Closed Captioning Service

Fun Word Friday: Revolution!

Posted by Emma on July 8, 2011 at 9:37 am. Fun Word Friday

Happy July! In honor of the recently departed 4th of July and the quickly upcoming Bastille Day, we’re bringing waving the red, white, and blue flags in our minds and learning some revolution-related terms.

broadsides/broadsheets: large sheets of paper printed vertically and often used as posters or as pages in newspapers or magazines. On July 4, 1776, hundreds of copies of the new Declaration of Independence were printed by a man named Dunlap and cleverly called Dunlap broadsides.

cockade: a circular decoration of ribbons usually worn on a hat and whose colors indicate an allegiance. Because of ribbonosity, the colors are often displayed in concentric rings, which sounds very nice in theory, but if you Google “French Revolution cockade” and see a picture of actor Sam Neill in costume, you’ll quickly decide that wearing a large bull’s-eye on one’s head during a revolution isn’t perhaps the best idea.

flying camp: a small, mobile reserve of troops, particularly the ones organized by the Americans during the Revolutionary War. A lot of the soldiers who joined were probably very disappointed to learn that the alleged “flying” actually involved walking really fast and that there were almost no s’mores whatsoever.

real tennis: The French signed the Tennis Court Oath in the early days of the revolution, but the “tennis” in question is not the tennis of today. Today’s tennis is also known as “lawn tennis,” and it is derived from an older game that was originally called “tennis” but then, after those cocky upstarts introduced the new version, changed its name to “real tennis,” which I think really conveys its attitude toward its successor. Real tennis is played indoors, and bouncing the balls off the walls is a part of the game, so you really needed to watch your back if you were a real tennis player (or someone whose name ended in “the Sixteenth”).

seigneurial: of a seigneur, a man of high position, especially a feudal lord. “Dudes, I’m totally going to use this sweet broadside poster to advertise my seigneurial real tennis court.”

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Is FCPX Right for CaptionMax?

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

by Emily Bell
Multimedia Manager

(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!

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Fun Word Friday: An Aleatoric Arrangement

Posted by Emma on June 24, 2011 at 8:33 am. Fun Word Friday

by Kirsten Dirkes

zeugma: the use of a word to govern two or more words or phrases; a Greek word meaning “yoke” Example: “He took his coat and his leave.” People who use zeugmas in their speech are very clever, so you’re going to want to remember this term and be all, “Oh, good use of a zeugma” if you want to impress them back and be regarded as a worthy conversational rival.

aposematism: a warning signal, such as coloration, possessed by a harmful living organism to deter predators. It’s all very well and good for a poison dart frog to kill the predator that eats it, but how much better would it be if the predator knew ahead of time, due to bright coloration, that the frog was poisonous and could therefore avoid it? Good for the predator. Good for the frog. Not so good for the next dull brown frog the predator encounters, but we can’t all be winners.

gueridon: a small, ornate table. And that’s about all there is to say about that.

phugoid: motion of an airplane in which it pitches up while decreasing speed and pitches down while accelerating. Speaking of airplanes, did you know they display aposematism? See their sparkly and noticeable ascent into the air? That’s a sign you shouldn’t get on one.

aleatoric: random, happening by chance. Once again, I display massive skill in writing this column, because although these words seem to be disconnected and random, they are an aleatoric arrangement and thus perfectly showcase my final term, aleatoric. I totally planned that.

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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.

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…)

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Fun Word Friday: List ‘o Words

Posted by Emma on June 10, 2011 at 8:22 am. Fun Word Friday

by Kirsten Dirkes

At first glance, it may seem that these words have nothing in common and that I threw them together without bothering to come up with a theme. But that accusation just doesn’t hold H2O. There’s a special bond between these words, a bond as special as Mr. 007. (You’re going to understand these terrible jokes in a minute.) I hereby present several interesting words all linked by the very significant and meaningful fact of having two Os.

Barracoon: a temporary barracks used to contain slaves or prisoners.

Moon gate: a circular opening in a wall, used in Chinese architecture. You don’t want to put one of these in your barracoon, however aesthetically tempting it may be, because your slaves and/or convicts will run right out.

Gobo: (shortened from “goes before optics”) a device placed in front of a light source to control the shape, color, or strength of the light stream. If your prisoners are really mean guys, what would be really funny is to use a gobo like to make it look like there’s a moon gate in the wall and watch them run into it. Ha ha!

Cocotte: a small baking dish with one or two handles. (Or a prostitute. Hopefully, context will help you determine which of the two is meant.) On the other hand, if your prisoner is a friend that you’re holding for his or her own good, it would be a nice gesture to serve your friend a delicious hotdish in a cocette.

Hooligan firm: a group of people who really like their soccer team and who have decided that this warrants acts of vandalism and assault against other teams’ property and supporters. “Hooligan firm” is a pretty silly name for something violent, but fortunately each group has given itself a fierce-sounding name to instill fear in the hearts of the opposition. Examples: City Service Firm, The Naughty Forty, Newcastle Gremlins, Baby Squad, The Ointment. Well, they’re English; even the criminals show a little restraint.

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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!

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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.

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!

