Closed captioning
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Closed captioning (CC) and subtitling are both processes of displaying text on a television, video screen, or other visual display to provide additional or interpretive information. Both are typically used as a transcription of the audio portion of a program as it occurs (either verbatim or in edited form), sometimes including descriptions of non-speech elements. Other uses have included providing a textual alternative language translation of a presentation's primary audio language that is usually burned-in (or "open") to the video and unselectable.
HTML5 defines subtitles as a "transcription or translation of the dialogue when sound is available but not understood" by the viewer (for example, dialogue in a foreign language) and captions as a "transcription or translation of the dialogue, sound effects, relevant musical cues, and other relevant audio information when sound is unavailable or not clearly audible" (for example, when audio is muted or the viewer is deaf or hard of hearing).[1]
Terminology
The term closed indicates that the captions are not visible until activated by the viewer, usually via the remote control or menu option. On the other hand, the terms open, burned-in, baked on, hard-coded, or simply hard indicate that the captions are visible to all viewers as they are embedded in the video.
In the United States and Canada, the terms subtitles and captions have different meanings. Subtitles assume the viewer can hear but cannot understand the language or accent, or the speech is not entirely clear, so they transcribe only dialogue and some on-screen text. Captions aim to describe to the deaf and hard of hearing all significant audio content—spoken dialogue and non-speech information such as the identity of speakers and, occasionally, their manner of speaking—along with any significant music or sound effects using words or symbols. Also, the term closed caption has come to be used to also refer to the North American EIA-608 encoding that is used with NTSC-compatible video.
The United Kingdom, Ireland, and a number of other countries do not distinguish between subtitles and captions and use subtitles as the general term.[citation needed] The equivalent of captioning is usually referred to as subtitles for the hard of hearing. Their presence is referenced on screen by notation which says "Subtitles", or previously "Subtitles 888" or just "888" (the latter two are in reference to the conventional videotext channel for captions), which is why the term subtitle is also used to refer to the Ceefax-based videotext encoding that is used with PAL-compatible video. The term subtitle has been replaced with caption in a number of markets—such as Australia and New Zealand—that purchase large amounts of imported US material, with much of that video having had the US CC logo already superimposed over the start of it. In New Zealand, broadcasters superimpose an ear logo with a line through it that represents subtitles for the hard of hearing, even though they are currently referred to as captions. In the UK, modern digital television services have subtitles for the majority of programs, so it is no longer necessary to highlight which have subtitling/captioning and which do not.[citation needed]
Remote control handsets for TVs, DVDs, and similar devices in most European markets often use "SUB" or "SUBTITLE" on the button used to control the display of subtitles/captions.
History
Regular open-captioned broadcasts began on
Closed captioning was first demonstrated in the United States at the First National Conference on Television for the Hearing Impaired in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1971.
The closed captioning system was successfully encoded and broadcast in 1973 with the cooperation of PBS station WETA.[2] As a result of these tests, the FCC in 1976 set aside line 21 for the transmission of closed captions. PBS engineers then developed the caption editing consoles that would be used to caption prerecorded programs.
The BBC in the UK was the first broadcaster to include closed captions (called subtitles in the UK) in 1979 based on the Teletext framework for pre-recorded programming.
Real-time captioning, a process for captioning live broadcasts, was developed by the National Captioning Institute in 1982.[2] In real-time captioning, stenotype operators who are able to type at speeds of over 225 words per minute provide captions for live television programs, allowing the viewer to see the captions within two to three seconds of the words being spoken.
Major US producers of captions are
Improvements in speech recognition technology means that live captioning may be fully or partially automated. BBC Sport broadcasts use a "respeaker": a trained human who repeats the running commentary (with careful enunciation and some simplification and markup) for input to the automated text generation system. This is generally reliable, though errors are not unknown.[3]
The National Captioning Institute was created in 1979 in order to get the cooperation of the commercial television networks.[2]
The first use of regularly scheduled closed captioning on American television occurred on March 16, 1980.
Since 2010 BBC provides a 100% broadcast captioning service across all 7 of its main broadcast channels
.BBC iPlayer launched in 2008 as the first captioned Video on demand service from a major broadcaster meeting comparable levels of captioning as those provided on its broadcast channels.
