Unfortunately, professional broadcast video production is not as easy as uploading a video from your iPhone to your YouTube account. Creating a quality program for broadcast television is extremely detailed and technical, which requires thousands of dollars of high-tech equipment and many years of experience to ensure each facet of the process is completed with the highest level of quality and skill. Below are five easy ways to (not) screw up your video. Hopefully, you can keep these tips in mind the next time you hit ‘Export’ and therefore improve the quality of your next broadcast.
#1: Keep it NativeRead
It’s been twelve years since the FCC ushered in a new era of closed captioning.
On July 2, 2002, the Federal Communications Commission mandated all Digital Televisions include an EIA-708 caption decoder, adding new features to viewers who want to change the captions’ font, color, and size according to preference—an advance in the captioning world comparable to the leap in Television from Monochrome to Technicolor tube sets.
In addition to altering the text, EIA-708 has eight windows with fewer constraints than EIA-608, the original (and primitive) standard for closed captioning that preceded digital during the analog era. These windows provide added freedom when positioning captions to a specific location, which helps when a viewer wants to move captions around graphics on screen.
For more information about the differences between 608 and 708 captions, check out: The Basics of 608 vs. 708 Captions.
If providing access to the deaf and hard of hearing lacks incentive, will more YouTube views persuade you? YouTube creators today are forced to look for new and exciting ways to attract viewers. Meanwhile, it’s only getting harder to stand out in the ever-growing, over competitive, viral hungry, trend hopping, video-sharing ecosystem that is YouTube (see the video-host’s latest press release for an idea—the numbers are staggering, unsurprising, and deservedly proud—boasting that over 6 billion hours of YouTube is watched monthly).
Although intended for the deaf and hard of hearing community, captions are providing lesser-known secondary benefits to an unlikely recipient: YouTubers. Content creators are using captions, and they’re doing it for more hits. With rewarding incentives from YouTube, creators are reaping the benefits of “popularizing” their content by tapping into larger audiences—albeit, in a few unlikely places.
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The Federal Communications Commission stirred up a hot debate this past week when it proposed net neutrality laws that would give Internet providers permission to charge companies for faster broadband, or “fast lanes.” The new rules garnered opposition from the public and service providers alike, with some foretelling the collapse of “open Internet.” Tom Wheeler, the FCC Chairman sees it differently. He affirmed the nation's tenet that all Internet traffic is created equal and assured skeptics the proposal supports net neutrality, not user discrimination. Back in February, Chairman Wheeler announced new improvements to closed captioning standards after expressing frustration in the agency's lack of quality control since it became law in 1996. For now the debate rages on. After Thursday's 3-2 vote to move forward with the proposal, the public has 120 days to comment on the matter. You can share your suggestions at Fcc.gov.
This blog was written by David Schmidt, one of Aberdeen’s detailed oriented Operations Administrators. He joined the Aberdeen team in 2013 and loves the close-knit community (including the many pranksters and shenanigans around the office). Married in October 2013, he is enjoying his new life (and wife!) in Tustin, California. He is an Orange County native, and received his English Writing BA from Biola University. In his spare time, he enjoys creative writing, classic cinema, and learning to cook.
There's a common question: "Why would I need to pay for professional translation services if I have access to Google Translate?" However, there are numerous compelling reasons why Google Translate cannot replace the expertise of a native human speaker.
To begin, it's essential to understand how Google Translate operates. It functions like a computer, akin to how a search engine conducts a web search. Instead of phrases, it primarily deals with individual words, lacking comprehension of syntax, style, or grammar. Google Translate essentially dissects your sentence into words and attempts to replace each word with its translated counterpart. The outcome is often peculiar, disjointed, and occasionally humorous. Google Translate encounters difficulties with proper names, units of measurement, currencies, and other technical equivalents. Some amusing examples include translating "I love Sweden" to "I love Canada." There's even a website that takes an English phrase, translates it into several languages using Google Translate, and then back into English, resulting in hilarious outcomes reminiscent of the childhood game "telephone." For instance, the famous quote "To be or not to be, that is the question" transforms into "Or rather, it is a problem."
That said, Google Translate can be a handy tool when you're traveling in a foreign country and need to find a restroom, hail a taxi, or locate a hotel. However, when it comes to professional translation services, nothing can replace the expertise of native-speaking professionals who understand the nuances and intricacies of language. They have the ability to preserve the true meaning of the original text, ensuring that nothing is "lost in translation."
Aberdeen has been a long-standing partner in providing captioning services for Joseph Prince Ministries. Recently, the team had the opportunity to attend the Power of Right Believing Tour as it came to the United States. The event, held at the Long Beach Arena, was a special occasion for Aberdeen's management team who had the chance to see Pastor Joseph Prince preach live on November 6th. It was a memorable moment for everyone, marking the first in-person meeting after years of collaboration.
