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We’re Thankful!

Posted by Emma on November 23, 2011 at 10:43 am. Audio Description, Captioning, Movies, Subtitling

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the U.S. How does the holiday season always sneak up so quickly?!

Our offline staff will get a much-needed day to rest their speedy fingers and indulge in too much turkey, stuffing, and all the fixings. We’ll all be back on Friday, rested, well fed, and raring to work.

Our realtime staff will work through the holiday to caption your favorite holiday events. We are working on a dozen basketball games, not to mention other fantastic holiday specials. Don’t worry; they will also be taking a couple of quick breaks to scarf down some holiday goodies too.

We could not keep doing this fantastic work if it wasn’t for you!

We are thankful for …

- all the viewers who keep us on our toes by suggesting new programs to caption and video describe.

- all our clients who choose to add accessibility to their videos.
(Clients like A&E, AIT, Allied Vaughn, APT, Ascent Media, Best Buy, BioMedia Associates, BKN International, Bravo, Bullfrog Films, Bunim/Murray Productions, CBS, Clear Channel Entertainment, Colonial Williamsburg, CSN, Comedy Central, CPB, Dreamworks, Embassy Row Productions, Faith & Values Network, Fanlight Productions, Films Media Group, Florentine Films, Fox Broadcasting Company, FremantleMedia, Google, Granada TV, GSN, Gurin Co., HBO, History Channel, HIT Entertainment, Holt McDougal, Image Entertainment, Hometime, IFC, ITVS, King World, KQED, Laureate Education, Lifetime Television, Lions GateLiveNation, Magical Elves, Major League Baseball, Mayo Clinic, McGraw-Hill, MG Perin, MTV, NETA, NASA, NASDAQ, NAD, National Black Programming Consortium, National Geographic Television, National Institute of Health, NBC Universal, Nickelodeon, Noggin, Outdoor Channel, Reveille Productions, SCET, SyFy Channel, Scripps Networks, Showtime, Sony Pictures Television, Spike TV, Starz, The CW, TV Land, TV One, Twentieth Television, United Way, University of Minnesota, USA Network, US Department of Education, US Park Service, US Postal Service, VH1, Warner Brothers Television, Wet Cement Productions, WNET-Thirteen New York)

- all the educators working to create inclusive educational communities with captions and video description.

- all the advocacy groups who keep our legislators on their toes.

Thank you, and we hope you have a wonderful holiday season!

Consumer Advisory Board Meeting 2011

Posted by Emma on October 5, 2011 at 8:17 am. Audio Description, Captioning, Consumer Advisory Board, Movies, Subtitling

Welcome to CAB 2011.

We had another successful Consumer Advisory Board (CAB) meeting. The weekend was packed full of movie watching, interesting presentations, and invaluable discussions. Enjoy some of the photos of our meeting.

Joya Bromeland, Timothy Smitley, Josh Miele, Jordan Richardson, Ardis Bazyn, Michelle Rich, and Cathy Lyle.
Our fantastic board members. Joya Bromeland, Timothy Smitley, Josh Miele, Jordan Richardson, Ardis Bazyn, Michelle Rich, and Cathy Lyle.

Cathy and Kate talking at while getting coffee.
We started with some meet and greet. Cathy (Board Member) and Kate (Video Describer) grab some coffee while chatting about last night’s movie.

Mike Hanson talking about his Appalachian Trail Hike.

Mike and Josh discussing the hike.
Our guest speaker, Mike Hanson, presented stories from his experience on the Appalachian Trail Hike. Mike is a blind attorney who hiked the trail in 7 months; he is very amazing and inspiring. Check out his facebook page for pictures and videos. We can’t wait to see the documentary!

Lunchtimee in the cafe.
Lunch break in the cafe.

Mel and Jess presenting captioning examples.
At our meeting, we discuss different captioning situations. Our board members review our choices and give us feedback.

Jeremy presenting video description samples.
Our board members also review samples of our video description. This is why we have the best description in the business.

A thank-you to our board members.

Thanks to everyone who attended our annual meeting. Thanks to our staff, who made the meeting a great success. Now it’s time to plan for next year.

A Captioning Dream Job!