Legislative development in the U.S.
Until the passage of the Television Decoder Circuitry Act of 1990, television captioning was performed by a set-top box manufactured by Sanyo Electric and marketed by the National Captioning Institute (NCI). (At that time a set-top decoder cost about as much as a TV set itself, approximately $200.) Through discussions with the manufacturer it was established that the appropriate circuitry integrated into the television set would be less expensive than the stand-alone box, and Ronald May, then a Sanyo employee, provided the expert witness testimony on behalf of Sanyo and Gallaudet University in support of the passage of the bill. On January 23, 1991, the Television Decoder Circuitry Act of 1990 was passed by Congress.[2] This Act gave the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) power to enact rules on the implementation of closed captioning. This Act required all analog television receivers with screens of at least 13 inches or greater, either sold or manufactured, to have the ability to display closed captioning by July 1, 1993.[6]
Also, in 1990, the
The Federal Communications Commission requires all providers of programs to caption material which has audio in English or Spanish, with certain exceptions specified in Section 79.1(d) of the commission's rules. These exceptions apply to new networks; programs in languages other than English or Spanish; networks having to spend over 2% of income on captioning; networks having less than US$3,000,000 in revenue; and certain local programs; among other exceptions.[7] Those who are not covered by the exceptions may apply for a hardship waiver.[8]
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 expanded on the Decoder Circuitry Act to place the same requirements on digital television receivers by July 1, 2002.[9] All TV programming distributors in the U.S. are required to provide closed captions for Spanish-language video programming as of January 1, 2010.[10]
A bill, H.R. 3101, the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010, was passed by the United States House of Representatives in July 2010.
On February 20, 2014, the FCC unanimously approved the implementation of quality standards for closed captioning,[13] addressing accuracy, timing, completeness, and placement. This is the first time the FCC has addressed quality issues in captions.
In 2015, a law was passed in Hawaii requiring two screenings a week of each movie with captions on the screen. In 2022 a law took effect in New York City requiring movie theaters to offer captions on the screen for up to four showtimes per movie each week, including weekends and Friday nights.[14]
Some state and local governments (including
Philippines
As amended by RA 10905, all TV networks in the Philippines are required to give CC.
Closed captioning in some Filipino films either to be "included" if film production companies have a bias on having impact on their viewing experience for those who did not understand the language. Since 2016, all Filipino-Language Films and also on some Streaming Services like iWant had included their English Subtitles in some showing on films. The law regarding that was passed by Gerald Anthony Gullas Jr., a lawmaker from Cebu City, who had implemented the regulations on standardizing both official languages of the Philippines, as the people had not fluently mastered their English vocabulary.[18]
Legislative development in Australia
The government of Australia provided
Funding development in New Zealand
In 1981,
Application
Closed captions were created for
In the United States, the
Closed captions are also used in public environments, such as bars and restaurants, where patrons may not be able to hear over the background noise, or where multiple televisions are displaying different programs. In addition, online videos may be treated through digital processing of their audio content by various robotic algorithms (robots). Multiple chains of errors are the result. When a video is truly and accurately transcribed, then the closed-captioning publication serves a useful purpose, and the content is available for search engines to index and make available to users on the internet.[23][24][25]
Some television sets can be set to automatically turn captioning on when the volume is muted.
Television and video
For live programs, spoken words comprising the television program's soundtrack are transcribed by a human operator (a speech-to-text reporter) using stenotype or stenomask type of machines, whose phonetic output is instantly translated into text by a computer and displayed on the screen. This technique was developed in the 1970s as an initiative of the BBC's Ceefax teletext service.[26] In collaboration with the BBC, a university student took on the research project of writing the first phonetics-to-text conversion program for this purpose. Sometimes, the captions of live broadcasts, like news bulletins, sports events, live entertainment shows, and other live shows, fall behind by a few seconds. This delay is because the machine does not know what the person is going to say next, so after the person on the show says the sentence, the captions appear.[27] Automatic computer speech recognition works well when trained to recognize a single voice, and so since 2003, the BBC does live subtitling by having someone re-speak what is being broadcast. Live captioning is also a form of real-time text. Meanwhile, sport events on ESPN are using court reporters, using a special (steno) keyboard and individually constructed "dictionaries."
