[M4IF Technotes] Does MPEG-4 support Closed captioning?

[AVARO Olivier FTRD/DIH/REN]

Dear Sassan,
> I was wondering if MPEG-4 has support for closed captioning. 
> Since CC includes
> both text (ascii) and control characters (binary) I'm not 
> sure if the MPEG-4 support
> for text would be adequte. Any pointers to the appropriate 
> MPEG-4 documents would
> be appreciated.

It definitly does.
You can currently create closed captionning in the form of a BIFS streams that can be frame by frame synchronized with the video (share the exact same clock). This has been demonstrated many times (last week in particular in a small workshop on MPEG-4 tools in Bruxelles organized by the EU).
You can use a variety of fonts and effects.
MPEG is currently defining extension to this text format to allow more predictible rendering both in terms of fonts support and layout management.
Kind regards,
Olivier