Closed Captioning Service

Access in the Classroom – It’s Not Just Braille.

Posted by Emma on March 16, 2011 at 11:12 am. Audio Description, Captioning, Consumer Advisory Board, Subtitling, Techy

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. Our next CAB guest blogger is Joya Bromeland, a 6th year itinerant teacher for blind and visually impaired students. Joya works with many different schools to make technology accessible to all students. In the past year, she has been developing this great resource to empower classroom teachers. She has been great enough to share it; so head on over and check it out! Take it away, Joya.

I’m one of Louis Braille’s biggest fans, and providing braille and braille instruction continues to be an important part of my job, but the multi-media classroom of the 21st century requires that my students who are blind and visually impaired be just as skilled in areas of technology, self-advocacy and creative problem-solving in order to have basic access to classroom tools.

As an itinerant Teacher for students who are Blind and Visually Impaired (TBVI), I collaborate with teachers in roughly 18 different schools to ensure that our students have access to the same instructional materials, experiences, and opportunities as their sighted peers. It’s an ambitious and necessary goal that leads to alternative pathways to access and success: braille, tactile graphics, refreshable braille displays, speech screenreaders, audiobooks, audio description, keyboard shortcuts, video magnification and more.

I start with the assumption that every element of the curriculum can be accessed nonvisually—whether it’s Algebraic graphs, diagrams of the moon phases, PowerPoint assignments and board work, websites, Twitter, Moodle, email, newspapers, books, abstract visual concepts, and videos. Then, through collaboration with general ed. teachers, braillists, and my fellow TBVIs, we figure out a way to make it happen through accessible formats and specialized instruction.

Our students become experts at thinking outside the box, maneuvering around it, giving it a good kick every once in a while—all inherent to the process of full and independent participation at school among their sighted peers. It’s not surprising we work with such great students (and I can’t wait to see what they bring to our future!)

Of course there are daily bumps in the road to access. There are days when I am on the phone trying to reach publishers of an online textbook because their “accessible version” of the book is not accessible to my students. Or I’m sending accessibility standards to the “Contact Us” links on websites after a frustrating session with a student that probably led to me scanning, pasting, or retyping the web text because it was inaccessible via screen reader. And this spring, we TBVIs will continue the campaign for reducing bias and providing equal access to standardized tests for our students. But more and more we have the law to back up our expectations for accessibility with ADA, IDEA, NIMAS, and now the 21^st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act.

Currently, there is limited availability of audio described videos for specific curriculum, though these videos are being produced by educational publishers and used by teachers at increasing rates. Working with my students, I understand the value in providing vivid audio descriptions with accurate vocabulary in the 5-minute science video shown at the beginning of class, or the history video shown to build context for a unit of study. Access to AD video leads to opportunity for my students to develop the same level of awareness and understanding of concepts as their sighted peers. Publishers and schools need to act on this value in order to make audio description a real possibility in the classroom.

I’ve really appreciated the resources CaptionMax has made available to teachers in Minnesota to help spread the word about Audio Description and teach us how to access it. It’s also been exciting to be a part of the Consumer Advisory Board, where we experience some of the rigorous process that goes into high quality audio describing. I’m hopeful that the Video Accessibility Act and the committed work of CaptionMax will lead to greater availability of these videos and ultimately greater access and opportunity for our students.

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Top 5 Tips to Beat the Captioning Headaches!

Posted by Emma on March 9, 2011 at 9:35 am. Audio Description, Captioning, Subtitling, Techy, translation

Captioning doesn’t have to be a painful process. In fact, adding accessibility to your media (broadcast, web, whatever) can be pain free! Here are our 5 Top Tips for keeping your captioning/subtitling/transcription costs down and finding the right provider for you!

Include captioning/subtitling/transcription costs in your initial project budget and timeline to get the best deal and eliminate those unexpected gotchas at the end. Adding captions can significantly boost your SEO and drive more potential clients to your website. Any captioning services worth their weight will offer you a free quote for your project.

Look at lots of samples! Many companies will have a sample gallery where you can see a small bit of all the services they offer. Find the the look and style that you like best. Find out the difference between web and broadcast captions. Ask your friends who they use. Get recommendations! Ask your prospective captioning company any questions you have. All the best have experts on staff who have added captions/subtitles/you name it to everything short of a toaster oven (we’re still working on that one). Those experts can help you find the best fit and the most pain-free process for your specific video!