Posted by Emma on September 14, 2011 at 8:43 am. Captioning, Techy

Picture of a steno machine

We know that Deanna is fabulous, and now you will, too! Here at CaptionMax, we choose our employees very carefully. We have a very dedicated team of offline and realtime caption writers working around the clock to make all kinds of media accessible. We couldn’t be prouder when one of them is recognized for their fantastic skills.

Read all about Deanna Baker in the AZ Daily Sun.

Our Top 5 Favorite Blogs

Posted by Emma on July 13, 2011 at 9:16 am. Captioning, Movies, Subtitling

There are so many amazing blogs about living with disabilities. Here are 5 on our ‘need to read’ list. Do you have any favorites?Thank you to everyone who have shares their story.

1. CaptionFish

This is a directory/search engine for captioned movies nationwide. There is nothing like it on the internet! Just type in your zipcode and find the nearest movie theater that displays closed captions! It’s a snap.

2. Speak Up Librarian

Read stories about deaf living by a hard of hearing librarian attempting to find her way in the world as a deafened adult. Her stories revolve around her everyday experiences. She talks about the latest TV trends, watching closed captioned movies in a theater, and issues around communication. She has a great voice!

3. BrailleWorks Blog

This blog has a wide range of articles about the need for braille, social networks for blind families, new technology, movie reviews, and parent resources. There are also current event updates.

4. Great Things About Being Blind!

This blog contains enlightening and uplifting stories about being blind. It was started in January 2011 to add a new voice to the disability community.

5. Hearing Your Voice

This blog has news, updates, and stories about being deaf & hard of hearing.

Is FCPX Right for CaptionMax?

Posted by Emma on July 6, 2011 at 8:44 am. Captioning, Subtitling, Techy

by Emily Bell
Multimedia Manager

MacBook Pro with FCPX Software
(credit: Apple)

So, we probably won’t be “upgrading” (is crossgrading a word?) to Final Cut X anytime soon. While we offer many file-based workflows already, we also do a lot of work with the broadcast TV market, and for us, Final Cut Pro is integrated into our technical operations center along with our video servers, routers, and high-def and standard-def tape decks. For the time being, we will continue to use Final Cut Pro 7 to provide tape capture and tape transfer services to our clients and to access your finished projects in our archives.

This is kinda how we feel about FCPX. Take it away Team Coco.
(There are no captions or description since we are using a clip from the Team Coco website.)

We also love DVD Studio Pro too much to say good-bye, since our authors know all of the scripting secrets to make really cool DVDs with it.

We will be doing some testing with the new software, however, to see how our subtitle and closed caption files import and whether our software nerd needs to make any tweaks. If you are a current client who already made the switch to FCP X, please let your project manager know when you set up your next job with us so we can be sure to send you the right file!

A Call for Quality Captions

Posted by Emma on June 15, 2011 at 8:39 am. Captioning, Consumer Advisory Board, Subtitling

CaptionMax has a dedicated Consumer Advisory Board with experts in all kinds of accessibility. As guest bloggers, we ask our board members to share their accessibility stories or voice their concerns.

by Carl Jensema, Ph.D.

Photo of a guitar with captions "lively guitar music"

Tonight my wife and I sat down to watch Country Strong.

I don’t know who captioned it but they gave a textbook example of how not to do it.  The whole movie is about music, but NONE of the music was captioned.  The dialog was captioned and then when someone started singing there would be no captions at all for several minutes until the song was over.  Extremely frustrating.  I stopped watching the movie.

We’ve had captioning since 1980 and some caption companies still haven’t figured out how to do it!

(more…)

Tech Time: Start of Program vs. Start of Video

Posted by Emma on June 8, 2011 at 8:39 am. Captioning, Techy

Are you just starting out the video world? Did you know that there can be a difference between the “start of program” and the “start of video”? That difference can be very important to your caption timing!

The Start of Video is the first frame of the video file.

The Start of Program means the first frame of the actual show itself. There could be some packaging (10 seconds of black and bars/tone) before the of the start of the program.  For broadcast video, this frame is usually 01:00:00;00.

When it matters:
1.  Master tape: When sending us a master tape, we will use the start of the program to time our captions or subtitles. Normally a tape will have that extra packaging, so the start of the video won’t actually be that important to us.

2. Web files: When you send us a .mov, .wvm, .flv, .mp4 (etc.) for web captioning, the start of the video is important. We time our captions to with the start of the video because there is no timecode to read and the start of the video becomes our anchor point for all caption timing.