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Fun Word Friday: Cuisine of Kentucky

Posted by Emma on May 27, 2011 at 7:49 am. Fun Word Friday

by Kirsten Dirkes

Last time on this column, we mentioned the Kentucky Derby, and we also mentioned the words “human consumption.” Put the two together, and what have you got? Well, yes, you’ve got that, but you’ve also got the very hot topic of Cuisine of Kentucky! [marquee lights flash]

Perhaps, like me, you did not know that Kentucky had cuisine worthy of note, but that bastion of important things known as Wikipedia has decided that the subject deserves its very own article, so let’s check it out, shall we? After all, Kentucky was named the 44th healthiest state, so they must be doing something right!

Picture of beer cheese dip

beer cheese (also called snappy cheese): a processed cheese spread made with beer and garlic.

Picture of benedictine dip with toast

benedictine: cream cheese, cucumbers, and green food coloring combined into what was traditionally a sandwich spread but is now used as a dip and in other applications.

Picture of burgoo stew

burgoo: a spicy, thick stew. Wikipedia says it was traditionally made using “whatever” was available. Mmm!

Picture of yellow, chess pie.

chess pie: a sweet custard cornmeal pie. There’s a interesting story about how this pie got its name, but since everybody who knows the story is dead, that’s pretty much the end of that. So let it be a lesson to you: blog your nomenclature tales, or the people of 2234 will be ill-informed.

Picture of Derby Pie with whip cream.

Derby Pie: the name is actually a trademark of the Melrose Inn of Kentucky, but plenty of best-guess recipes are made for this pie, which is associated with the Kentucky Derby. Ingredients include chocolate, walnuts and/or pecans, and bourbon.

Picture of wrapped modjeskas.

modjeskas: caramel-covered marshmallow candies. Named for Polish actress Helena Modjeska (1840-1909), who once visited Louisville, performed a play, and then promptly left. A candymaker decided to name the confections after her because he so enjoyed the play, even though it was by Ibsen.

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DVD Studio Pro: Buttons and Subtitles!

Posted by Emma on May 25, 2011 at 9:14 am. Subtitling, Techy

Here’s another quick, tech-related blog for all you editors and producers out there.

What happens after you’ve imported a .son or .slt files into DVDSP? How do you allow your user to turn the subtitles on and off? We hope that this quick guide helps to get you moving in the right direction. Enjoy!

First

Label each subtitle track in the timeline with its language. This will keep your subtitles organized. There’s a little drop-down box for that, full of languages you’ve probably never even heard of:

Second

Make the subtitles default to the “off” position. Most people want the subtitles to be turned off unless the user clicks a button to turn them on.

1. Go to the Disc Inspector -> General tab,
2. Under the Streams Section, set Subtitle to “not set”
3. Make sure the View Button is unchecked.
(See the graphic below.)

Third

Add some buttons that allow users to turn on the subtitle tracks. You might put these on the main menu or if you have a lot of subtitles, you might make a separate “Subtitles” or “Languages” menu.
(We don’t show you how to add buttons in this tutorial. We show you how to link a button to a subtitle track.)

1. Create a button for each subtitle language.
2. Then look at the Button Inspector and set the Target to be the video track, as you would normally do for a “play” button.
3. Then go to the Advanced tab. In the middle section, labeled Streams, there is a Subtitle option. Select the stream you want and click on the View checkbox.

In this example, Subtitle Stream 1 is the English subtitle stream. When the user clicks on the “English” button, the track will play with English subtitles.

User controls (on the remote)

Some DVD players have a “subtitle” key on their remote control. You can influence the behavior of this control.

To allow the user to turn the subtitles off and to cycle through all the available subtitle streams using this key:
1. Bring up the Track Inspector
2. Go to the User Operations tab
3. Under the Stream Selection options, make sure “Subpicture Stream Change” is enabled.

If you want the Language or Subtitle menu to pop up when the user presses the Subtitle key on their remote, you can also set that in the Track Inspector.
1. In the General tab under Remote Control,
2. Choose your subtitle menu in the Subtitle drop-down.

There’s more complex scripting that you can do if you want fine control over the subtitle streams, but the controls above will be sufficient for most quick and easy projects.

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Fun Word Friday: Horses

Posted by Emma on May 13, 2011 at 8:37 am. Fun Word Friday

by Kirsten Dirkes

The Kentucky Derby recently happened again, as it tends to do every year, and it’s an event that always provides some entertaining reading in the area of horse names. This year, I’m partial to Mucho Macho Man and Pants on Fire, and as editors, we have to give a shout-out to Comma to the Top, even though the “Top” part turned out to be a bit of a misnomer. But don’t restrict yourself to names when it comes to horse-related humor.

There are plenty of actual terms that are good for a chuckle.

A photo of a horse and rider trotting across a stage.

dressage: According to Merriam-Webster, dressage is “the execution by a trained horse of precision movements in response to barely perceptible signals from its rider.” According to Wikipedia, “Dressage is occasionally referred to as horse ballet.” According to the look you can’t see on my face, I clearly have no idea why anybody would ever do this.

A picture of a equine passport.

equine passport: All horses in the European Union need to possess passports, regardless of whether they plan on crossing borders to vacation in Phuket or not. Look away, horses, because the reason has something to do with “human consumption.”

A picture of a long, formal coat.