[John Calhoun]

Thanks Greg, I’ll give it a shot 🙂

Editor/Director of Production of “The Zone”.
direct tv, channel #378 NRB network, 11pm Sat. nites.
surfthezone.com
myspace.com/zonetv

Dual 2GB G5, 4GB RAM, AJA IO LA, HUGE 1.25TB U320-R.

“Love God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength, and your neighbor as yourself.” Luke 10:25

[John Calhoun]

Thanks Todd, that’s good advice. They are paying the rate soooo, yeah. I’ll just hang in there …

[John Calhoun]

I hear that Flash video is the way to go. Most browsers can playback Flash, so for playback on the most machines, use a Flash encoder like On2 or cleaner.

pxlmvr

[John Calhoun]

Ya know, I heard years ago, that there are a high percentage of editors who happen to be drummers. I’d always wanted to play since I was young, but didn’t actually start playing till I was 40. We all know that editing requires a keen sense of rhythm; so, how many here hit the skins?

[John Calhoun]

We’ve used Aberdeen until recently with good results.

We send them our timecoded tape which they use as reference for creation of the captioning. They use their software to create the encoding. The file they provide is a just a black screen with the little encoding lines at the top (these lines can be seen on a production monitor set to overscan). This can be e-mailed as a QT file. You merely overlay this file over your video and crop the bottom to 97, which leaves the few scan lines at the top. When the video is played back, if the video is viewed on a TV which supports CC, (running a BNC to RCA to your TV’s input) then the CC is seen over the video. You then master as usual to Beta.

If you need a DV master, either need to have your service make it or use MacCaption for encoding into the DV vaux data area. This is different than the encoding for analog which is merely a part of your video signal. CC is view during playback through your analog outputs of your DV deck.

A faster way to recieve your files if you don’t need a DV master is to create a QT file of your program and e-mail it to your captioning service. They can then use this to create your captioning; this saves postage.

Hope this helps clarify captioning.

pxlmvr

p.s. We now use Atlantic Coast Communications (ACC). They are cheaper than Aberdeen and provide a more detailed caption. (i.e. references to sound effects, music, singing, etc.)

[John Calhoun]

When you say ‘it isn’t working’, what do you mean? Are you trying to view the CC on your production monitor? If so, then you won’t be able to see the CC since most production monitors don’t support this. Overlaying the CC encoding does give you CC; you just have to output your video to a consumer TV which supports CC to view it. We’ve run composite video out of our IO LA to a TV or out of our Beta deck to a TV to view captions. Of course, captioning has to be turned on, on the consumer TV.

Also, your sequence has to be initially set to 720×486 before overlaying your CC QT.

pxlmvr

p.s. Aberdeen is a closed captioning service.

[John Calhoun]

Usually mixing down the audio has worked for me without exporting video and such.

pxlmvr

[John Calhoun]

FCP does digitize line 21. This is just another part of the video signal. You can check for the CC encoding on an underscan monitor. Digitize the video, insert your commercial in FCP and layback to tape. Check CC encoding on a TV.

pxlmvr

[John Calhoun]

I’ve used cleaner in the past to convert to .aiff

pxlmvr

[John Calhoun]

Are you sure that all of the footage is on the raid? Often, when I’ve had to trash preferences, the scratch disks will get reverted to the internal computer hard drive. I’ve accidently digitized to the computer drive.

pxlmvr