[Jason Livingston]

Line 21 is part of the analog SD world and doesn’t apply to HD.

Right now there are really only 2 options for HD captioning:

1) If you have a Matrox MXO2, then many caption providers can generate a “Matrox 4VANC” file which is similar to a black movie, but works for both HD and SD (all formats). The caption company (using CPC’s MacCaption-HD software) can e-mail you a caption track, which drops right into your Final Cut Pro timeline with no rendering required. The MXO2 internally converts this track into HD and SD closed captions for output to tape. (If you had the MacCaption software, you could do it all in house. For 13 shows you would more than break even on the cost of the software.)

2) If for some reason you can’t get or use a Matrox MXO2, then your only choice is to master to tape, mail the tape to a caption service company (one which has dual HDCAM decks), have them run it through a HD hardware encoder to a record deck (incurring generation loss), and mail a tape back to you. These systems are very expensive so the costs are very high.

Jason Livingston
CPC

[Jason Livingston]

Could it be that just the one 100ft cable you tried happens to be bad?

Make sure that your cable isn’t running parallel to any AC electrical cables or conduits, because the cable can pick up stray current by induction. It could also be a grounding problem.

A quick & dirty solution might be to set up an ethernet switch (not a hub) in the middle of the 100ft run and use 2 50ft cables instead, which will help to re-generate the signal. They’re often on sale for $10-20.

Jason Livingston
CPC

[Jason Livingston]

Hi Aaron,
If you are talking about uncompressed HD over HD-SDI, then the captions are in the VANC on line 9. But unlike SD formats, which store the extra lines as part of the image, compressed HD formats (e.g. HDCAM, XDCAM HD, DVCPRO-HD, etc.) store the VANC lines (including captions) as metadata packets. Each format uses a totally different workaround to stuff the caption packets somewhere in the bitstream, which is why HD captioning is so hard. (There are also many HD formats which don’t support closed captioning at all, such as XDCAM EX, HDV, AVCHD, etc.)

Right now, the only I/O device which can preserve HD captions on HD-SDI capture and playback is the Matrox MXO2.

If you have an MXO2 you can capture captions as a separate “Matrox 4VANC” track and re-use that track in any sequence. It even works during up/down/cross conversion, so you can play the same HD track out to HD-SDI and analog SD simultaneously and both will have captions. If you also want to edit, re-purpose (e.g. re-use the same captions for your DVD or web projects), or create captions from scratch, the MXO2 workflow is supported by CPC’s MacCaption software for closed captioning.

You might want to take a look at this page for more information: https://www.cpcweb.com/hdtv/

Hope this helps,
Jason
CPC

[Jason Livingston]

Hi Alan,
Your timeline MUST be 720x486, 29.97fps, Upper field first. No other setting will work for adding line 21 closed captioning. The line 21 data must go into those extra 6 lines, otherwise it will not end up in the right place for the CC decoders to recognize it.

If you have run the CPC black movie calibration video ( https://cpcweb.com/blackmovie/ ), you should have gotten the row & column settings which are compatible for your particular hardware. If the black movie was made using different row & column settings, it will have to be re-exported by the captioner with the correct settings.

You can put 720×480 video onto a 720×486 timeline, but the timeline itself MUST be 720x486.

[Jason Livingston]

Hello Thompson Coles,
I work for CPC, the company which makes MacCaption.

The XDCAM closed captions export feature is currently in beta and not part of our release version. The beta is offered for download to our customers who want to help us test new features, but we do not support them until they are officially released.

We are aware that there may be some issues with XDCAM exporting in the beta, and we are actively working directly with Sony’s engineers to resolve these issues ASAP. Once the issues are resolved, the XDCAM feature will be added to the next official release version.

If you have any other questions please visit our website or give us a call.

Thank you.