Closed Captioning Blog » Closed Captioning

Automatic Voice Recognition Caption Blunders

christina — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 19:09:15 +0000

YouTube now recognizes the need for online videos to be closed captioned and for that we say, “Hooray!” However, it is becoming increasingly clear that while their new automatic voice recognition software allows their videos to be quickly captioned, the technology still has its bugs and its accuracy leaves a lot to be desired. In fact, the actual errors are so great that it has now spawned tons of new websites solely dedicated to posting screenshots of the ridiculous captions that have been found on certain YouTube videos. These are not just random user videos, either. Some are found on professional software training videos, including a rather embarrassing captioning error within a video clip by Macintosh for their Snow Leopard operating system.

Per our last post, we discussed the benefits of using voice recognition software. However, we understand that part of the process is to go back and correct the errors. Voice writing “on the fly” by a trained professional still only produces captions that are 95% accurate at very best, but usually under 90%. (And this is using software that has been trained to understand an individual captioner’s voice.) Closed captioning remains a field where a trained human professional’s product will surpass any computer program.

So while this new embrace of closed captioning is still a step in the right direction, we encourage companies to remember that accuracy is important especially when it comes to your message. (Also remember that your SEO will be enhanced if the captioning text of your online video is completely accurate.) Why risk having your professional video ridiculed for closed captioning blunders?

To get an idea of just how inaccurate voice recognition captions can be, check out: http://youtubecaptionfail.com/.

US House Passed HR 3101!

christina — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 17:31:17 +0000

On the 20th Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, 348 members of the U.S. House of Representatives voted for HR 3101, the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act. This act will require closed captioning on all Internet video information and will help millions of people have access to these videos. This act will also provide up to $10 million annually for specialized communications equipment for low-income individuals who are deaf/blind. It also requires that Internet telephones be hearing aid compatible.

California Representative Henry A. Waxman states: “Today, as we mark the 20th anniversary of the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act, the House is giving Americans with disabilities access to smart phones, other communications technology, and video programming. This bill ensures that millions of Americans with disabilities can participate in our 21st century digital society.”

Senator John Kerry said, “Technology and the Internet have broken down barriers, and no one should be or has to be excluded from modern communications and the new economy because of a disability. It’s been 20 years since the Americans With Disabilities Act knocked down barriers to employment and government services — and now it’s time to do the same thing [with regard to] blocking people with disabilities from getting online.”

So what happens next? The bill gets sent to the Senate for vote and if it passes, it will be signed into law!

Increase Your Search Engine Optimization With Closed Captions!

Joanna — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 19:33:36 +0000

YouTube and Google are now indexing videos for text that is contained within each video’s closed captions and/or subtitles. Therefore, ensuring that your video is closed captioned will certainly lead to increased views given that your video will now rank for any words that are contained within the closed captioned text. This text will assist the search engine and will help with indexing and ranking for certain key phrases.

Mark Robertson wrote an article on his website titled “In-Depth Look at YouTube Closed Captions, SEO, and YouTube Indexing,” where he explores the many added benefits of adding closed captions to YouTube videos. In addition to increasing accessibility and allowing your video to have a global reach with the addition of multi-language subtitles, Robertson points out yet another added benefit—advanced search filtering. Both Google and YouTube allow users to filter their video search to include only videos with associated closed captions. If your Web video is not closed captioned, you are not only limiting your video’s accessibility, but you are missing out on an easy marketing strategy.

For more information on captioning your Web or YouTube video, visit our website!

Is Stenography Dying because of Voice Recognition?

