Your Guide to Media Selector with subtitles option

When accessing video on the BBC online the Media Selector tool allows you to choose a connection speed best suited to your computer and to select your preferred media player, either Windows Media Player or RealPlayer. Additionally BBC online is now trialling a new technology to allow us to provide subtitles for some video content using Media Selector.

The following instructions let you know how to identify if some video content has subtitles, and how to turn subtitles on and off using the BBC online Media Selector.

Subtitles are available for the chosen video if the word ' Subtitled ' appears to the right of the BBC logo as shown in Fig 1.

Fig 1

To set your preferences for whether to show or hide subtitles for video content which has subtitles available, you should click on the ' Settings ' link at the top of the Media Selector window as highlighted in Fig 2 below.

Fig 2

Once you have selected the ' Settings ' link, the Media Selector preferences panel will appear. If the video content has subtitles available the preferences panel will reflect this by the inclusion of a tick-box control to show or hide subtitles as highlighted in Fig 3 below:

Fig 3

Note: Where video content is available for both Real and Windows Media players, subtitles will be available for each format.

Once you have indicated your preferences for showing or hiding subtitles, this information will be stored in your cookie on your computer so that BBC online video content will always play according to your preferences.

How to turn on subtitles

If the video content has subtitles, to view them you need to click the checkbox next to ' show subtitles ' (as highlighted in Fig 3 above) and then click ' OK ' or press ' Tab ' until the checkbox is highlighted and then press the ' Spacebar ' to select it and then press ' Enter '.

How to turn off subtitles

If you wish to hide subtitles after turing them on , you will need to select the ' hide subtitles ' tick-box by clicking on it and then clicking ' OK ' or press ' Tab ' until the checkbox is highlighted and then press the ' Spacebar ' to select it and then press ' Enter ' as highlighted in Fig 4 below.

Fig 4

I have chosen to play subtitles but nothing happens. What can I do?

If the subtitles do not playback, the most probable reason will be an incompatible combination of Web Browser and Media Player. All browsers supporting RealPlayer will play the subtitles as long as the RealPlayer browser plugin is installed. If you experience problems with RealPlayer then please look at the RealPlayer support site. Windows Media Player requires that ' ActiveX ' is installed on your computer. Internet Explorer comes with ' ActiveX ' . It is possible to download ' ActiveX ' for Mozilla based browser from http://www.mozilla.org, although this is not recommended. If you wish to view subtitles on the Mozilla platform it is best to use RealPlayer.

This is due to heavy traffic at peak hours during lunchtime and evening - if your patient the video will play after a short wait.

Windows Media player

Fig 5

Real Player

Fig 6

You can view subtitles in standalone and full screen players by selecting the links at the top of the Media Selector window.

Note: If you have selected to view subtitles for Windows Media player, and view the content in either full screen or standalone version, you may find that the subtitles fail to appear. If this occurs, you will need to:

• Click on the ' Play ' menu of the player or press ' Alt ' + ' P ' .
• Click on ' Captions and Subtitles ' from the menu or press ' B ' .
• Click on ' English Captions (or 'On if Available') ' from the expanded menu or use the ' Up ' and ' Down ' arrows to select and press ' Enter ' .

Fig 7

Under the ' Settings ' option a help link is also available within Media Selector which contains details on how to use the new subtitles functionality, you will find it on the third page of questions as shown in Fig 8 below:

Fig 8