Comments on: Closed Captioning Survey Results Are In! http://abercap.com/blog/2009/08/12/closed-captioning-survey-results-are-in/ Powered by Aberdeen Captioning Thu, 14 Jan 2010 23:42:02 -0800 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Joanna http://abercap.com/blog/2009/08/12/closed-captioning-survey-results-are-in/comment-page-1/#comment-67 Joanna Tue, 18 Aug 2009 19:59:34 +0000 http://www.abercap.com/blog/?p=225#comment-67 Good point, Matt. I will pass the info along. Good point, Matt. I will pass the info along.

]]> By: Matt Cook http://abercap.com/blog/2009/08/12/closed-captioning-survey-results-are-in/comment-page-1/#comment-63 Matt Cook Fri, 14 Aug 2009 19:20:47 +0000 http://www.abercap.com/blog/?p=225#comment-63 Joanna, Thank you! I think this would be good information for the DTV group working on closed captioning standards. Joanna,
Thank you! I think this would be good information for the DTV group working on closed captioning standards.

]]> By: Joanna http://abercap.com/blog/2009/08/12/closed-captioning-survey-results-are-in/comment-page-1/#comment-62 Joanna Fri, 14 Aug 2009 15:39:49 +0000 http://www.abercap.com/blog/?p=225#comment-62 Thank you for all your comments!!! LARRY: The respondents were randomly recruited. For the most part from my contacts and networking and other random requests for people to take the survey. I just wanted to get a variety of people to take the survey, since caption users can be anything. On the other hand, it would have been nice if there were more deaf and hard-of-hearing respondents. Perhaps I will do a survey directed specifically for deaf and hard-of-hearing respondents in the future. Unfortunately digital captioning and still requires decoders, so if one is not functioning properly, there could be errors or garbled captions. SEAN: These are all great questions/ideas. I have not specifically found any formal papers or studies about benefits of closed-captioning your web videos, although I have read quite a bit of online chatter about it and people STRONGLY advocating it. There is actually something being discussed about making it mandatory that I am going to post to the blog today so check that out. I have not heard of being able to make a caption a link. This would be AN AMAZING feature, like: "click on this caption now to receive your free offer." I think this technology would be extremely marketable, but I have not heard of it being available. A good resource to ask about this, may be http://www.cpcweb.com. They are captioning software developers who are pretty up on the latest technologies and may have heard if there is any buzz about this. PAUL: Your concerns are very much the norm. The problem lies with different decoders. Some decoders may decode perfectly and others not so perfectly. It has nothing to do with the signal. It sounds like the captions were ENCODED properly to begin with so if they are viewed in properly from one source, but not another, then it is a decoder issue. Duncan: Currently there is the technology to be able to caption and subtitle Flash videos. It is more complicated, than WMV or QT, but it can be done. In fact, we are currently providing captions for flash videos. JEFF: Viewing captions for web video varies per player, but each player has a way to turn them on our off. It is fairly simple. When you say industry leaders, do you mean in industry leaders for streaming video or closed captioning leaders? The “closed captioning leader” supports this 100% as you can imagine, but it is not up to us… it is up to the people that have web video wanting to pay for the service. Many times, they just don’t see all the benefits. I think you would find the closed-captioning meta data to be an advantage. Why don’t you contact me and we can go over your interests and we can talk about rates and services and you can decide if it is an endeavor you want to try out. Closed captioning your videos will increase your viewers, not only from the large deaf and hard of hearing community, but also people that need to watch the videos with the sound off because they are at work, et cetera. Anyway, I think you bring up a good point about doing a survey for online video. I checked out your site!!! It is so cool. I haven’t seen anything like it. . Activating captions and clicking through to stuff would be such a cool feature. I am going to pass this info on to my team. Thank you for all your comments!!!

LARRY: The respondents were randomly recruited. For the most part from my contacts and networking and other random requests for people to take the survey. I just wanted to get a variety of people to take the survey, since caption users can be anything. On the other hand, it would have been nice if there were more deaf and hard-of-hearing respondents. Perhaps I will do a survey directed specifically for deaf and hard-of-hearing respondents in the future. Unfortunately digital captioning and still requires decoders, so if one is not functioning properly, there could be errors or garbled captions.

