How Do I Add Closed Captioning?

[Debe]

http://www.captionmax.com

Captioning is an art and a science. If you’re not experienced in it, it’s also a huge time-suck.

Check out Captionmax. They have offices all over the country.

debe

(for the record, Max used to be my boss when he was VP of Post Production at a large facility while he was getting CaptionMax off the ground. I do not work for CaptionMax, nor do I receive any consideration. He’s just a really nice guy! I mention them because they are very good at what they do and their service is impeccable!)

[Brian Mills]

Thank you for the reference, Debe, and I have already emailed a rate request. How about if I try to do it in-house? Does anyone have any ballpark numbers at the cost of plugins/time involved so I can weigh my options? I found one plugin called MacCaption that costs $4000! Has anyone tried it or has other sugestions? Thanks.

Brian Mills
Videographer

[Dan Riley]

Debe,

After you get the file from them, how do you take that file
and put it into your DigiBeta master? That’s the thing
I don’t see explained at their site.
Yes, I know THEY can do it. But I just want to know
what’s involved.

We do shows every month that have to
go through the CC process. The dub house has it handled.
(where they make dub masters with 800#s).
But I’d like to see what’s involved in doing it ourselves.
Mainly as a time saver. The dub house always needs
the show two or three days early to do the CC.

Thanks,
Dan

[Debe]

The producers I know always get a new DigiBeta master. They provide their own stock and don’t pay markup.

I don’t know how you’d take their file and put it on line 21 yourself. You’d need at the very least a waveform monitor to check to make sure you’re on line 21…When I was on staff, I “emergency captioned” a program for Max when one of his machines was down using a Grass Valley 1200 switcher and a Sony DME-3000 DVE mastering to DigiBeta. I don’t recall how we got the signal…it was over 10 years ago! But I’m sure with the right gear, it can be done.

It might be worth a phone call. I know several of the people in the local office here who’d be happy to answer all sorts of questions. I’m not familiar with anyone in the LA office, other than Max when he’s there!

They really are open to doing whatever they can do to help you get what you need. At least all the people I know are very helpful, very knowledgeable, and understanding of the fact that lots of folks don’t quite understand the process. (I’m not insinuating you, specifically, don’t. Even though I’ve been familiar with the concept since 1992, there were plenty of things I didn’t grasp until I talked with one of their sales reps last year to get specific info for a client. Neil spent the better part of an hour walking me though the process and explaining how things would work best for the specific need my client had.)

I know they supply the digital file for DVD captioning. If that’s something that can be used in FCP, I’m sure they’d be happy to supply it to you for making your own masters. They don’t make their money on the dubbing/mastering. They make their money being the best of caption-ers, paying very close attention to all the audio in the program, not just the spoken words. That’s the part that’s art! The descriptive nature of captioning.

Just go ahead and call the office nearest you! There are some needs that are just different enough that are either too new to have been addressed yet, or are too unique to be singled out on the website. Or it could be a whole new angle to the business that they haven’t fully explored yet. If there’s one thing I know about Max, he loves learning new things and new ways to provide his clients with the things they need!

debe

[Dan Riley]

Thanks Debe.
Since I posted I did some googling and learned a few things.
There seems to be a need for some kind of plug in or whatever,
for FCP, that would take the finished file the caption people make,
and put it on line 21 of the sequence when you edit to tape.
I don’t see anything like that out there.
In DVCSP there seems to be a process for this when making
a DVD, but not when outputting to tape.

With all broadcast and cable shows now mandated to have
CC beginning Jan 1, you’d think someone would see this
as a business opportunity. The only encoder I see is $5000.
Of course that’s absurd unless you are doing it as a business.
I wonder what makes the process so complicated.
If someone would make a Plugin for FCP, a filter, I could just
drop on my sequence, that would be the ticket.
Then I’d just take the file from CaptionMax (or whoever)
and add it in there.

Dan

[Debe]

Might be a good question for Graeme Nattress or Klaus Eperlie, or any of the other filter-making men!

You’re absolutely right, danrw, you’d think with a date looming such as it is, someone would’ve jumped on this bandwagon!

Perhaps when I get a break, I’ll see if Neil is in and has any thoughts! I just don’t know if I’ll get a break today….

debe

[Mark Maness]

Here’s a cost effective solution to your captioning problem. Check out http://www.cpcweb.com and look at MacCaption NLE. Its a stand-alone software solution that captions your quicktime files and then you can export the caption only track and import it into FCP and render your timeline to a complete program with captioning to be output using your favorite capture card like the AJA Kona2. It works with everything since FCP can pass caption information in a timeline. Give it a look see.

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions

[Dan Riley]

You think $2000 is cost effective?
This process can’t possibly be that complicated.
Making the actual text file…, now that seems like a big
time commitment. So just have that process done
at the CC house. But I want a file I can then add to
show revisions without having to go through the
CC process every time at the dub house.

Dan

[Dan Riley]

actually, I read the price sheet wrong.
It’s $3000.
MacCaption -NLE/MPEG Lite (encoding only)

This is not a cost effective solution.

Dan

[Mark Maness]

Well… you have to add up the amount of captioning you are going to have to do this year and total it up. Then check on the rates of captioning and compare those. We do about 39 shows a year, so $3000 is pretty cheap compared to 39 x $300 which is about just under $12,000. If you only do a couple a year, then a captioning company would be your best bet.

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions