Subtitles Not Displaying (not closed captioning) or duplicating - GDC SR-1000/SR-1000-4K

Note:  This article refers to subtitles for a foreign language film.  It does not refer to, or apply to,  closed captioning for the hearing impaired.

As absurd as it may sound, the first step in troubleshooting a subtitling issue is to confirm that you are, in fact, using the correct subtitled version of the DCP.  It is not unheard of for a distributor to include two versions of a foreign language film on a DCP; one subtitled, one not.  Assuming that the content uses the ISDCF naming convention, the title should look something like this:

FeatureName_FTR_S-PL-EN_US_51_2K_20210626_WB_IOP_OV

In the example, the first highlighted portion indicates that the dialogue is in Polish and the subtitles are in English.  The second highlighted portion indicates that this DCP is using the IOP format.

IOP and SMPTE are two formats for creating DCP's in current usage.  More studios are moving towards the SMPTE standard as the subtitles are encrypted.  

In the IOP format, the subtitles are rendered in the projector.  SMPTE subtitles can be rendered by the server.  Series I projectors cannot decrypt the encrypted SMPTE subtitles so subtitles must be rendered in the server.

In the SR-1000 server, there is a toggle to turn on/turn off the server rendering of the subtitles.  There are two possible scenarios here.  In the first scenario, there are no subtitles shown on the screen.  In this case, check the box labeled Subtitle Overlay should cause the subtitles to appear.  In the second case, two sets of identical subtitles appear.  In this scenario, the Subtitle Overlay box should be unchecked.

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