Do you need tape encoding? Are you making a web video and a DVD? Do you need multiple language translation? Interested in going green with a tapeless work flow? Is sending a hard drive your preferred method? The best companies can handle your project from start to finish. These extra technical services let you skip the hassle of contracting yet another post-house that can charge you double for the same product. Take advantage of your captioning company’s techy knowledge, and you’ll work with fewer go-betweens and have fewer headaches!

Sometimes you need it yesterday! Some projects will always have irritations and bottlenecks as their deadlines approach. Make sure that you talk to your captioning company about clear turnaround deadlines. Your captioning company should be able to clearly explain their turnaround times for the file types you want. Be clear with your scheduling needs and confirm a guaranteed turnaround time. But if you’re down to the wire, go with the company that delivers on time — every time!

Have questions? Don’t understand something? While there will always be variations in prices between captions, subtitles, transcription, etc., your captioning company should provide you with excellent customer service. A dedicated project manager can answer your questions and guide you smoothly through the captioning/subtitling/transcription process. Choose a company with years of experience in a wide range of projects, subjects, and technologies. Find a company with real people who speak real-people language and not a bunch of industry (yes, there is a captioning industry) jargon.

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Fun Word Friday: Word Origins

Posted by Emma on March 4, 2011 at 9:24 am. Captioning

by Kirsten Dirkes

A curate’s egg: something which has good and bad parts; traditionally, it meant something which was rendered useless by the bad bits. From a Punch cartoon in which a curate won’t condemn his entire egg. Example: The Liberty Bell is a curate’s egg of good patina but bad ringability.

Ketchup: I know you’ve heard this word before, but you may not know its origin. In fact, I’m sure you don’t, because apparently no one does. It likely derived from either Malay or Chinese words back in the day before it contained tomatoes. Yes, all those labels that state “tomato ketchup” are not redundant, because even in the Western world, ketchup started out as a thin sauce made from pickled walnuts or mushrooms. Prior to that, it was a fish sauce in Asia.

Banana ketchup: No, I’m not done talking about ketchup. Who knew it was such a fascinating topic? Banana ketchup (bananas, vinegar, sugar, garlic, onion, etc) originated in the Philippines during World War II, when they had tomato shortages, and it’s still highly popular there. It’s dyed yellow or red and reportedly tastes similar to tomato ketchup, only sweeter, and now I know what to get my toddler for his birthday.

Kugel ball: a sculpture consisting of a large granite ball that spins on a thin layer of water. The term originated when someone who obviously wasn’t that bright combined the English word “ball” with the German word for…“ball.”

Yat dialect: a dialect of English spoken in New Orleans; has many similarities to New York dialects. From the phrase “Where y’at,” which means “How are you?” In these days of cell phones and actually needing to know where the speaker is at, I anticipate this use of the phrase might lose popularity soon. Now if only someone would invent a device that makes the phrase “give 110%” obsolete. Oh, wait, they did: math.

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Gulliver’s Travels (1939)

Posted by Emma on March 2, 2011 at 9:36 am. Captioning, Movies, Subtitling, YouTube, translation

by Jason Mitchell

Our resident public domain and creative content expert, Jason, is back to share his vast knowledge of early animation.

I’ve talked about Fleischer Studios before, and I will undoubtedly talk about them again. The studio was a major force in the early years of animation, and they are largely forgotten today.

Walt Disney did the unthinkable in 1937, releasing Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first feature-length animated film. Just two years later, Fleischer Studios released the second with Gulliver’s Travels.

Max and Dave Fleischer, the brothers who co-founded Fleischer studios, had wanted to produce a feature-length animated film since Disney announced production of Snow White in 1934. Paramount, their distributor, refused to allow such an ambitious project until Snow White proved to be successful. Paramount’s desire to have Gulliver ready for a Christmas 1939 release meant that it had to be completed in a third of the time Disney took to produce Snow White. Other issues also troubled the production, including a relocation of the animation studios from New York to Miami after a labor strike in 1937. As a result, the film falls short of the technical achievements of Disney’s animated features. Nevertheless, Gulliver was a box office success when it opened in 1939.

Gulliver implements some of the Fleischers’ animation innovations. The character of Gulliver was animated using a rotoscoping technique. The actor Sam Parker was filmed performing as Gulliver, and then the film of his performance was traced as an animation reference. This technique gave Gulliver’s movements a very lifelike quality, which contrasts with the cartoon-like Liliputians.