christina — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 16:16:53 +0000

Looking for a dream job? Certified realtime stenographers can set their own schedules, work from anywhere in the world and can make six figures a year. Mirabai Knight, a stenographer in New York, composed a six part article on her website entitled “What Is Steno Good For?” It’s an insightful look into the career of stenography and the challenges that steno students face. In “CART, Court, and Captioning,” Knight describes the current debate of stenography vs. speech recognition software. She argues that although voice recognition software is constantly improving, it will never be perfect. Knight notes, “Its theoretical ceiling of improvement is far below what’s required for consistent, reliable transcription… It has no ability to use context or meaning to change sounds into words. It records audio waveforms, breaks them up into little bits, and compares them to a database of other audio waveforms. It never finds a perfect match, because no two humans say the same word in exactly the same way each time.” The voice writer is also at a disadvantage when it comes to homophones (words that sound alike) whereas the steno writer has many options to resolve homophone conflicts. Steno writers also know exactly what will appear on the screen with each stroke, whereas voice writers are relying on the computer to interpret accurately what they are saying. Sadly, because it takes money and lengthy training to become a realtime stenographer, many students are turning to voice recognition software instead. This shortage of CART providers and captioners has led to many companies hiring “untrained voice writers, deciding that their output is good enough, and dropping both standards and wages accordingly. It’s a sad situation,” says Knight. Knight’s fear is that more people will choose to learn voice recognition because it is significantly cheaper than purchasing a steno machine and the required software. Her goal is to make steno machines cheaper and more mainstream so that this discipline has a chance at survival. For information on stenography as a profession, visit Knight’s website at: http://stenoknight.com/index.html.

Aberdeen Captioning Has Been Qualified by DCMP as “YouTube Ready”

christina — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 13:01:22 +0000

Aberdeen Captioning has been qualified as a “YouTube Ready” vendor by DCMP. As a DCMP “Approved Captioning Service Vendor,” Aberdeen is committed to providing quality captioning in multimedia formats, now including your YouTube videos. This allows your YouTube video to be captioned according to DCMP guidelines and with a customer satisfaction guarantee. Aberdeen offers different choices for your YouTube video and will work closely to establish a package that is right for you.

Need multi-language translation for your YouTube video? No problem! Aberdeen will provide a professional and experienced translator to ensure that your message is understood globally. All you need is a YouTube account.

To learn more about DCMP’s “YouTube Ready” qualification visit:

http://youtubeready.dcmp.org/

Also, watch Aberdeen’s YouTube video for more information on our captioning and subtitling services for your YouTube video at:

http://abercap.com/youtube_captioning.html

A Growing Awareness for Captioning Web Videos

christina — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 09:07:46 +0000

On June 20, 2010, New York Times reporter Brian Stelter wrote an article that criticized the lack of captioning available for Web videos. He states that advocates like Marlee Matlin have been fighting for captions on popular sites like CNN.com and Netflix. Many sites that contain videos and entertainment clips such as CBS.com, NBC.com, and MSN.com all lack captions or are inconsistent with their captions.

With a growing trend towards Internet video, advocates are urging Congress to pass a bill that would mandate captions on online videos that have also appeared on television. They are also pushing for captions to be more accessible by requiring closed-caption buttons on remote controls. Stelter notes, “The prospect of legislation is motivating some major Web site operators to add captions more quickly.” A few companies are attempting to create a universal standard for online captions, which would make it easier to adapt TV captions to other formats.

Media companies are beginning to understand the importance of captions and are now taking action. YouTube and Google provide captions for any video uploaded as of April, which is mutually beneficial—the text added to their videos aides in searches. Hulu, a Web site that offers free TV episodes, now offers captions for many of its popular shows. Eric Feng, the chief technical officer for Hulu, stated that “Users send us feedback about closed captions more often than almost any other feature, so what started as a small side project has turned into a very important part of our user experience.”

Adding captions to all Web videos is a giant endeavor, which will likely take a huge amount of time, but in the end, it will provide accessibility to the 36 million Americans who rely on captions.

New Closed Captioning Rules and Requirements

christina — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 16:27:02 +0000

The Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau reported an increase in closed captioning complaints since the transition to digital television in June of 2009. To combat this, in February 2010, the FCC implemented a new closed captioning complaint rule. This allows consumers to file their closed captioning complaints directly with the FCC. Closed captioning complaints (captions that are missing, delayed, too fast, garbled, or unreadable) must be filed within 60 days of viewing the program. Consumers can fill out an online form, or they can email their complaints to fccinfo@fcc.gov, fax them to 1-866-418-0232, or send a letter directly to the FCC. Once the FCC receives the complaint, they will contact the TV station, who is required to respond within 30 days.

The FCC has also implemented new contact information requirements. This requires video programming distributors to post their contact information on their websites and billing statements, so that consumers may contact them directly to report problems with their closed captioning.

