Learning Center

An as-broadcast script is the verbatim record of your finished program — every word spoken, every significant sound effect, every music cue, every title or super that appears on screen. It's built from the locked cut, not the shooting script, which means it reflects what was actually delivered, not what was planned. This is one of the most requested documents in post, and one of the most frequently confused with other script types. If someone asks for an as-broadcast and you hand them a production draft, expect problems downstream.

Closed captions are the text version of a program's audio — dialogue, sound effects, speaker IDs, music cues — encoded into the video and turned on or off by the viewer. The "closed" just means they're hidden until activated, as opposed to open captions, which are burned into the picture permanently. Captions started as an accessibility tool for deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers and are now required by FCC regulations for broadcast and by most streaming platforms. They're not the same thing as SDH, even though people use the terms interchangeably all the time. (See: SDH.)

A continuity script is a time-coded, verbatim transcript of a finished program — all spoken dialogue, on-screen text, supers, and key audio elements in the order they appear in the cut. It's produced from the locked edit, not from any earlier draft. The continuity script is the foundational document for captioning, subtitling, localization, and network compliance. Some broadcasters use the term to mean slightly different things depending on their house format, so it's always worth confirming exactly what elements they need before you deliver.

A dialogue list is a structured, time-coded record of every word spoken in a production. It's the core document for foreign language dubbing and localization — the starting point for everything that follows in that pipeline. It's not the same as a continuity script, which typically includes sound effects and music cues as well. A dialogue list is speech-focused by design. Accuracy matters more here than people realize: even small errors can create real problems when a dubbing studio is working in a language where lip-sync timing is tight.

A dubbing script takes a dialogue list one step further — it's an adapted translation written specifically for lip-sync replacement in another language. A good dubbing script doesn't just translate the words accurately; it shapes those words to match the mouth movements of the original performance. That's a skill, and it's different from straight translation. A literal translation that ignores sync will make a dub look wrong even if the words are technically correct. Dubbing scripts are typically produced by a translator working alongside a sync adapter who understands that constraint.

Forced narrative subtitles — usually just called "forced" on a deliverable spec — are a subtitle track that displays for all viewers, regardless of their language settings. They're used for content that a viewer needs translated to follow the story: a foreign language conversation inside an otherwise English-language film, a plot-relevant text message, an invented language. Forced narrative is a separate track from your full subtitle file and should only contain the lines that actually require it. Delivering a complete subtitle track as a "forced" is a common mistake and will almost always come back to you as a rejection.

Localization is the full process of adapting content for a different language and regional market. In post-production, that means translation, subtitling, dubbing, on-screen text replacement, and whatever cultural adjustments are needed to make the content land for that audience. It's broader than translation — a properly localized program accounts for idiom, humor, cultural references, and sometimes regulatory differences depending on the territory. The distinction between Latin American Spanish and Castilian Spanish is a localization decision, not just a translation preference. Getting it wrong isn't just an accuracy issue; it's an audience issue.

M&E stands for Music and Effects — it's an audio mix of the program with all dialogue removed, leaving only music, ambient sound, and effects. It's the essential audio deliverable for international dubbing: the foreign language recording gets laid over the M&E, replacing the original dialogue while keeping everything else intact. The M&E needs to be clean, meaning no original dialogue bleeding through into the effects or music underneath. A dirty M&E usually gets sent back. This is a deliverable that needs to be requested and checked before post wraps — it's not something you want to be chasing after the fact.

SDH is a subtitle track that does everything closed captions do — it includes dialogue, speaker identification, sound effect descriptions, and music cues — but formatted and delivered as part of the subtitle track structure rather than as a separate caption data channel. Most streaming platforms now prefer SDH over traditional closed captions because it travels more cleanly through international delivery pipelines. SDH and closed captions serve the same audience, but they are technically different things, delivered differently, and should not be treated as interchangeable on a deliverable spec. If the spec says SDH, it means SDH.

Timecode is the frame-level reference system that holds post-production together — a sequential numbering system expressed as hours:minutes:seconds:frames (HH:MM:SS:FF) that identifies exactly where you are in a program at any given moment. Every caption file, every subtitle file, every script deliverable is built to a specific timecode. When timecode is wrong, inconsistent, or broken, everything tied to it breaks too. Drop-frame versus non-drop-frame is a common source of confusion and a real source of errors. If you hand a captioning vendor a file with different timecode than what the captions were built to, the sync will be off. That's not a small fix.