The opening title sequence features realistic footage of a three-dimensional ship. Max Fleischer’s Tabletop 3D Setback invention was capable of photographing actual 3D background sets to be incorporated in animation. The device was used more prominently in some of Fleischer Studios’ animated shorts. Play Safe has an especially cool sequence with a train maneuvering through some cliffs and into a tunnel. Disney’s competing multiplane camera wasn’t in use until three years after the Setback was introduced.

Gulliver’s Travels included several songs that became popular outside of the film and were used in later Fleischer shorts. The character of Gabby also was given a series of spin-off shorts. Mel Blanc, noted voice actor responsible for voicing many Warner Bros. and Hanna-Barbera characters, portrayed Gabby in Gulliver’s Travels and the later shorts.

Gulliver’s success would lead to the production of Mr. Bug Goes to Town, the Fleischers’ second feature-length film, but a growing feud between Max and Dave, along with growing financial issues for the studio, led to the studio being absorbed by Paramount in 1941. Today, many of the films Fleischer Studios produced are in the public domain, including Gulliver’s Travels.

CaptionMax has recently added a captioned, video described, and Spanish translated version of the film to the CaptionMax YouTube page. Check it out to see if you notice the rotoscoping & 3D Setback techniques that made this a groundbreaking film.

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Tech Time: Aspect Ratio (Part 2)

Posted by Emma on February 23, 2011 at 9:58 am. Captioning, Subtitling, Techy

This is Part 2 of a two part series about aspect ratio. In Part 1, we talked 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios. Now, we’ll talk anamorphic aspect ratio & how aspect ratio affects captions and subtitles.

Anamorphic widescreen

Some widescreen programs, such as HD TV, are just straight-up rectangles. But there’s also a type of widescreen used for standard definition programming that people watch on TV sets (broadcast and DVDs), because the producers don’t know what kind of TV the viewers are going to use. For this type of widescreen, called anamorphic widescreen, the rectangular picture is horizontally squeezed into a square for delivery to the screen. The sides are pushed in, and this makes objects look taller and skinner until the picture is stretched back out. When played on a 16:9 screen, the picture will be stretched out again. When played on a 4:3 TV, it’s either zoomed-and-cropped or letterboxed, depending on the TV’s settings.

The key point to remember about anamorphic video is that it is stretchy. It is a widescreen 16:9 rectangle and should be treated as widescreen, but it is disguised as a 4:3 square, and sometimes you will see it in disguise.

How to determine if a file is true 4:3 or anamorphic

It’s tricky. This isn’t a numerical value that you can just look at on a deck. You actually have to watch the video to see if things “look right.” Look for spots with people, circular objects, and on-screen text. Is something that’s supposed to be round, like a planet or the sun, shaped more like an egg? Are all of the people suspiciously gaunt and scrawny? Probably anamorphic. Be sure to check the video in several places, because some people really do have kind of skinny faces.

Most importantly…ask for help! A second set of eyes is very important. Even if you do this all the time, you will start to second guess yourself and start thinking everything looks stretched or squeezed, even physical objects in real life. This is called anamorphic madness (not really, we just made that up).

Does aspect ratio affect closed captioning?
Not at all. The captions are drawn by the TV or player’s decoder, and it’s the decoder that determines the absolute placement of the caption text on screen. A caption file contains coordinates for where the captions should display on the grid, but the size and screen location of the grid are determined by the decoder. Most TVs draw the captions after any manipulation of the image.

Does aspect ratio affect subtitles?
It could! The producer has more control of where and how subtitles are placed. For anamorphic video, when the video is stretched into a rectangle, the subtitles may also be stretched causing them to look squat and blocky. Try using a narrow font so that when the video is stretched the subtitles will look normal. For letterbox video, many people like to put the subtitles in the black matte and not on the image. Normally, that is the best option but you always have to watch that the subtitles stay in title safe.

Hopefully we’ve answered a lot of questions about aspect ratio. Is there anything else you want to know or want to add? Leave us a comment and we’ll get back to you ASAP!

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Tech Time: Aspect Ratio (Part 1)

Posted by Emma on February 16, 2011 at 9:26 am. Captioning, Subtitling, Techy

Part 1 of a two part series about aspect ratio. First, we’ll talk 4:3 and 16:9. What is the difference? What do those aspect ratios look like? Then, in Part 2, we’ll talk anamorphic aspect ratio and how aspect ratio affects captions and subtitles.