Closed Captioning Improves Literacy in Children (and Adults!)

christina — Mon, 24 May 2010 15:04:10 +0000

The statistics are astounding: 42 million American adults are illiterate and 50 million are unable to read higher than a 4th-grade reading level. Studies show that frequent reading improves reading proficiency, although sadly, according to the “Washington Post,” only one in four Americans actually read a book in the past year. Instead of reading books, the average child in America watches 20 hours of TV each week. How do we remedy this ongoing problem? What if watching television could actually improve literacy?

According to studies conducted in Finland, it can! Children in Finland watch as much TV as Americans and even attend school less. Yet, they rank higher in educational achievement and literacy. Jim Trelease states in “The Read-Aloud Handbook” that Finland’s high test scores are due to their use of closed captions. Children in Finland want to watch American sitcoms but are only able to understand them by watching the Finnish words at the bottom of the screen. Therefore, they must read to watch!

Victoria Winterhalter Brame conducted her own study after reading Trealease’s book. In her article “TV that Teaches: Using Closed Captions,” she writes about introducing her daughter to closed captioning at a young age and that once her daughter started Kindergarten, she began to recognize her vocabulary words on the screen while watching television.

Perhaps there is a simple solution to this nationwide problem of illiteracy and reading deficiency: turn on the closed-captions!

Reminder: FCC Mandates Spanish Captioning January 1st 2010

Joanna — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:08:27 +0000

Just wanted to send out a reminder to everyone producing Spanish captioning programming. The FCC mandate requires that 100% of all Spanish captioning programming be closed captioned in Spanish for the deaf and hard of hearing. You can find the complete mandate here:

http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/closedcaption.html:

Here are the specifics from the FCC’s website:

Spanish Language Programming

Because captioning is fairly new to Spanish language program providers, the FCC allows them a longer time to provide captioned programming. All Spanish language programming that was first shown after January 1, 1998, must be captioned by 2010 with some exemptions. The following schedule applies to Spanish language “new” and non-exempt programming, or programming shown after January 1, 1998:
January 1, 2004, to December 31, 2006: 900 hours of programming per channel per quarter or all of the new, non-exempt Spanish language programming on that channel, whichever is less.
January 1, 2007, to December 31, 2009: 1350 hours of programming per channel per quarter or all of the new, non-exempt Spanish language programming on that channel, whichever is less.
January 1, 2010, and thereafter: 100 percent of all programming, with some exceptions.
For Spanish language “Pre-Rule Programming” (first shown before January 1, 1998) that is not exempt from the closed captioning rules, the following schedule applies:
January 1, 2005, to December 31, 2011: 30 percent of programming per channel per quarter.
January 1, 2012, and thereafter: 75 percent of programming per channel per quarter.

There are many ways you can get your Spanish programming captioned. There are tape and tapeless options to fit your budget. Feel free to give Aberdeen a call (800-688-6621) or an e-mail (info@abercap.com) to request a price quote for your project or to learn about your different workflow options. You can request a price quote here: rate request. For more information on our Spanish captioning department visit: Spanish Captioning.

True EIA-708 Captions Made Possible with AJA and Final Cut Pro 7

Joanna — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 18:10:41 +0000

True EIA-708 captions can be achieved without the use for an external HD captioning encoder that can cost well over $8000 (US) by using a new captioning work flow.

What You Need

You need Final Cut Pro 7, an AJA Kona card (3, LHi or LSe), and the most recent Kona drivers. Of course, you will also need a special caption file created by a closed captioning service like Aberdeen Captioning (ONLY created using CPC/Mac Caption software).

What You Get

If you have the above-mentioned hardware and software, you can create the HD master caption tape in various HD tape formats, create HD captions for optical disc format delivery, and create captions for web video–and all of this can be done in-house without having to ship anything back and forth with a caption company.

How it Works

The AJA Kona cards ($1490 US) function as an HD encoder and place the captions in the accurate area in the HD video data. Here’s how:

The closed captioning file that you receive is then imported into Final Cut Pro 7 and it doesn’t require you to do any rendering. Final Cut Pro 7 has been designed to accept this caption file and in conjunction with the AJA card, it places the caption data into the correct location in the video being laid to tape.

AJA, Final Cut Pro, and CPC have all worked together to create this new technology.

Note: This workflow can also work for SD video if needed.