Now Offering Accurate and Affordable AI-powered Captioning & Transcription

In September of 2011, the U.S. Department of Transportation issued a notice of proposed rule making in Docket OST 2011-0182 titled, “Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Disability in Programs or Activities Receiving Federal Financial Assistance (U.S. Airports).” The DOT issued this final rule to amend section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which requires accessibility in airport terminal facilities.Read

Think about what you know about the English language. Alphabet letters combine to form words. Words represent different parts of speech (such as nouns, verbs, and adjectives). To convey an idea or thought, we string words together to form sentences, paying attention to grammar, style, and punctuation. Because we understand pronunciation and phonetics, we can read other languages that use the Latin alphabet even if we do not understand the meaning of the words. However, the Chinese language functions in an entirely different way. Chinese is a conceptual language. It relies on written characters (not letters and words) to express ideas and general concepts.Read

Television stations or advertising agencies will provide detailed instructions on their broadcast requirements for producers to follow before submitting their program. However, before exploring the technical specifications of the bit rate, codec, wrapper, GOP structure, etc. you’ll need to ensure you add your broadcast leader elements to your timeline. Although the broadcast requirement varies from station to station (sometimes absent), we have established a common layout of how the leader elements should be formatted.Read

Due to the updated FCC guidelines and standards regarding the quality of captioning, video editors face challenges when it comes to graphic placement during their programs, particularly text-heavy programming such as infomercials.

The new law states the following: Captioning shall be view-able and shall not block other important visual content on the screen, including, but not limited to, character faces, featured text (e.g., weather or other news updates, graphics, and credits), and other information that is essential to understanding a program’s content when the closed captioning feature is activated.

In order to avoid potentially getting their show rejected by TV stations, editors have had to work hard and be extra creative so they can allow space for closed captions to be displayed without conflicting with any important visual content.

The following blog was written by one of our clients, Simon Roberts, from Rock Church San Diego.

Since the Rock Church San Diego launched Closed Captioning at the 10 am live stream recently, I've had several inquiries into how we went about adding this essential feature.

I figured the best way to answer this is simply to write about it. So, in what is hopefully the first of many posts regarding church technology projects, let's begin.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: Approximately 17 percent (36 million) of American adults report some degree of hearing loss. Source: Deaf Statistics for USA

Have you stumbled upon a goldmine of budget-friendly or complimentary voice-over services at the foreign TV station broadcasting your program? When you reach out to your local voice dubbing provider to inquire about the costs of voice dubbing services, do you find yourself taken aback by the quotes you receive?

Well, don’t be, because it does not reflect the same two services.

Numerous evangelical television ministries have a global reach, often translating their programs through voice dubbing into the local languages. Typically, they bundle airtime and voice-over dubbing services into a comprehensive package, where the fees for voice-over are encompassed within a single rate. This setup can make voice dubbing appear as a seamless and cost-effective endeavor.

As the international viewership expands, these ministries might approach our team at Aberdeen for voice dubbing rates in a different language, only to experience a form of sticker shock. They might express, "Yet the network in Russia, Italy, or China handles this for us at a fraction of the cost! Why is your pricing considerably higher?"

Insight into Voice Dubbing Operations at TV Stations

In these instances, these TV stations might resort to using their in-house TV presenters to cut down on expenses, instead of meticulously selecting suitable voice talents. Frequently, the voice dubbing is executed without synchronization of lip movements, resembling a rapid assembly-line process with no preceding script translation. The resulting production often resembles real-time interpretation at a meeting rather than a meticulously crafted, post-production performance.

However, it's crucial to note that this isn't a universal practice, but rather a common occurrence based on our observations. Often, the ministries remain oblivious to this distinction or fail to recognize the significance of quality until they receive unfavorable feedback from their audience (which might not even reach the US-based client unless actively sought). Some dubbing efforts are so subpar that they render the content amusing to viewers.

Functioning of a Professional Voice-Over Dubbing Service

When you approach Aberdeen or any reputable voice-over dubbing facility to have your program dubbed in another language, a plethora of elements come into play to ensure a professional outcome.

Our services encompass, among others:

All the services integrated into our holistic post-production voice dubbing process guarantee an outcome characterized by integrity and excellence. There's simply no room for compromise when aiming for such quality.

Ministries: Your Next Steps

Should a voice dubbing price appear exceptionally enticing, it's likely too good to be true, potentially leaving you with results that fall short of your expectations and requirements.

If your TV program's voice dubbing is currently handled by a foreign TV station at a minimal cost, we strongly advise having the voice-over work evaluated by an impartial native third party.

Aberdeen Broadcast Services is honored to confidently proclaim that we have secured our position as a trusted and reliable vendor of captioning and digital file delivery throughout the #2 Designated Market Area in the United States, according to recent estimates by The Nielsen Company. Our AberFast Digital File Delivery is now in place to deliver broadcast-ready long-form programming to all of the major stations in the Los Angeles market including KCBS (CBS), KNBC (NBC), KTLA (CW), KABC (ABC), and KTTV (FOX).

