Motivation

Subtitles have become an ubiquitous part of localization in an ever more connecting global world. Use-cases range from simple translations at the bottom of the screen over games using them as the sole medium to convey story to promotional videos using them as art (lyrical videos).

Even though ubiquitous and needed in any media project that wants to support multiple languages, there are still a lot of unique solutions on the market, each with their own philosophy, quirks and limitations while "industry standards" often fail to incorporate the most basic understanding of the human perception.

Surprisingly most localization work is still being done as an afterthought and the solutions available on the market seem to reflect that.

This format, SSB, aims to be the foundation of a standard which provides best practices and a multitude of integrations in all sorts of systems to present text to any end-user in a non-obtrusive and enjoyable manner.