Spot Software VOF, based in Amsterdam, Holland, is run by its partners Martin Cleaver and Jean Offenberg. Software development is the responsibility of Portugal-based Mark Raishbrook.
Spot was initially developed in 1994 and was one of the first systems on the market to allow translators to subtitle in the comfort of their own home. "Rudimentary" might be the best way to describe the initial release: there was a limit on the number of subtitles per file and the maximum supported screen resolution was 640 x 480.
By the summer of 1996, WinSub (ouch!) had become the much improved (though not in name) TCLite, following the chance meeting of Mark and Martin on the sci.lang.translation newsgroup. Jean joined the effort six months later and in 1997 Spot Software VOF came into being.
The Y2K bug came and went, as did TCLite, now cunningly renamed SpotOn. And then a miracle occurred: one of us had a good idea. "Let's just call it Spot!" And so we did.
In April 2003, as VHS made way for VOB, we went digital and launched Spot 4. Good riddance, joggy shuttle thing! Now, instead of taking five minutes to rewind the tape to the start, you could jump to any point in a video instantaneously.
Spot 5 followed in 2010. A year later, Screen Subtitling Systems announced that it had licensed Spot Software to create and issue compliant PAC files, making Spot the first subtitle system on the market to undergo PAC testing and compliance certification by Screen.
Just over five years and one massive code rewrite later, Spot 6 was released, its new design proving popular even with the "Why did you have to change it?" crowd. 18 or so months later, for the first time in its long history, we made Spot available to rent rather than buy. Love it or hate it, the era of subscription software had begun.
And now, three decades after the first few buggy lines of code were written in a dark, dingy apartment in central Portugal, we welcome Spot 7 into the fold. We may be older than we once were, but our passion for subtitling and for building powerful, user-friendly subtitling software remains as strong as ever.
Spot wouldn't be what it is without our faithful band of merry Spotters, all of whom have helped shape our software in one way or another. The list includes, but is not limited to, Bartho Kriek, Celeste Ferraz, Christian Barkholt Muller, Diederik Eekhout, Frank Lekens, Gerard van Loenhout, Hans de Jong, José Manuel Canário, Leo Reijnen, Martijn Bijwaard, Peter Bosma, Rubén Delgado, Stephen Ford, and Tobias Trummer. Thanks also to Geraint Davies, MVP Chris Parsons and closed caption guru Dan Glisson. Oh, and Spot the Dog, of course.