To what do we attribute our success?

Station managers are able to free up the time of their engineers and traffic personnel from ingesting tapes or flipping individual client files flowing in from various producers. The content securely arrives at the station QC’d for broadcast in a custom play-server ready file codec/wrapper, approved file naming system, and properly embedded closed captions.

And for the producers? One single upload of the finished program to us and we’ll take it from there.

Local Television Designated Market Area Estimates

For producers of paid programming, it is essential to know your reach.

Los Angeles is the most populous city in the state of California, and the second-most populous in the U.S; after New York City. According to Forbes, Los Angeles is currently on pace to become the world’s third city with a trillion-dollar economy, following behind Tokyo and New York City. The average resident of L.A. has 20% more purchasing power than their counterparts in New York.

There are 5,523,800 Los Angeles TV homes, making up 4.85% of the entire US TV viewership. Here’s how the demographics breakdown and where LA ranks:

• Hispanic or Latino TV Homes 1,927,420 | Rank #1
• Asian American TV Homes 740,330 | Rank #1
• African American TV Homes 482,030 | Rank #6

13.25% of the US Hispanic and Latino TV viewership resides in LA, further reinforcing the benefit of adding Spanish captioning on CC3.

AberFast Station Partners in the Los Angeles Market Area

We are adding clients and stations on a regular basis all over the world. Please check out our FULL station map. It’s now close to 400 stations globally!

A recognizable anthem throughout Los Angeles, the song “I love LA” by Randy Newman is ringing in our ears. With over 18 million people in the greater Los Angeles market, there’s a lot to love. "We love it!"

The introduction of high definition television super-sized our television sets from the square look of the 4:3 aspect ratio, to the widescreen 16:9 ratio. If you acquire your content in HD, the natural instinct when shooting HD is to use the entire 16:9 frame for composing your shots.

Not so fast.

Currently, most television networks in US markets do broadcast in HD. However, since there are still a significant amount of 4:3 television sets still in use, every one of these HD stations also simultaneously feeds SD signals of their content to their SD viewers. In fact, the majority of the US viewership is actually watching in SD. This means your cinematic 16:9 content is being down-converted to the 4:3 screen ratio for SD viewers.Read

Did you know that the majority of the US viewership is actually watching in SD? A recent Nielsen study states that nearly 86 percent of US households own at least one HD television set. However, only 36 percent of these households are actually watching “true HD,” defined as tuned in to the proper channel for an HD signal with an appropriately connected HD set-top box via HDMI or component cables.

With that in mind, 64 percent of viewers are actually watching television in an SD 4:3 ratio – even on their 16:9 HDTVs. Yes, SD television is still alive and well.

Read

Audible exhales could be heard throughout the nearly 1 million square feet of exhibit space as the final closing announcement was sent over the loudspeakers of the Las Vegas Convention Center. Some, involuntary gasps of panic from what was left of 103,000 NAB attendees that just realized they didn't make it successfully through the 4 halls of the convention; and others, sighs of relief from the exhibitors of the 1,700 companies as they realized that the past 31 hours of standing on their feet is over.

That closing message also marked the 7^th consecutive year of Aberdeen Broadcast Services exhibiting in the South Lower Hall at the NAB Show. This time, with a new location and a fresh look. As we continue to grow as a company, so does the size of our booth and the gathering of our team.

Upgraded 20'x20' booth complete with a 10'x4' triangular overhead hanging sign.

In the years past, Aberdeen has had a nice presence in a 10'x20' space just beyond the main product demonstrations from Red Digital Cinema, Blackmagic Design, and Adobe Systems. This year we were right in the middle of all that activity adjacent to Amazon Web Services.

We could not have predicted the perfect balance of inquiries across our 3 divisions. Frequent visits from producers looking for further education on the new closed captioning laws. TV stations looking to continue to free up their resources in the tape-less world. International producers looking to expand their audiences with multilanguage translations. And, unexpectedly, a dozen universities whose attention has focused on captioning their online courses after the recent lawsuit filed against a couple of Ivy League schools.

This year saw new innovative video and broadcasting technologies introduced at a rate only Flash Gordon could keep up with. 8K display systems, 10-ounce Micro Cinema Cameras, a storm-chasing Jeep Wrangler that would make Bill Paxton salivate, and drones. Drones EVERYWHERE. And like the drones, attendance is soaring: in six years, the turnout has grown to over 21,000 and now represents 164 countries!

It’s also encouraging to see the overall growth in the broadcasting industry at large. After all, the NAB was originally founded as the National Association of Radio Broadcasters and it wasn't until 1951 that the name was changed to include television broadcasts. Now, just “broadcasters” seem to cover it all.

2015 Aberdeen Broadcast Services Exhibitors

(Left to right) Michael, Tony, Arif, Kyle, Matt D., Steve, Becky Isaacs, Nathan, Ryan, Ed, and Matt Cook.

NAB Show, THANK YOU and we’ll see you again next year. April 16-21, 2016.