In some cases, the transcript is available beforehand, and captions are simply displayed during the program after being edited. For programs that have a mix of pre-prepared and live content, such as
For prerecorded programs, commercials, and home videos, audio is transcribed and captions are prepared, positioned, and timed in advance.
For all types of
Captioning is modulated and stored differently in PAL and SECAM 625 line 25 frame countries, where teletext is used rather than in EIA-608, but the methods of preparation and the line 21 field used are similar. For home Betamax and VHS videotapes, a shift down of this line 21 field must be done due to the greater number of VBI lines used in 625 line PAL countries, though only a small minority of European PAL VHS machines support this (or any) format for closed caption recording. Like all teletext fields, teletext captions can not be stored by a standard 625 line VHS recorder (due to the lack of field shifting support); they are available on all professional S-VHS recordings due to all fields being recorded. Recorded Teletext caption fields also suffer from a higher number of caption errors due to increased number of bits and a low SNR, especially on low-bandwidth VHS. This is why Teletext captions used to be stored separately on floppy disk to the analogue master tape. DVDs have their own system for subtitles and captions, which are digitally inserted in the data stream and decoded on playback into video.
For older televisions, a set-top box or other decoder is usually required. In the US, since the passage of the Television Decoder Circuitry Act, manufacturers of most television receivers sold have been required to include closed captioning display capability. High-definition TV sets, receivers, and tuner cards are also covered, though the technical specifications are different (high-definition display screens, as opposed to high-definition TVs, may lack captioning). Canada has no similar law but receives the same sets as the US in most cases.
During transmission, single byte errors can be replaced by a white space which can appear at the beginning of the program. More byte errors during EIA-608 transmission can affect the screen momentarily, by defaulting to a real-time mode such as the "roll up" style, type random letters on screen, and then revert to normal. Uncorrectable byte errors within the teletext page header will cause whole captions to be dropped. EIA-608, due to using only two characters per video frame, sends these captions ahead of time storing them in a second buffer awaiting a command to display them; Teletext sends these in real-time.
The use of capitalization varies among caption providers. Most caption providers capitalize all words while others such as WGBH and non-US providers prefer to use mixed-case letters.
There are two main styles of line 21 closed captioning:
- Roll-up or scroll-up or paint-on or scrolling: Real-time words sent in paint-on or scrolling mode appear from left to right, up to one line at a time; when a line is filled in roll-up mode, the whole line scrolls up to make way for a new line, and the line on top is erased. The lines usually appear at the bottom of the screen, but can actually be placed on any of the 14 screen rows to avoid covering graphics or action. This method is used when captioning video in real-time such as for live events, where a sequential word-by-word captioning process is needed or a pre-made intermediary file isn't available. This method is signaled on EIA-608 by a two-byte caption command or in Teletext by replacing rows for a roll-up effect and duplicating rows for a paint-on effect. This allows for real-time caption line editing.
- Pop-on or pop-up or block: A caption appears on any of the 14 screen rows as a complete sentence, which can be followed by additional captions. This method is used when captions come from an intermediary file (such as the Scenarist or EBU STL file formats) for pre-taped television and film programming, commonly produced at captioning facilities. This method of captioning can be aided by digital scripts or voice recognition software, and if used for live events, would require a video delay to avoid a large delay in the captions' appearance on-screen, which occurs with Teletext-encoded live subtitles.
Caption formatting
TVNZ Access Services and Red Bee Media for BBC and Australia example:
I got the machine ready.
ENGINE STARTING (speeding away)
UK IMS for ITV and Sky example:
(man) I got the machine ready. (engine starting)
US WGBH Access Services example:
MAN: I got the machine ready. (engine starting)
US National Captioning Institute example:
- I GOT THE MACHINE READY. [ENGINE STARTING]
US
- I got the machine ready. [engine starting]
US in-house real-time roll-up example:
>> Man: I GOT THE MACHINE READY. [engine starting]
Non-US in-house real-time roll-up example:
MAN: I got the machine ready. (ENGINE STARTING)
US VITAC example:
[MAN] I got the machine ready. [engine starting]
Syntax
For real-time captioning done outside of captioning facilities, the following syntax is used:
- '>>' (two prefixed greater-than signs) indicates a change in single speaker.
