangeably. Choosing it adds speaker labels and sound description; plain "English" is dialogue only.

Fonti Studio produces translated subtitle tracks for feature films, with the forced narrative track as a separate file on every title that needs one, SDH included free on request with every subtitle order, and a broadcast caption file (CC conversion) on request for buyers who need one instead of SDH. If a schedule with "CC," "subs," "SDH" and "forced" on it does not obviously add up to a list of files, the subtitling service page lists what we deliver, or send the schedule to hello@fonti.studio.