Open captions and closed captions are both used to provide text-based representations of spoken dialogue or audio content in videos, but they differ in their visibility and accessibility options.
Here's the difference between closed and open captions:
| Feature | Open Caption | Closed Captions |
|---|---|---|
| Visibility | Permanently embedded in the video | Separate text track that can be turned on or off |
| Accessibility | Cannot be turned off | Can be turned on or off by the viewer |
| Applications | Wide audiences, noisy environments | Diverse audiences, compliance with accessibility regulations |
| Creation | Added during video production | Generated in real-time or embedded manually during post-production or uploaded as a sidecar file |
Both open and closed captions serve the purpose of making videos accessible to individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing, those who are learning a new language, or those who prefer to read the text alongside the audio.
The choice between open or closed captions depends on the specific requirements and preferences of the content creators and the target audience.

In the July ‘21 release of Premiere Pro, Adobe introduced its artificial intelligence (AI) powered speech-to-text engine to help creators make their content more accessible to their audiences. Their extensive toolset allows their users to edit, stylize, and export captions in all supported formats straight out of the sequence timeline of a Premiere Pro project. A 3-step process of auto-transcribing, generating, and stylizing captions all within the platform already familiar to its users delivers a seamless experience from beginning to end. But how accurate is the final product?
This blog article was published in March 2022, and since then, ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) technology has advanced significantly. While AI-powered ASR still does not outperform human writers — which we firmly consider the gold standard — these advancements have been so substantial and continue to improve. This progress gives us the confidence to use ASR as a budget-friendly alternative for specific applications.
Learn more about our ASR services here:
Today, at their best, AI captions have an error rate of 5-10% - much improved over the 80% accuracy we saw just a few years ago. High accuracy is crucial for the deaf and hard-of-hearing audience as each error adds to the possibility of confusing the message. To protect all audiences that rely on captioning to understand television programming, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) set a detailed list of quality standards that all captions must meet to be acceptable for broadcast back in 2015. Preceding those standards, the Described and Captioned Media Program (DCMP) published its Captioning Key manual over 20 years ago and has since been a valuable reference for captioning of both entertainment and educational media targeted to audiences of all age groups. Simply having captions present on your content isn’t enough, it needs to be accurate and best replicate the experience for all audiences.
Adobe’s speech-to-text engine has been one of the most impressive that our team has seen to date, so we decided to take a deeper look at it and run some tests. We tasked our most experienced Caption Editor with using Adobe’s auto-generated transcript to create & edit the captions to meet the quality standards of the FCC and the deaf and hard of hearing community on two types of video clips: a single-speaker program and one with multiple speakers. Our editor used our Pop-on Plus+ caption product for these examples, which are our middle-tier quality captions that fulfill all quality standard requirements but are not always 100% free of errors.
Did using Adobe’s speech-to-text save time, or did it create more work in the editing process than needed? Here’s how it went…
In-depth comparison documents that evaluate the captions cell-by-cell are available for download here:
In this example, we used the perfect scenario for AI: clear audio, a single speaker at an optimal words-per-minute (WPM) speaking rate, and no sound effects or music.
The captions contained the following issues that would need to be corrected by the Caption Editor:
Here’s the clip with Adobe’s speech-to-text captions overlayed on the top half of the video, and ours on the bottom half.
For the next clip, we went with a more realistic example of television programming where there are multiple speakers, an area where AI is known to struggle and has difficulties identifying the speakers. This clip also features someone with a pronounced accent, commentators speaking over one another, and proper names of athletes – all of which our editors take the time to research and understand.
The same errors detailed in the single-speaker example are present throughout, among the other difficulties we expected it to have. In fact, there were so many errors that our editor was unable to use the transcript from Adobe and started from the beginning using our own workflow.