- Sometimes appended with the speaker's name in alternate case, followed by a colon.
- '>>>' (three prefixed greater-than signs) indicates a change in news story or multiple speakers.
Styles of syntax that are used by various captioning producers:
- Capitals indicate main on-screen dialogue and the name of the speaker.
- Legacy EIA-608 home caption decoder fonts had no descenders on lowercase letters.
- Outside North America, capitals with background coloration indicate a song title or sound effect description.
- Outside North America, capitals with black or no background coloration indicates when a word is stressed or emphasized.
- Descenders indicate background sound description and off-screen dialogue.
- Most modern caption producers, such as mixed case for both on-screen and off-screendialogue.
- Most modern caption producers, such as
- '-' (a prefixed dash) indicates a change in single speaker (used by CaptionMax).
- Words in italics indicate when a word is stressed or emphasized and when real world names are quoted.
- Italics and bold type are only supported by EIA-608.
- Some North American providers use this for narrated dialogue.
- Some providers use this for off-screen dialogue.
- Italics are also applied when a word is spoken in a foreign language.
- Italics and
- Text coloration indicates captioning credits and sponsorship.
- Used by music videos in the past, but generally has declined due to system incompatibilities.
- In Ceefax/Teletext countries, it indicates a change in single speaker in place of '>>'.
- Some Teletext countries use coloration to indicate when a word is stressed or emphasized.
- Coloration is limited to white, green, blue, cyan, red, yellow and magenta.
- UK order of use for text is white, green, cyan, yellow; and backgrounds is black, red, blue, magenta, white.
- US order of use for text is white, yellow, cyan, green; and backgrounds is black, blue, red, magenta, white.
- parenthesesindicate a song title or sound effect description.
- Parenthesesindicate speaker's vocal pitch e.g., (man), (woman), (boy) or (girl).
- Outside North America, parenthesesindicate a silent on-screen action.
- Outside North America,
- A pair of eighth notes is used to bracket a line of lyrics to indicate singing.
- A pair of eighth notes on a line of no text are used during a section of instrumental music or even voice tones playing with the music.
- Outside North America, a single number sign is used on a line of lyrics to indicate singing or may just instead use the eighth notes without the lyrics playing.
- An additional musical notation character is appended to the end of the last line of lyrics to indicate the song's end.
- As the symbol is unsupported by Ceefax/Teletext, a number sign - which resembles a musical sharp - is substituted.
Technical aspects
There were many shortcomings in the original Line 21 specification from a
Captions are often edited to make them easier to read and to reduce the amount of text displayed onscreen. This editing can be very minor, with only a few occasional unimportant missed lines, to severe, where virtually every line spoken by the actors is condensed. The measure used to guide this editing is words per minute, commonly varying from 180 to 300, depending on the type of program. Offensive words are also captioned, but if the program is censored for TV broadcast, the broadcaster might not have arranged for the captioning to be edited or censored also. The "TV Guardian", a television set-top box, is available to parents who wish to censor offensive language of programs—the video signal is fed into the box and if it detects an offensive word in the captioning, the audio signal is bleeped or muted for that period of time.
Caption channels
The Line 21 data stream can consist of data from several data channels
As CC1 and CC2 share bandwidth, if there is a lot of data in CC1, there will be little room for CC2 data and is generally only used for the primary audio captions. Similarly, CC3 and CC4 share the second even field of line 21. Since some early caption decoders supported only single field decoding of CC1 and CC2, captions for SAP in a second language were often placed in CC2. This led to bandwidth problems, and the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recommendation is that bilingual programming should have the second caption language in CC3. Many Spanish television networks such as Univision and Telemundo, for example, provides English subtitles for many of its Spanish programs in CC3. Canadian broadcasters use CC3 for French translated SAPs, which is also a similar practice in South Korea and Japan.
