Captioning in General

Types of Captions

Captioning allows users who are deaf or hard-of-hearing, those who speak another language, and people with low literacy levels to read the audio portion of a multimedia presentation as text displayed on the screen.

Closed-captions

In order to make closed-captions viewable the user must activate the function. Though the law mandates closed-captioning for almost all television programs and home movies, no regulations currently impact closed-captioning on the web. However, certain programs such as RealPlayer and QuickTime support them.

Open-captions

Open-captions remain viewable to all users at all times. Open-captions benefit from needing no specific supporting program since they embed directly into the video. However, users who do not require them cannot remove open-captions, which might become annoying. Open-captions also require directly editing the visual track. If a developer would rather use closed-captioning in your multimedia presentation, then they must provide a link to download the appropriate plug-in. Occasionally, developers also choose to include both a captioned and non-captioned version of your presentation.

Bonus for Captions

Captioning not only makes video accessible for some, but more useful for everyone:

Multiple sensory modalities
Learning, education, learning disorders & cognitive impairments
Gym, club, ESL or learning languages

When creating accessible video, it is necessary to have a transcript of the audio and then synchronize this transcript with what is currently happening in the video. This process is called captioning and requires some kind of video editing software to make it happen. Most video editing software that has captioning capabilities usually behave similarly:

It generally starts with loading a video and possibly the transcript into a project file, which provides organization for your files and the software settings; there is usually one project file per video.
While the video is playing you will be inserting timestamps (sometimes called markers or commands) into the video to determine when what text of the transcript should appear on the screen. Timestamps are usually inserted at the beginning of each sentence (as it is being spoken or happening on the screen) by using a certain key or selecting a button in the software.

Note: It is usually best to have a print-out of the transcript to follow along with as the video is playing.

Software For Captioning Video

How do you know which video editing software to use for captioning? It depends on your needs and the video editing software utilized. The video editing package we will discuss in this module is MAGPie, a free software which can meet the needs presented throughout the module. However, other options exist, though they can be very pricy. Among these are Adobe Premier, and others.

Media Access Generator (MAGPie) was designed specifically to add captions to video and offers the time-saving benefit of loading captioning from a file into the project.

Hardware in Video Production

Beyond the video editing software for captioning, video production requires a player and a video server; these technologies must be considered in the decision of which video editing software to use. The two most common technologies used in video production, Windows© and Real©, offer varying benefits and drawbacks:

Windows© technology can be "free" since the player, video server, and video editing software (Windows Media On-Demand Producer) are available with the Windows operating system.
Real© technology offers a free RealOne player but requires the purchase of a video server license and usually some kind of video editing software.

Note: MAGPie is a free video editing software that can handle several different file types, but it cannot work with the Windows streaming video format of a .ASF file.

Consideration must also be given to the computer that supports and interacts with the video editing software. The general rule for a computer to support video production is: "the faster, the better". Most computers sold today come equipped with multimedia capabilities, such as video capture through "firewire", that are more than adequate for doing captioning.

General guidelines for a computer to support video production are:

Minimum 200 Mhz (Megahertz) processor; the higher the number of Mhz, the less time taken in converting files.
Video card with a minimum of 32 MB (megabytes) of random access memory (RAM) and support for DirectX (if you are working in Windows).

Note: If planning to capture video from a video camera, look into a video capture card which can be used as an all-in-one video card and also has 3D support.
Sound card that has the ability to record voice and output digital audio (which most do).
Minimum 1 GB (gigabyte) hard drive to store the space-consuming video files.
Monitor with 15 inches or more of viewable screen.
Network card to transfer files over the network.

Note: Another way to transfer files would be to write them to a compact disc (CD) using a CD writer.

The next page provides information on the features, requirements, and installation of a video editing software that can be used for captioning video, Windows Media On-Demand Producer (WMODP).

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