You’ve probably heard about aspect ratio before, even if that is not the term that was used. Who knows, you might even have been in an argument about widescreen versus pan and scan.

Aspect ratio is a number that describes how wide an image is compared to how tall the image is. It describes the shape of the image.

First, a little terminology clarification because it can get a little complicated…
1. 4:3 and 16:9 (occasionally 4×3 and 16×9) are the common notations and values for aspect ratio.

2. The ratio can also be expressed as a decimal rather than with a colon: 4:3 = 1.33, because 4 divided by 3 is approx 1.33.

3. Note that the size of an NTSC picture is generally said to be 720×480, which isn’t precisely 1.33. That’s because it’s measuring lines instead of square pixels, and we really don’t want to get into pixel aspect ratio yet. (Yikes!)

4:3 (Regular NTSC TV)

This is the aspect ratio you’re thinking of when you imagine an iconic TV, the square with the rounded corners. The image is almost as tall as it is wide. Until a few years ago, all American television looked like this.

Now most TV is produced in 16:9. If you watch a widescreen TV show on an old-school TV, it will either be letterboxed (see below) or the sides will be cut off. This depends on the settings on your TV or receiver and also what flags the broadcaster is transmitting. Most networks require that programs delivered in 16:9 HD respect 4:3 title safe, so text is in the center of the frame and not cut off for people using standard sets.

Letterboxed 4:3 (…or “I hate those black bars”)

Letterboxed video is still 4:3. The video itself is not actually widescreen. Lots of people get this wrong; even some software gets it wrong. Letterboxing is a way to simulate a widescreen picture on a 4:3 monitor. The actual active video is presented as a widescreen rectangle, and the rest of the space is filled up with black mattes on the top and bottom. But the overall image itself is still 4:3.

The mattes do not (we repeat do not) cover up any of the picture. You can confidently assure your grandma that the black bars are not stealing any television from her. Seriously, some people do get really upset about letterboxing, but not letterboxing is what takes picture away. When you buy a “full screen” DVD of a movie, if they still sell those, there won’t be any black bars, but the sides of the picture will be cut off (see the first image in this article) in order to make the rectangle into a square. Beautiful scenery and even whole characters can be excised this way. These zoom-and-cropped, pan-and-scan full-frame releases aren’t nearly as common as they used to be, but you’ll still see them from time to time.

16:9 (Widescreen)

This is a rectangle. If you have a TV that is a rectangle, congratulations, you will see the entire widescreen picture in full screen. A 4:3 picture will be either pillarboxed (see below) or stretched out in freaky ways. We can’t even tell you how many big fancy plasma TVs we’ve seen that have had their settings all wrong, including the aspect ratio. The tears, the sadness, the gnashing of teeth!

It is possible to have a 16:9 widescreen video that also has letterboxing—it means that the active picture is ultra-widescreen, like 2.35:1, and is being fit into a 16:9 aspect ratio. That isn’t usually relevant to standard definition, though; it generally happens when a very wide film is being shown on 16:9 HDTV.

Just because an image is 16:9 does not mean it is high definition. Standard definition video can also be 16:9, almost always anamorphic…

Pillarboxed 16:9

Pillarboxed video is when a 4:3 video displayed on a 16:9 screen. In order to display the video in its correct proportions, black bars are added to along the side of the frame. Pillarboxing will be used instead of displaying a stretched video. And just like a letterboxed video, the black mattes do not cover up any of the picture.

Whew, got all that? Any questions? In Part 2 we’ll discuss anamorphic video and how aspect ratio affects captions and subtitles.

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DVD Subtitles are Unreadable

Posted by Emma on February 10, 2011 at 9:54 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.

I’d like to comment on a very annoying trend that I see in subtitling. I’m deaf and I use captions or subtitles on all of the video media I watch. I’ve also been involved in television captioning research for more than 30 years, beginning with my appointment as Director of Research at the National Captioning Institute back in 1979. Before the first closed caption television decoder was manufactured in 1980, quite a bit of research was done to determine the font and background characteristics that made the captions most readable. The first decoders presented captions as white letters in a black box, and 30 years later television decoders still use that method.

There is a reason for it: a black box with white lettering makes the most readable captions.

In recent years there has been a trend toward subtitling movies and other programs with a white or yellow font without a background. This often makes the subtitles virtually unreadable. The difference in readability is obvious; check out the examples below. I and other people who use subtitling find it very frustrating to have unreadable subtitles spoil what could otherwise be an enjoyable program.