Ceefax and Teletext can have a larger number of captions for other languages due to the use of multiple VBI lines. However, only European countries used a second subtitle page for second language audio tracks where either the NICAM dual mono or Zweikanalton were used.
Digital television interoperability issues
The US
Incompatibility issues with digital TV
Many viewers find that when they acquire a digital television or set-top box they are unable to view closed caption (CC) information, even though the broadcaster is sending it and the TV is able to display it.
Originally, CC information was included in the picture ("line 21") via a composite video input, but there is no equivalent capability in digital video interconnects (such as DVI and HDMI) between the display and a "source". A "source", in this case, can be a DVD player or a terrestrial or cable digital television receiver. When CC information is encoded in the MPEG-2 data stream, only the device that decodes the MPEG-2 data (a source) has access to the closed caption information; there is no standard for transmitting the CC information to a display monitor separately. Thus, if there is CC information, the source device needs to overlay the CC information on the picture prior to transmitting to the display over the interconnect's video output.
The responsibility of decoding the CC information and overlaying onto the visible video image has been taken away from the TV display and put into the "source" of DVI and HDMI digital video interconnects. Because the TV handles "mute" and, when using DVI and HDMI, a different device handles turning on and off CC, this means the "captions come on automatically when the TV is muted" feature no longer works. That source device—such as a DVD player or set-top box—must "burn" the image of the CC text into the picture data carried by the HDMI or DVI cable; there's no other way for the CC text to be carried over the HDMI or DVI cable.[29][30][31][32][33][34]
Many source devices do not have the ability to overlay CC information, for controlling the CC overlay can be complicated. For example, the Motorola DCT-5xxx and -6xxx cable set-top receivers have the ability to decode CC information located on the MPEG-2 stream and overlay it on the picture, but turning CC on and off requires turning off the unit and going into a special setup menu (it is not on the standard configuration menu and it cannot be controlled using the remote). Historically, DVD players, VCRs and set-top tuners did not need to do this overlaying, since they simply passed this information on to the TV, and they are not mandated to perform this overlaying.
Many modern digital television receivers can be directly connected to cables, but often cannot receive scrambled channels that the user is paying for. Thus, the lack of a standard way of sending CC information between components, along with the lack of a mandate to add this information to a picture, results in CC being unavailable to many hard-of-hearing and deaf users.
The
The BBC's Subtitle (Captioning) Editorial Guidelines were born out of the capabilities of Teletext but are now used by multiple European broadcasters as the editorial and design best practice guide [36]
New Zealand
In New Zealand, captions use an
The CEA-708 specification provides for dramatically improved captioning
- An enhanced character set with more accented letters and non-Latin letters, and more special symbols
- Viewer-adjustable text size (called the "caption volume control" in the specification), allowing individuals to adjust their TVs to display small, normal, or large captions
- More text and background colors, including both transparent and translucent backgrounds to optionally replace the big black block
- More text styles, including edged or drop shadowed text rather than the letters on a solid background
- More text fonts, including monospaced and proportional spaced, serif and sans-serif, and some playful cursive fonts
- Higher bandwidth, to allow more data per minute of video
- More language channels, to allow the encoding of more independent caption streams
As of 2009, most closed captioning for digital television environments is done using tools designed for analog captioning (working to the CEA-608 NTSC specification rather than the CEA-708 ATSC specification). The captions are then run through transcoders made by companies like EEG Enterprises or Evertz, which convert the analog Line 21 caption format to the digital format. This means that none of the CEA-708 features are used unless they were also contained in CEA-608.
Uses in other media
DVDs and Blu-ray Discs
NTSC DVDs may carry closed captions in data packets of the MPEG-2 video streams inside of the Video-TS folder. Once played out of the analog outputs of a set top DVD player, the caption data is converted to the Line 21 format.