SEAN: These are all great questions/ideas. I have not specifically found any formal papers or studies about benefits of closed-captioning your web videos, although I have read quite a bit of online chatter about it and people STRONGLY advocating it. There is actually something being discussed about making it mandatory that I am going to post to the blog today so check that out. I have not heard of being able to make a caption a link. This would be AN AMAZING feature, like: “click on this caption now to receive your free offer.” I think this technology would be extremely marketable, but I have not heard of it being available. A good resource to ask about this, may be http://www.cpcweb.com. They are captioning software developers who are pretty up on the latest technologies and may have heard if there is any buzz about this.

PAUL: Your concerns are very much the norm. The problem lies with different decoders. Some decoders may decode perfectly and others not so perfectly. It has nothing to do with the signal. It sounds like the captions were ENCODED properly to begin with so if they are viewed in properly from one source, but not another, then it is a decoder issue.

Duncan: Currently there is the technology to be able to caption and subtitle Flash videos. It is more complicated, than WMV or QT, but it can be done. In fact, we are currently providing captions for flash videos.

JEFF: Viewing captions for web video varies per player, but each player has a way to turn them on our off. It is fairly simple. When you say industry leaders, do you mean in industry leaders for streaming video or closed captioning leaders? The “closed captioning leader” supports this 100% as you can imagine, but it is not up to us… it is up to the people that have web video wanting to pay for the service. Many times, they just don’t see all the benefits. I think you would find the closed-captioning meta data to be an advantage. Why don’t you contact me and we can go over your interests and we can talk about rates and services and you can decide if it is an endeavor you want to try out. Closed captioning your videos will increase your viewers, not only from the large deaf and hard of hearing community, but also people that need to watch the videos with the sound off because they are at work, et cetera. Anyway, I think you bring up a good point about doing a survey for online video. I checked out your site!!! It is so cool. I haven’t seen anything like it. . Activating captions and clicking through to stuff would be such a cool feature. I am going to pass this info on to my team.

]]> By: jeff http://abercap.com/blog/2009/08/12/closed-captioning-survey-results-are-in/comment-page-1/#comment-61 jeff Thu, 13 Aug 2009 18:10:48 +0000 http://www.abercap.com/blog/?p=225#comment-61 I'm wondering how people use closed captioning with web video? I haven't noticed any of the industry leaders attempt to support this. Even youtube seems to have missed this feature entirely. Clikthrough's product (an interactive video solution) allows us to precisely position "hotspots" (clikable regions) over the people, products, places in the video where we can add captions, highlights or other effects. We've long considered adding closed captioning as another data stream but weren't sure how big of a target audience and the cost of captioning service providers that might be interested in partnering to provide the service. Could you add web video watching to your next survey? Input like this could help us to put priority on features like this if there was a need. Given we're based on flash/web technologies we could easily allow people to "drag and drop" to position the cc text as all the clik hotspots are web layers you can interact with. Take a look at www.clikthrough.com/videos (mostly music videos) and please get back in touch with me with any surveys you have on the online video side. I’m wondering how people use closed captioning with web video? I haven’t noticed any of the industry leaders attempt to support this. Even youtube seems to have missed this feature entirely.

Clikthrough’s product (an interactive video solution) allows us to precisely position “hotspots” (clikable regions) over the people, products, places in the video where we can add captions, highlights or other effects. We’ve long considered adding closed captioning as another data stream but weren’t sure how big of a target audience and the cost of captioning service providers that might be interested in partnering to provide the service.

Could you add web video watching to your next survey? Input like this could help us to put priority on features like this if there was a need.

Given we’re based on flash/web technologies we could easily allow people to “drag and drop” to position the cc text as all the clik hotspots are web layers you can interact with.

Take a look at http://www.clikthrough.com/videos (mostly music videos) and please get back in touch with me with any surveys you have on the online video side.

]]> By: Duncan Burbidge http://abercap.com/blog/2009/08/12/closed-captioning-survey-results-are-in/comment-page-1/#comment-60 Duncan Burbidge Thu, 13 Aug 2009 16:57:04 +0000 http://www.abercap.com/blog/?p=225#comment-60 Hi Joanna thanks for the results - did you see a need for a tool to put these subtitles into a Flash player too? best Duncan Hi Joanna

thanks for the results – did you see a need for a tool to put these subtitles into a Flash player too?

