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Help with closed captioning – Avid and BetaSP
Hello,
I am trying to find out if it is at least possible for me to add CC. I use Avid Xpress OS X and will be recording to Beta SP (PVW-2800). After searching here and the world wide interweb and pulling out what little hair I have left I broke down and called Avid, which was about as helpful as asking a brick wall.
I want to digitize show, add captioning, record captioned show to Beta SP. Using Avid Xpress Pro (Mojo) with OS X. Is this possible?
If it’s not possible what is needed to CC? I know a service I can use, but would like to know how to do it myself.(curses FCC)
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4 Replies
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Closed captions are cued using the master’s timecode. This is done with specialized software to time stamp each caption and create a file. That file drives a hardware encoder to insert the CC data on line 21 as your master is copied to a new CC master.
All hardware encoders are not created equal. This is a dupe, so if you are mastering to Beta SP, make sure the encoder can use y, pb, pr component video rather than composite. We try to stick with Digital Betacam & digital encoders so as not to take the analog hit.
If you are making a DVD, you will need to create a .scc file file for the DVD authoring system. Be aware that very few DVD authoring packages support line 21 closed captioning.
Besides the technical part, there is some skill in determining where the captions are on the screen, font, color, and describing non-spoken sounds, according to accepted practices for CC.
Because this is all very time-intensive, we use an outside service.
I hope this is helpful.Mike Brown
Video/Film Producer
American Heart Association -
I have not yet played with it myself, but there’s an all-software solution that’s a plug-in for NLE systems called CCaption by leapfrog.
Typically, we have a live transcriptionist listen over a phone line and type the captions live via a second phone line to a hardware encoder to amke a captioned master.
I had always thought that the captioning on line 22 gets lost when analog video gets digitized, but this article of faith turned out not to be immutable; I.E. I used a Discrete Edit with a MADRAS to capture the analog captioned betacam tape, was able to re-edit on the timeline, and output the new master to a VHS which retained the captioning. I imagine in one or two places, where I had made cuts, the caption was momentarily disrupted a little bit, but was still useable.
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Hi Mark!
Yes, our edit* T2K preserved CC. We’ve moved to Adrenaline, but it too retains the info. I’ve re-edited many projects while preserving CC. I put the old clip behind the new material and do a tiny crop at the top on to reveal the CC.
This is all in the Beta SP / Dig Beta world. I don’t think it works with the DV flavors.Mike Brown
Video/Film Producer
American Heart Association -
did you ever find out how to creat CC for the avid?
i’m on an adrenaline media copmposer, and i hear rumors about using the meta data to do the CC, but i can’t figure it out and avid says you can’t do it.thanks for your help.
Wilky Black
wblack@gforcemarketinginc.com
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