In addition to Line 21 closed captions, video DVDs may also carry subtitles, which generally rendered from the EIA-608 captions as a bitmap overlay that can be turned on and off via a set top DVD player or DVD player software, just like the textual captions. This type of captioning is usually carried in a subtitle track labeled either "English for the hearing impaired" or, more recently, "SDH" (subtitled for the deaf and Hard of hearing).[38] Many popular Hollywood DVD-Videos can carry both subtitles and closed captions (e.g. Stepmom DVD by Columbia Pictures). On some DVDs, the Line 21 captions may contain the same text as the subtitles; on others, only the Line 21 captions include the additional non-speech information (even sometimes song lyrics) needed for deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers. European Region 2 DVDs do not carry Line 21 captions, and instead list the subtitle languages available-English is often listed twice, one as the representation of the dialogue alone, and a second subtitle set which carries additional information for the deaf and hard-of-hearing audience. (Many deaf/HOH subtitle files on DVDs are reworkings of original teletext subtitle files.)
Movies
There are several competing technologies used to provide captioning for movies in theaters. Cinema captioning falls into the categories of open and closed. The definition of "closed" captioning in this context is different from television, as it refers to any technology that allows as few as one member of the audience to view the captions.
Open captioning in a film theater can be accomplished through burned-in captions, projected text or bitmaps, or (rarely) a display located above or below the movie screen. Typically, this display is a large LED sign. In a digital theater, open caption display capability is built into the digital projector. Closed caption capability is also available, with the ability for 3rd-party closed caption devices to plug into the digital cinema server.
Probably the best known closed captioning option for film theaters is the
For film projection systems,
Special effort has been made to build accessibility features into digital projection systems (see
Sports venues
Captioning systems have also been adopted by most major league and high-profile college
Video games
The infrequent appearance of closed captioning in
Video games don't offer Line 21 captioning, decoded and displayed by the television itself but rather a built-in subtitle display, more akin to that of a DVD. The game systems themselves have no role in the captioning either; each game must have its subtitle display programmed individually.
Reid Kimball, a game designer who is hearing impaired, is attempting to educate game developers about closed captioning for games. Reid started the Games[CC] group to closed caption games and serve as a research and development team to aid the industry. Kimball designed the Dynamic Closed Captioning system,[citation needed] writes articles and speaks at developer conferences. Games[CC]'s first closed captioning project called Doom3[CC] was nominated for an award as Best Doom3 Mod of the Year for IGDA's Choice Awards 2006 show.
Online video streaming
Internet video streaming service YouTube offers captioning services in videos. The author of the video can upload a SubViewer (*.SUB), SubRip (*.SRT) or *.SBV file.[46] As a beta feature, the site also added the ability to automatically transcribe and generate captioning on videos, with varying degrees of success based upon the content of the video.[47] However, on August 30, 2020, the company announced that communal captions will end on September 28.[48] The automatic captioning is often inaccurate on videos with background music or exaggerated emotion in speaking. Variations in volume can also result in nonsensical machine-generated captions. Additional problems arise with strong accents, sarcasm, differing contexts, or homonyms.[49]
On June 30, 2010, YouTube announced a new "YouTube Ready" designation for professional caption vendors in the United States.[50] The initial list included twelve companies who passed a caption quality evaluation administered by the Described and Captioned Media Project, have a website and a YouTube channel where customers can learn more about their services and have agreed to post rates for the range of services that they offer for YouTube content.
Windows Media Video can support closed captions for both video on demand streaming or live streaming scenarios. Typically, Windows Media captions support the SAMI file format but can also carry embedded closed caption data.
EBU-TT-D distribution format supports multiple players across multiple platforms.
QuickTime video supports raw EIA-608 caption data via proprietary closed caption track, which are just EIA-608 byte pairs wrapped in a QuickTime packet container with different IDs for both line 21 fields. These captions can be turned on and off and appear in the same style as TV closed captions, with all the standard formatting (pop-on, roll-up, paint-on), and can be positioned and split anywhere on the video screen. QuickTime closed caption tracks can be viewed in macOS or Windows versions of QuickTime Player, iTunes (via QuickTime), iPod Nano, iPod Classic, iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad.
