CPC Closed Captioning Help

[Alan Hunter]

You would think that with all the money you spent on that product they would at least offer some kind of training.

[Danny Jackson]

You got it all wrong, Golf Guy. I spent very little on this software, purchasing it from a company getting out of the business. In fact, less than 2K on software and hardware totaling more than 8K. So I made out pretty good.

CPC does have a very good tutorial manual. But time is of the essence for me in that I need product closed captioned by next week. The good news is that I farmed out the first couple of episodes of our program to a closed captioning company giving me time to learn the CPC software on my own.

I just thought with a post on Creative Cow that someone might jump on this and would like to make some real easy extra money. And this is the only response I get? Very disappointing.

But life goes on. Happy Holidays!

Danny Jackson

Danny Jackson, Producer
Ronnie Kovach’s FISHING VENTURES
FSN West

[Alan Hunter]

Danny,

What sort of issues are you having? We too must comply with the FCC mandate regarding closed caption. However, we ware using a “newsroom” based software product together with an enocder to do this. One of the issues we have is that we ship out multiple tapes per week to different sections of the country and relying on a software-based option would have added up to 12 additional hours on labor to the production. This way with our software we use one rundown, and treat it like someone running a prompter during a newscast. We script everything anyway, so this made the most logical sense.

[Danny Jackson]

Actually I have made much progress. The main issue was simply just getting started. I actually got a return phone call yesterday from a techie at CPC in Maryland. He guided me through some of the first steps and I am well on my way.

We were with The Outdoor Channel for 6 years. We farmed out all of our closed captioning in those days. We have been with FOX Sports the last year but no closed captioning was necessary. But of course that changes on January 1, 2006.

I only have one BetaSP tape to close caption and send to FOX each week in Houston. They cue it up there.

Yes, this close captioning thing can get to be real expensive for producers. I am really a one man band here. I shoot and edit about 90% of our programming. When I saw the chance to purchase the closed captioning software/hardware very inexpensively, I jumped on it. And glad I did. Now that captioning money from my EP goes straight to me. Nice.

Anyway…. the CPC software is awesome. It is really overkill for what I am doing. It will accomplish many things that I don’t need. But like I say I made much progress yesterday and am now captioning our next episode.

Thanks for your response. I appreciate it. BTW…. what is your name? I know it’s no Golf Guy… lol

Take care and Merry Christmas.

Danny

Danny Jackson, Producer
Ronnie Kovach’s FISHING VENTURES
FSN West

[Alan Hunter]

Danny,

Glad to hear things are working out for you. Yes, we too send a tape every week to Houston, but we also send one to Chicago and out to Cali. So you can see the software only route made no sense to us. And since we script almost everything its nice to have some newsroom software to work with. I almost feel like I’m working back in…no I don’t want to go there! Anyway, we’ll be burning the midnight oil next week, hoping to have an encoder in house before the end of the week.

Merry Christmas,

Golf Guy