best

Duncan

]]> By: Paul Garmon http://abercap.com/blog/2009/08/12/closed-captioning-survey-results-are-in/comment-page-1/#comment-59 Paul Garmon Thu, 13 Aug 2009 12:40:47 +0000 http://www.abercap.com/blog/?p=225#comment-59 Thanks for gathering interesting thoughts (and misconceptions) about closed captioning. I have seen cases where a set top box will show captioning errors whereas a Tivo (decoding the exact same broadcast) will not. Not sure if that's due to signal quality (which is highly variable, even within a single household, etc.). Maybe this will be improved by the recent switch of most channel delivery to digital broadcasting? However, I find it more complex to figure out how to turn on captions with digital delivery, since it's often the set top box (or equivalent) that needs to decode and display them, not the TV. Thanks for gathering interesting thoughts (and misconceptions) about closed captioning. I have seen cases where a set top box will show captioning errors whereas a Tivo (decoding the exact same broadcast) will not. Not sure if that’s due to signal quality (which is highly variable, even within a single household, etc.). Maybe this will be improved by the recent switch of most channel delivery to digital broadcasting? However, I find it more complex to figure out how to turn on captions with digital delivery, since it’s often the set top box (or equivalent) that needs to decode and display them, not the TV.

]]> By: Sean Randles http://abercap.com/blog/2009/08/12/closed-captioning-survey-results-are-in/comment-page-1/#comment-57 Sean Randles Thu, 13 Aug 2009 08:56:40 +0000 http://www.abercap.com/blog/?p=225#comment-57 Hi Joanna Thanks for this- are there any studies or papers or views on the commercial benefits/opportunties of closed captions on web videos - I assume to describe products- enhance understanding of complex propositions etc Is it possible to create a link out of a caption - ie to create a call to action the viewer could respond to? regards Sean Hi Joanna
Thanks for this- are there any studies or papers or views on the commercial benefits/opportunties of closed captions on web videos – I assume to describe products- enhance understanding of complex propositions etc
Is it possible to create a link out of a caption – ie to create a call to action the viewer could respond to?
regards
Sean

]]> By: Larry Goldberg http://abercap.com/blog/2009/08/12/closed-captioning-survey-results-are-in/comment-page-1/#comment-56 Larry Goldberg Wed, 12 Aug 2009 20:01:06 +0000 http://www.abercap.com/blog/?p=225#comment-56 Thanks for the interesting info. How were respondents recruited? ... Larry ... Thanks for the interesting info.

How were respondents recruited?

… Larry …

]]> By: Joanna http://abercap.com/blog/2009/08/12/closed-captioning-survey-results-are-in/comment-page-1/#comment-54 Joanna Wed, 12 Aug 2009 17:30:39 +0000 http://www.abercap.com/blog/?p=225#comment-54 Hi Tim, Thanks for your comment. I was surprised as well at how many complaints on quality there were, because as a closed-captioning service provider that is the LAST thing clients ask for (although we still maintain a high level of quality). Almost all were in the US, and the ones that weren't said they didn't use CC as they are not in the US. A lot of people WANT the functions that 708 offers, but it appears that few are using it or even know about it yet. Once it becomes the norm across the board, I feel people will be much happier when they discover they have more control. They still do not have control of the positioning though... Hi Tim,
Thanks for your comment. I was surprised as well at how many complaints on quality there were, because as a closed-captioning service provider that is the LAST thing clients ask for (although we still maintain a high level of quality). Almost all were in the US, and the ones that weren’t said they didn’t use CC as they are not in the US. A lot of people WANT the functions that 708 offers, but it appears that few are using it or even know about it yet. Once it becomes the norm across the board, I feel people will be much happier when they discover they have more control. They still do not have control of the positioning though…

]]> By: Tim Harris http://abercap.com/blog/2009/08/12/closed-captioning-survey-results-are-in/comment-page-1/#comment-53 Tim Harris Wed, 12 Aug 2009 16:23:26 +0000 http://www.abercap.com/blog/?p=225#comment-53 Hi Joanna, Thank you for sharing the results, very interesting. Do you have any ideas on the geographic spread of the respondents? It would be interesting if the requests for higher quality captioning came mainly from the US, where 708 is still in early days, whereas in Europe higher quality captioning is possible through DVB and Teletext. Tim Hi Joanna,

Thank you for sharing the results, very interesting.

Do you have any ideas on the geographic spread of the respondents? It would be interesting if the requests for higher quality captioning came mainly from the US, where 708 is still in early days, whereas in Europe higher quality captioning is possible through DVB and Teletext.

Tim

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