Theatre
Live plays can be open captioned by a captioner who displays lines from the
Captioning on display screens or personal devices can be difficult to follow at the same time as the performance on stage. To solve this sproblem, Creative Captioning refers to the process of integrating captions into set design as part of the creative process.[53] Creative Captions are a visible part of the show: the set designer/captioner match(es) the style of the captions to the atmosphere of the show through characteristics such as animation, color, font, and size.[54]
Telephones
A captioned telephone is a telephone that displays real-time captions of the current conversation. The captions are typically displayed on a screen embedded into the telephone base.
Video conferencing
Some online video conferencing services, such as Google Meet, offer the ability to display captions in real time of the current conversation.
Media monitoring services
In the United States especially, most media monitoring services capture and index closed captioning text from news and public affairs programs, allowing them to search the text for client references. The use of closed captioning for television news monitoring was pioneered by Universal Press Clipping Bureau (Universal Information Services) in 1992,[citation needed] and later in 1993 by Tulsa-based NewsTrak of Oklahoma (later known as Broadcast News of Mid-America, acquired by video news release pioneer Medialink Worldwide Incorporated in 1997).[citation needed] US patent 7,009,657 describes a "method and system for the automatic collection and conditioning of closed caption text originating from multiple geographic locations" as used by news monitoring services.
Conversations
Software programs are available that automatically generate a closed-captioning of conversations. Examples of such conversations include discussions in conference rooms, classroom lectures, or religious services.
In 2010,
In mid-2009,
This new closed captioning workflow known as
Alternatively, Matrox video systems devised another mechanism for inserting closed caption data by allowing the video editor to include CEA-608 and CEA-708 in a discrete audio channel on the video editing timeline. This allows real-time preview of the captions while editing and is compatible with Final Cut Pro 6 and 7.[57]
Other non-linear editing systems indirectly support closed captioning only in Standard Definition line-21. Video files on the editing timeline must be composited with a line-21 VBI graphic layer known in the industry as a "blackmovie" with closed caption data.[58] Alternately, video editors working with the DV25 and DV50 FireWire workflows must encode their DV .avi or .mov file with VAUX data which includes CEA-608 closed caption data.
Logo
The current and most familiar logo for closed captioning consists of two Cs (for "closed captioned") inside a television screen. It was created at WGBH. The other logo, trademarked by the National Captioning Institute, is that of a simple geometric rendering of a television set merged with the tail of a speech balloon; two such versions exist – one with a tail on the left, the other with a tail on the right.[59]
See also
- Speech-to-text reporter (captioner), an occupation
- Fansub
- Same Language Subtitling
- Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange (SAMI) file format
- Sign language on television
- Subtitles
- Surtitles
- Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) file format
References
- ^ "4.8.10 The track element". HTML Standard. Archived from the original on 2013-06-06.
- ^ a b c d e f g "A Brief History of Captioned Television". National Captioning Institute. Archived from the original on 2011-07-19.
- ^ "Match of the Day 2: Newcastle subtitle error leaves BBC red-faced". BBC Online. 2 October 2017. Retrieved 2 October 2017.
- ^ Gannon, Jack. 1981. Deaf Heritage-A Narrative History of Deaf America. Silver Spring, MD: National Association of the Deaf, pp. 384-387
- ^ "Today on TV", Chicago Daily Herald, March 11, 1980, Section 2-5
- ^ "Crossing at Roundabouts - United States Access Board". www.access-board.gov. Archived from the original on 2020-11-05. Retrieved 2019-07-20.
- ^ "Self Implementing Exemptions From Closed Captioning Rules". Federal Communications Commission. July 8, 2011.
- ^ "Economically Burdensome Exemption from Closed Captioning Requirements". Federal Communications Commission. May 30, 2017.
- ^ "Closed Captioning on Television". Federal Communications Commission. May 6, 2011.
- ^ "Part 79 - Closed Captioning of Video Programming". Archived from the original on 13 May 2004.
- ^ "Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010". 2010. Archived from the original on 2023-03-26. Retrieved 2013-03-28.
- ^ "Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010". 2010. Archived from the original on 2023-03-26. Retrieved 2013-03-28.
- ^ "FCC Moves to Upgrade TV Closed Captioning Quality". 2014.
- ^ "Why captions are suddenly everywhere and how they got there". AP NEWS. June 27, 2022.
- ^ More cities are requiring captions on public TVs. Here's why that matters.