Here’s a sample of the first 9 cells of captions with what Adobe transcribes in the first column, notes from our Caption Editor, and how it should look.
| Adobe’s Automated SRT Caption File | Issue | Formatted by Aberdeen |
|---|---|---|
| something you are never seen in your life, correct? | No speaker ID. | (Pedro Martinez) It's something you have never seen in your life, |
| “Correct” is spoken by new speaker. | (Matt Vasgersian) Correct! | |
| So it's. | Missing text. | So it's--so it's MVP of the year! |
| So we're all watching something different. OK | (Pedro) We're all watching something different. | |
| He gets the MVP. | Okay, he gets the MVP. | |
| I'd be better off. | Completely misunderstood music lyrics. | ♪ Happy birthday to you ♪ |
| Oh, you, you guys. | (Matt) You guys. | |
| Let me up here to dove into the opening night against the Hall of Fame. | Merged multiple sentences together. | Just left me up here to die. |
| You left me up here to die against the hall of famer. |
Take a look at the clip. Again, with Adobe's speech-to-text on the top and Aberdeen on the bottom.
In-depth comparison documents that evaluate the captions cell-by-cell are available for download here:
Overall, the quality of the auto-generated captions exceeded expectations, and we found them to be in the top tier of speech-recognition engines available. The timing and punctuation were particularly impressive. However, when doing a true comparison to the captioning work that we would consider acceptable, AI does not meet Aberdeen’s broadcast quality standard.
Aberdeen's post-production Caption Editors are detail-oriented and grammar-savvy and always strive to portray every element of the program with 100% accuracy so that the viewer misses nothing. For our most experienced Caption Editor, it took a 5:1 ratio in time for them to edit and correct the single-speaker clip; meaning, for every minute of video, it took 5 minutes to clean up the transcript and captions. Assuming your team is educated in the proper timing of caption cells, line breaks, and grammar, a 30-minute program may take over 2.5 hours to bring up to standards with a usable transcript. In the second example, the transcript was unusable and would have taken more time to clean up than it did to transcribe from scratch. Double that timeline now.
Consider all of the above when using this service. Do you have the time and resources to train your staff to know how to edit auto-generated captions and get them up to the appropriate standards? How challenging may your content be for the AI? Whenever and however you make the choice, make sure you deliver the best possible experience to your entire audience.
Closed captioning is an essential aspect of modern media consumption, bridging the gap of accessibility and inclusivity for diverse audiences. Yet, despite its widespread use, misconceptions about closed captioning persist. In this article, we delve into the most prevalent myths surrounding this invaluable feature, shedding light on the truth behind closed captioning's capabilities, impact, and indispensable role in enhancing the way we interact with video content.
Let’s debunk these common misunderstandings about closed captioning and gain a fresh perspective on the far-reaching importance of closed captioning in today's digital landscape.
While closed captions are crucial for people with hearing impairments, they benefit a much broader audience. They are also helpful for people learning a new language, those in noisy environments, individuals with attention or cognitive challenges, and viewers who prefer to watch videos silently.
While there are automatic captioning tools, they are not always accurate, especially with complex content, background noise, or accents. Human involvement is often necessary to ensure high-quality and accurate captions.
Some formats, like SCC, support positioning and allow captions to appear in different locations. However, most platforms use standard positioning at the bottom of the screen.
While it's possible to add closed captions after video production, it's more efficient and cost-effective to incorporate captioning during the production process. Integrating captions during editing ensures a seamless viewing experience.
Closed captioning is essential for television and films, but it's also used in various other video content, including online videos, educational videos, social media clips, webinars, and live streams.
Different platforms and devices may have varying requirements for closed caption formats and display styles. To ensure accessibility and optimal viewing experience, captions may need adjustments based on the target platform.
Captioning standards and regulations vary between countries, and it's essential to comply with the specific accessibility laws and guidelines of the target audience's location.
While manual captioning can be time-consuming, there are cost-effective solutions available, including automatic captioning and professional captioning services. Moreover, the benefits of accessibility and broader audience reach often outweigh the investment.
In summary, closed captioning is a vital tool for enhancing accessibility and user experience in videos. Understanding the realities of closed captioning helps ensure that content creators and distributors make informed decisions to improve inclusivity and reach a broader audience.
Earlier this month, a team of Aberdeen caption editors took an educational field trip to the cinema! We were excited to check out Sony’s closed captioning glasses offered at Regal Cinemas. We decided to watch Hillsong’s “Let Hope Rise” documentary.

We were surprised at how easy the process was—you simply need to check that accessibility devices are available for the movie you want to see. After you purchase your tickets, head over to guest services and request the glasses. Unfortunately, there were only 4 pairs of glasses available so we had to share.