Happy timing!

Captions and YouTube

Posted by Emma on June 1, 2011 at 8:47 am. Captioning, Techy, YouTube

Now you have a fancy YouTube page and you’ve gone to all the work to add captions. How can you make sure that they’re easy to find?

It’s easy, you can force the captions on. This is our option of choice on our CaptionMax YouTube page. It’s easy to do and worry free!

Playback Setup
*This tip only applies to your own personal, or corporate, YouTube page.

- Log-in to your account. Navigate to your Account Settings page.
- Select the Playback Setup. This is the menu allows you to adjust your video playback settings, adjust captions, and adjust annotations.

Graphic of the Account Settings Page. Naviate to the Playback Setup section.

This option will ensure that whenever captions are present on your videos, they will automatically default to ‘on.’ After all, you’ve done all that work, you might as well show it off!


Tech Time: Subtitles for FCP

Posted by Emma on April 6, 2011 at 8:44 am. Captioning, Subtitling, Techy

There is another cool way to add subtitles to your video! Did you know that you can embed subtitle files into Final Cut Pro (FCP) project? It’s really easy to do and your subtitles always look sharp.

Image of embedded subtitles (white text with a semitransparent background)

(This technique is available for versions 5.1.2 and later. Sadly, this won’t work for FCP versions older than 5.1.2 or Final Cut Express.)

What you need:

An XML file with PNG graphics that matches the timing of your FCP sequence. (That’s it!)

How does it work?

The XML file with PNG graphics provides an open, transparent, graphic format that anyone can utilize with a wide range of tools.

Here’s the basic idea; however there are a few more steps when working on an actual project.

First, import the .xml into Final Cut Pro.

Graphic showing the steps of importing an XML into FCP.

(The XML import allows you to match your subtitle sequence to your master program sequence. Just scroll through your list of sequence setting choices.)

(A new sequence is created that includes only the timed subtitle PNGs. Open the sequence and take a look. Pretty snazzy!)

Second, open your finished video sequence and drag your CaptionMax Subtitle sequence onto the track above your finished video.

Lastly, render the finished video sequence with subtitles and play it in FCP to test it.

Now you’re ready to export your video out of FCP and into any format. Your video will have open, accessible captions that look very sharp!

If you have FCP & an excellent Video Editor, then we recommend this format to add open captions to your video file.

Does this work in other editing systems?

This is the workflow we recommend for FCP but Avid & Blu-ray both have similar set-ups.

- Avid users with the Avid DS subtitle plugin can get an Avid DS text file.

- Blu-ray also uses XML/PNG files, but the XML file is totally different than the FCP XML. Exports for FCP & Blu-ray are, unfortunately, not interchangeable. Be sure to clarify your editing system when talking to your project manager!

- Users of other editing systems are out of luck—there isn’t a subtitle file that can be imported by, for example, Adobe Premiere, unless you’ve heard something we haven’t!

Happy editing!

Tech Time: Videos with Embedded Captions

Posted by Emma on March 23, 2011 at 8:32 am. Captioning, Techy

Quicktime captions are IN!

Did you know that CaptionMax can create Quicktime/iTunes/iPod videos with embedded captions?

The very cool final product is your finished .mov with embedded caption data.

An example of captions in Quicktime player.

Pros:

1. The newest versions of Quicktime can only use embedded captions, so you won’t have accessibility problems by using this new method.

2. Embedded captions work for videos played in the iTunes player or on Apple devices such as iPods, iPhones, Apple TV, iTunes, etc.

3. This is the only web captioning format that can be roll-up, have italics, and have music notes!

4. With Quicktime version 7.x, Apple allows the video package to contain a Closed Caption Track. This works for both Mac & Windows versions of Quicktime.

5. Captions are turned on and off via the ‘Show Captions’ command in the Play menu.

Cons:

1. This method will not work with videos that are played in other players, such as Flash or Windows Media Player. The CC on/off controls are only part of the Quicktime/iTunes players.

2. If you have a .mov with embedded captions and it is later transcoded, the captions may be lost. Trancoding most likely will strip the captions.

3. The positioning can be a little weird when the captions are played in Quicktime, with centered captions slightly off center or dropped characters. This happens especially in high definition and it’s a function of the Quicktime player’s decoder.

Just another cool technology update. Have you used caption embedded .movs? What do you think?

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