The event also provided a chance for a memorable photo with Joseph Prince. The team, including Nathan Isaacs, Becky Isaacs, Matt Cook, and Ed Gallagher, captured a moment alongside Pastor Prince.
Joseph Prince, the senior pastor of Singapore's New Creation Church, is known for his program "Destined to Reign," which reaches viewers in over 150 countries. To explore more about Joseph Prince and his ministry, you can visit their website: http://www.josephprince.org/
Starting September 30, all pre-recorded video that has been “substantially edited” for the Internet must be captioned if it was shown on television with captions. Jason Livingston, the project manager and developer at CPC, states: “Unlike broadcast video, where every station transmits the same ATSC spec and every consumer TV set can display the closed captions carried in ATSC video, the Web is like the ‘Wild Wild West’ of video formats.”
In late July, Livingston conducted a Webcast updating closed-captioning regulations. The organization’s SMPTE Timed Text [PDF] (SMPTE 2052) format attempts to unite the countless formats for captioning. SMPTE Timed Text can be the captioning format for all Web video delivery systems or playback devices. Livingston notes, “One of the things that makes captioning workflows difficult is that caption data is fragile and can be lost at any step in the process—content creation, editing, transcoding, distribution, hosting, and online delivery. For captioning to work end-to-end, not only do all of these tools have to support closed captioning, but they all have to be mutually compatible in terms of how they work with captioning.”
To read the whole interview, click here.
We recently came across an article in the Washington Post about a woman who relies on closed captioning to watch television programs. Her husband Stephen decided to compile a list of the descriptive terminology used during musical interludes to determine if it was helpful or not. The verdict was the more accurate the description, the better.
So [music] or just music notes wasn’t as helpful as a fully descriptive phrase. This is especially true when the music is pertinent to the meaning of the program. For example, on an episode of “Glee” where someone is auditioning to sing and is singing poorly, it is helpful to note that in the captioning. Otherwise, the deaf or hard of hearing viewer loses the meaning of that particular scene.
Some of the more descriptive phrases for music on Stephen’s list: “piano and clarinet playing mischievous melody,” “orchestra playing accelerated frantic,” or “flute fluttering bird song.” Think of the difference between “piano” versus “sinister piano” or, “upbeat piano.” Sometimes just one descriptive word can make the difference!
To read the full article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/with-closed-captioning-music-can-help-tell-a-story/2013/07/24/18a172e2-f3d2-11e2-aa2e-4088616498b4_story.html
This weekend I had the privilege of attending a wedding where the bride is hearing and the groom is deaf. It was very interesting to watch them communicate with each other. She even serenaded him by “signing” a love song. I was questioned a lot about my job as a caption editor and was asked why captions aren’t always accurate. The couple was watching a sitcom together and some of the jokes lost their humor due to the fact that the captions were severely edited down and not verbatim. I discussed the importance of verbatim captioning and how at Aberdeen we make it our priority to provide accurate, verbatim captioning that does not deter from the original meaning. It was a personal moment for me to take pride in my professional career but also sad to see that many programs still have poor captioning that barely meets the requirements. Hopefully this will change as awareness spreads on the importance of quality captioning.
Side note: I was very embarrassed by my own personal lack of sign language and was frustrated that I was not able to communicate as well as I would have liked. I think it is important that everyone knows at least a few fundamental and basic signs. Here is a website that provides a list of some common signs that you should know: http://www.start-american-sign-language.com/basic-words-in-sign-language.html.
The captions are horrible! Why can’t they spell? These are the valid questions asked when watching live closed captioning of a TV broadcast. Let’s briefly look at the behind the scenes of live closed captioning. Live closed captioning, in the majority of cases, is completed by a human. Live captioners, called writers, write to a steno machine (keys are all based on sounds). The steno machine is connected to live captioning software that has an extensive dictionary to take the steno strokes and convert to English words. A dictionary is not just imported from Webster’s to the software but rather created per writer based on their writing theory. So how do they know the difference between words that sound the same such as to, two and too? They have to remember the stroke they gave that word when creating their dictionary. So when writing 200-300 words per minute the human behind the machine can mistroke the word and you could see errors such as:
prays Hymn when it should be praise Him
mall mighty God when is should be almighty God
top or pop
There are other times when a word may just clearly not be in their dictionary and it would show up as:
graph fight when it should be graphite
authentic cater when it should be authenticator
you know sex when it should be unisex
ear gates when it should be irrigates
Aberdeen’s live Abercap department strives to write every show with a 98% or better accuracy rate. This is completely possible as long as the following is provided:
1) Show information such as key words, hosts, guests, websites and phone numbers
2) Clear audio feed to the live captioner so they can hear the audio they are to write well
98% accuracy means you may see 4 errors per minute when the speaker is speaking at 200 words per minute.
To see a live demo of a live writer, watch this clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCPEjz--BvE
If you are interested in learning more about our live captioning department or any other of our broadcast services, feel free to send us a note here.