The glasses fit like heavy 3-D glasses. They are attached to a small receiver box where you can choose mid, near, or far distance and even change the brightness of the text. (You can also choose different languages if available and there is a headphone output if you desire described audio as well.)

The captions appear in bright green font and “move” on the screen depending on where you look or how you tilt your head (which took a little getting used to). This technology is wonderful for the deaf and hard-of-hearing community and is likely going to encourage these viewers to choose Regal over other theaters. We had a blast evaluating the closed captions as we watched and were all pretty impressed with the movie theater glasses.
The field trip was even more rewarding for our team because of our longstanding relationship with the Hillsong team. The influx of content due to the June 1st Hillsong Channel launch has exposed more of our captioners to their productions and, along the way, created a few more super-fans of their work. They all jumped at the opportunity to check out their new theatrical release.
Here’s the trailer for the documentary...
The Chinese language is one of the oldest continuously used languages in the world and plays a central role in global communication, culture, and media. While often discussed as a single language, “Chinese” actually refers to a family of related spoken varieties that share a common writing system.
Understanding how Chinese works — especially how its writing system differs from alphabetic languages like English — can help clarify why translation, captioning, and accessibility require specialized expertise.
Unlike alphabetic languages, Chinese uses a logographic writing system. Instead of letters representing individual sounds, written Chinese is composed of characters, each of which typically represents a meaningful unit of language known as a morpheme.
Most modern Chinese characters combine:
This means characters are not purely symbolic concepts—they are tied to spoken language, even though they are not alphabet-based.
Written Chinese is closely connected to spoken language, but pronunciation can vary widely across regions.
For example:
This shared writing system is one reason written Chinese enables communication across many dialects, even when spoken forms differ significantly.
Mandarin Chinese is the official standard language of China and the most widely spoken variety worldwide. It is the primary form used in education, broadcasting, and modern written communication.
However, Mandarin is not the only Chinese language. Other widely spoken varieties include:
These varieties can differ substantially in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar, even though they often share the same written characters.
There are two primary sets of Chinese characters in use today:
Simplified characters were introduced in the mid-20th century to improve literacy by reducing the number of strokes in many characters. Traditional characters preserve older, more complex forms.
Both writing systems can represent the same language content and are used across multiple spoken varieties of Chinese.
Because Chinese involves:
effective translation, captioning, and accessibility services must account for:
This is especially important for broadcast media, live events, education, and multilingual accessibility initiatives.
Chinese is not a single, monolithic language, but a rich linguistic ecosystem shaped by history, culture, and regional diversity. Its writing system plays a unique role in connecting speakers across dialects while presenting distinct challenges — and opportunities — for accessibility and communication.
Understanding these fundamentals is essential for anyone working with Chinese-language media in accessibility, translation, and captioning contexts.
Prior to translating your content, it’s important to know your audience. For further guidance on your Chinese translation, Chinese voice-over, or Chinese subtitling project, contact Aberdeen.
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?"
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.
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.
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.
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:
13.25% of the US Hispanic and Latino TV viewership resides in LA, further reinforcing the benefit of adding Spanish captioning on CC3.
| KABC-TV ABC & ABC Family | KCAL-TV Independent |
| KCBS-TV CBS | KCOP-TV MYTV |
| KDOC-TV Independent | KFTR-TV Univision |
| KJLA-TV LATV | KLCS-TV PBS SoCal |
| KMEX-TV Univision | KNBC-TV NBC |
| KOCE-TV PBS | KPXN-TV Ion Television |
| KTBN-TV Trinity Broadcast Network | KTLA-TV CW |
| KTTV-TV Fox | KVEA-TV Telemundo |
| KXLA-TV Independent |
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!"
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 7th 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.
One of the main goals of every producer is to try to reach the maximum amount of viewers every time their program airs. Apart from engaging content, time slots, and targeting the right regions, there is one simple thing EVERY producer can do. In this article, we will discuss why including Spanish captions is so important, how they work, and who is doing it.
First things first: Who is your audience? Perhaps it is as broad as every American across the nation. But do you know who they are? Can they understand your program?
Did you know that according to the United States Census Bureau, the U.S. had the second-largest Hispanic population in the world just behind Mexico [4]? That means there are more Spanish speakers in the U.S. than in Argentina and Spain!
If you live in the United States, you are among 54 million Hispanic people, of whom 38.3 million speak Spanish at home! That is 17% of the entire United States population [4].