Screen shot of a man in a space suit with easy to read subtitles in a black box at the bottom of the screen.

Screen shot of a man in a space suit. White subtitle text blends into white space suit making it difficult to read.

What do you think? Tell us about your subtitle experience.

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The Art of Spanish Translation

Posted by Emma on February 2, 2011 at 9:51 am. Captioning, translation

by Eladio Canibano

What’s translation? If we research the word, we find a simple definition, “a rendering from one language into another.”

Pretty straightforward, isn’t it?

Well, not that straightforward when you have about 20 countries and 330 million speakers on 3 different continents.

At CaptionMax, we’re always brainstorming about how to obtain the best possible translation, keeping in mind our target market is Latinos in the United States, and this market is compounded by multiple nationalities, cultures, and dialectal varieties. It’s not an easy task, that is for certain.

Our goal is to try to convey the meaning in the most neutral Spanish possible and one the “average” Latino can understand. This is a challenge at times; identical words can mean such different things in two countries.

For example: “pollera,” means “skirt” in Argentina but in other countries—like Spain—is simply a “chicken coop” at best.

Our goal has always been and continues to be to convey the meaning of the sentence regardless of the individual words, and that’s something we take a lot of pride in. Through research, dictionaries, glossaries, online tools, and personal experience, we will always come up with the most universal way to make a message understood.

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Fun Word Friday: 1800s

Posted by Emma on January 21, 2011 at 9:39 am. Captioning

by Kirsten Dirkes

101 (okay, 5) Reasons Not to Live in the 1800s

Semmelweis reflex – the automatic rejection of a new idea because it contradicts an entrenched belief; named after Ignaz Semmelweis (1818-1865), a Hungarian doctor who was ridiculed for his belief that handwashing could reduce the spread of disease.

phrenology – a pseudoscience in which a practitioner feels a person’s skull to determine that person’s personality, most popular between 1810 and 1840. A phrenologist who felt Semmelweis’s head might have been able to use the additional clues of red skin and rising steam to deduct that Semmelweis was really ticked off.

The Great Game – a term used for the conflict between the British and Russian Empires for control of Central Asia (1813-1907), because nothing says fun like having one’s homeland divvied up by foreign invaders. Corner on India! I mean barley!

1816 –This year was nicknamed Year Without a Summer or Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death. At the time, people didn’t know that the cold temperatures were due to volcanic eruptions, and if they had, they wouldn’t have cared, because what can you do?

landau – a type of horse-drawn carriage with a fold-down roof. Actually, these are kind of cool, but I’m sure you can think of a reason or two why modern cars are better. (See 1816.)

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Fun Word Friday: Medical Terms

Posted by Emma on January 7, 2011 at 10:08 am. Captioning

by Kirsten Dirkes

Thinking about becoming a doctor? Time to study up on those medical terms. Start with some of our favorites below.

M.A.S.T. suit – an abbreviation for military anti-shock trousers, which is a really amusing name that caused me to picture a bunch of army guys running through a swamp of electric eels with impunity, and you should too, because it’s much more cheerful than the reality, which is that these suits are medical devices used in the field prior to hospital arrival in cases of extreme blood loss and/or pelvic fractures.

Babinski sign – an indication of the presence or absence of brain and/or spinal cord damage achieved by rubbing the sole of the foot. In people over the age of 2, an involuntary raising of the big toe indicates a positive Babinski sign that signals a problem. Amaze your friends by checking the condition of their central nervous system via one simple poke of their feet! You could call yourself The Great Babinski.

erythematous – red. You could say, “I was trying to get my box of Hello Kitty kitchen appliances off the top shelf of the pantry and dropped the box on my foot, and now my big toe is red.” Or you could say, “I was trying to get my box of Hello Kitty kitchen appliances off the top shelf of the pantry and dropped the box on my foot, and now my big toe is erythematous.” Don’t be boring! (No picture for this because it makes us a bit squeamish!)

ilium – the largest pelvic bone

ileum – part of the small intestine

(If you’re studying to be a doctor, try not to get these two mixed up. Removal of the ilium is almost never advised.)

Finally, if you have one of these next two procedures, sure, you may have lost a body part, but you should feel a lot better when you tell people the name of your surgery.

uvulopalatopharyngoplasty – surgical removal of tissue in the throat.