[John Birch]

EBU format is an industry standard format used for subtitles (or closed captions) worldwide (though not commonly in USA!). All professional subtitle preparation products typically support EBU format files as an interchange format. For Teletext subtitling (a form of closed captions common in Europe) the EBU format, (file extension .stl) is usually used as the ‘transmission file’ by a subtitle insertion system in the broadcast facility.

There are some caveats to using EBU files as a storage mechanism for subtitles, primarily they are typically limited in line length (37 characters) and will not include spaces after punctuation characters if originally authored for Teletext presentation (since Teletext characters are fixed width, punctuation chars have intrinsic spaces).

regards

John Birch
Screen Subtitling Systems Ltd.