And get this… the projected Hispanic population of the United States in 2060 is 128.8 million, which would be 31% of the nation’s population [4]!
Are you taking into consideration this huge audience with your programming? Have you thought about how many more people you could reach with your national TV broadcast, web videos, or DVD sales if you localized your programming with Spanish closed captioning, subtitles, or Spanish voice dubbing? Ministries in the know, like In Touch Ministries, have been doing this for years. Learn from the leaders.
The simple truth is this: By offering captions in various languages, you automatically reach more viewers. Statistically, Spanish is the second most-used language in the United States [1] and there are more Spanish speakers in the U.S. than speakers of Chinese, French, German, Italian, Hawaiian, and the Native American languages combined. Spanish is the best place to start localizing your programming, and there is no faster, more cost-effective way than to utilize CC3.
If you are broadcasting in English, chances are you have already heard or thought about broadcasting Spanish captions. Some of you may already broadcast it via CC2, so why think about using CC3 [2]? Although broadcasting via CC1 and CC2 works well, both of these channels are embedded in field 1. By choosing CC3, which is embedded in field 2, you are able to provide the maximum bandwidth and allow for more accurately timed captions in both languages.
Also, in order to avoid bandwidth problems with early caption decoders [3], the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recommends bilingual programming to be broadcast via CC3. Many Spanish television networks, such as Univision and Telemundo, provide English captions for many of their Spanish programs in CC3. The standard nowadays has become to broadcast the original language’s captions on CC1, and then the alternative language’s captions on CC3.
In the Christian broadcasting industry, many ministries see the value of including Spanish captions. Take In Touch Ministries which has implemented the use of CC3 to offer Spanish captions for their English program, In Touch with Dr. Charles Stanley. This has allowed them to provide high-quality Spanish captions to their viewers across the country, and gain viewership with their message.
Any ministry that is investing to broadcast nationally, should not only be captioning in English but in Spanish too. There is approximately a 20% increase in viewership and you can get Spanish captions for a fraction of the cost you pay to broadcast your programming. The additional cost is minimal and usually discounted when English and Spanish captioning are done in tandem with the same captioning company.
Observe the languages spoken in your community and you’ll find English is most definitely not the only language understood by your neighbors, and it also isn't always the primary language of your national viewers. Give Spanish captioning a try!
If you have any questions regarding Spanish captioning via CC3 or would like to see what it would cost to add Spanish captions to your video programming, contact us.
More astounding facts about the Hispanic population in the U.S. can be found here: United States Census Bureau.
Sources:
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_language_in_the_United_States
[2] http://www.captionsinc.com/what.asp
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_captioning
[4] http://www.census.gov/newsroom/facts-for-features/2014/cb14-ff22.html

If you've ever watched an old noir film—the ones where the troubled narrator rambles on about his dire circumstances in worried existential grief—then you’re probably familiar with voice-over. Employed through various ways in cinema, for which it’s garnered iconic in pop culture today, the technique actually has a more common, practical use in day-to-day news and radio.
When an interviewee speaks a foreign language, production companies typically use voice actors to record over the original audio. This way, the viewer hears the interviewee in the background speaking his or her language, while the voice actor interprets. In most cases, the volume of the voice actor is much louder and lags seconds behind the original audio track. This voice-over technique is useful because it allows the viewer to both hear and understand the speaker’s words at the same time. This is typically referred to as UN-Style voice-over.
Another audiovisual process is called dubbing. Not to be confused with the electronic music genre (yes, that one), dubbing is when all the elements of sound are mixed including the original production track with any additional recordings; joined together, they make a complete soundtrack. In the video production world, the phrase “dubbing” is used when the original speaker’s audio track is replaced entirely by the voice actor’s. Contrary to voice-over (UN-Style), which preserves the original track underneath the voice actor, the dub must be carefully timed and synchronized to match the speaker’s lips, meaning, and even intonations. To be more specific, this is often referred to as lip-sync dubbing. As imagined, this process is arduous and lengthy; oftentimes, the voice actor is required to work with editors in a studio re-recording segments where the audio and visuals struggle to match.
Looking for someone to do your voice-over/dubbing work? Aberdeen wants to take care of it for you! For more information, please visit: AberLingo Language Services.