Investigating the Influence of Subtitles Synchronization in the Viewer's Quality of Experience

Abstract

Watching a movie in which audio and video are out of sync is certainly an unpleasant experience, even with a big bucket of fresh popcorn. In a similar way, viewers can experience a negative experience when subtitles are not well synchronized with the media content. The point is that subtitles synchronization (or the lack thereof) plays a key role, positively or negatively, in the perception of quality that viewers have about the content. In this context, this work focuses on investigating how slightly more "relaxed" synchronization directives may affect significantly the perception of Quality of Experience (QoE) that users have when watching audiovisual content in English with subtitles in Brazilian Portuguese. Our observations are based on the analysis of data collected in an experiment with 24 users and the results suggest that subtitles beginning with delay have most influence in the viewers' QoE.