Localizing multimedia (Flash, QuickTime) - Part 4

Oops! What about the broadcasters?

Sometimes you're localizing a commercial or a product demo intended for viewing over broadcast (think Home Shopping Network) or at the point of sale (think sports equipment demo). The localized Flash or QuickTime files that you poured into .flv or .swf format are of no help here, because someone has the intention of pushing a tape into a machine in a broadcast operations center or sliding a DVD into a player in a department store.

As usual, your client may take for granted that you understand this, and be dismayed when the right physical media doesn't show up. One client had no clear directions for us in this regard, and we've since learned that the question we need to ask is, "How will the localized multimedia be viewed?" or "Do you want a playable DVD for this?"

The project was rushed, and it was all we could do to determine ahead of time the proper specifications for the Web-based deliverable (described in the Part 3 post). They instructed us in the easy matters - "We need Italian, Spanish and German" - but we never did get a solid answer about physical media, so at the end of localization I asked the studio to bundle up these assets:

• the original, uncompressed audio/video footage (about 7GB)
• .mov files with each of the localized subtitles only (no audio/video; about 400MB each)
  
• the translated scripts
• the .flv files we'd used as previews for publishing over the Web

We didn't really know exactly what the client's in-country partners and customers would need - and were convinced it would take the client a long time to tell us - so we gave them a set of data files that would not paint them into a corner. That seemed better than our guessing at the ultimate use for these, and getting it wrong.

Sure enough, two weeks later they phoned. "Why doesn't the Italian version play when I put in the DVD?" the client wanted to know. I explained that the client would first have to determine exactly the format in which each country wanted the DVD, then have a studio build a playable DVD from the files we'd handed off. This last step would not require a studio with localization expertise and could probably be executed less expensively by the people who had created the original English-language media.

There was also some confusion about regional codes, which ended up relating only to piracy prevention. Since nobody was worried about illicit duplication of the media, that issue went away.

The moral: Ask all the questions ahead of time. Then ask at least one more.

Do you have that "one more question" you wish you'd asked ahead of time? Post it in a comment.