- ^ "Philippine TV to Provide Closed Captioning – Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas". www.kbp.org.ph.
- ^ Carl Lamiel (October 14, 2017). "GMA, TV5 now airing shows with closed captioning". YugaTech. Retrieved February 2, 2019.
- ^ "Lawmaker wants English subtitles for PH TV, movies". Rappler. October 6, 2013. Retrieved September 6, 2019.
- ^ Alex Varley (June 2008). "Submission to DBCDE's investigation into Access to Electronic Media for the Hearing and Vision Impaired" (PDF). Australia: Media Access Australia. pp. 12, 18, 43. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2009-03-26. Retrieved 2009-02-07.
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- ^ [1] Ofcom, UK: Television access services Archived June 1, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Alex Varley (June 2008). "Submission to DBCDE's investigation into Access to Electronic Media for the Hearing and Vision Impaired" (PDF). Australia: Media Access Australia. p. 16. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-12-03. Retrieved 2009-01-29.
The use of captions and audio description is not limited to deaf and blind people. Captions can be used in situations of "temporary" deafness, such as watching televisions in public areas where the sound has been turned down (commonplace in America and starting to appear more in Australia).
- ^ Mayor's Disability Council (May 16, 2008). "Resolution in Support of Board of Supervisors' Ordinance Requiring Activation of Closed Captioning on Televisions in Public Areas". City and County of San Francisco. Archived from the original on January 28, 2009. Retrieved 2009-01-29.
that television receivers located in any part of a facility open to the general public have closed captioning activated at all times when the facility is open and the television receiver is in use.
- ^ Alex Varley (April 18, 2005). "Settlement Agreement Between The United States And Norwegian American Hospital Under The Americans With Disabilities Act". U.S. Department of Justice. Retrieved 2009-01-29.
will have closed captioning operating in all public areas where there are televisions with closed captioning; televisions in public areas without built-in closed captioning capability will be replaced with televisions that have such capability
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- ^ MKPE Consulting LLC. "Enabling the Disabled in Digital Cinema". mkpe.com.
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- Imagine Media. June 1997. p. 133.
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- ^ Lyons, Kim (31 July 2020). "YouTube is ending its community captions feature and deaf creators aren't happy about it". The Verge.
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- ^ "National Captioning Institute Logos". Archived from the original on February 15, 2008.
- Sources
- Realtime Captioning... The VITAC Way by Amy Bowlen and Kathy DiLorenzo (no ISBN)
- BBC Subtitles (Captions) Editorial Guidelines [2] Archived 2019-10-20 at the Wayback Machine
- Closed Captioning: Subtitling, Stenography, and the Digital Convergence of Text with Television by Gregory J. Downey (ISBN 978-0-8018-8710-9)
- The Closed Captioning Handbook by ISBN 0-240-80561-5)
- Alternative Realtime Careers: A Guide to Closed Captioning and CART for Court Reporters by ISBN 1-881859-51-7)
- A New Civil Right: Telecommunications Equality for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Americans by Karen Peltz Strauss (ISBN 978-1-56368-291-9)
- Enabling The Disabled by Michael Karagosian (no ISBN)
External links
- Parfitt, Ellie (15 November 2018). "A deafie's guide to accessing captions anywhere!". Hearing Like Me.
- Closed Captioning of Video Programming - 47 C.F.R. 79.1-From the Federal Communications Commission Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau
- FCC Consumer Facts on Closed Captioning Archived 2010-08-10 at the Wayback Machine
- Alan Newell, Inventor of Closed Captioning, Teletext for the Deaf, 1982
- Closed Captioning at Curlie
- Closed Captioned TV: A Resource for ESL Literacy Education Archived 2011-06-07 at the Wayback Machine-From the Education Resources Information Center Clearinghouse for ESL Literacy Education, Washington, D.C.
- Bill Kastner: The Man Behind Closed Captioning
- First Sears Telecaption adapter advertised in 1980 Sears catalog
- BBC Best Practice Guidelines for Captioning and Subtitling (UK) Archived 2022-07-15 at the Wayback Machine
- EBU-TT-D Subtitling (Captions) Distribution Format