Closed Captioning for Broadcast:

Fleshpainter wrote on 7/22/2004, 3:59 AM
Spent the afternoon at a local FOX Network affiliate, they said the FCC is mandating that closed captioning be used on progressively higher percentages of airtime and eventually will be 100%. This includes local low budget paid programing mom & pop type advertisers. Vegas explaines how to include CC in Windows Media but doesn't mention anything about inserting it into NTSC AVI MiniDV tape. This leads me to ask if this is technically possible at all. The tech people at the station are still new with all this, and explained how they have been doing it with their own news and other internal programing, but they are under the impression that small time shmucks need to have it included in their MiniDV tape that they bring in which is simply placed into a ProDV adaptor. They weren't snotty about it or anything like that, and they didn't actually call us shmucks to our faces while we were in the same room with them but they seemed somewhat concerned that they were going to start running into this more frequently in the future and needed to establish some kind of protocal now. They said that they could make a second copy of our tape and do the insertion themselves on their own system but I could see their point at how much it would cost the client to have the station do it for them. So the question is: can Vegas insert Closed Captioning into NTSC AVI MiniDV tape for broadcast?

Comments

ScottW wrote on 7/22/2004, 5:34 AM
You can get software that does this; one place is: http://www.ccaption.com/

Google suggested lots of other sites that I didn't look at.

I've not tried it, but it looks like framserving the AVI from the T/L in Vegas might work and then do a PTT. They do have a free download to play with.

Oh, be sure to have an oxygen bottle handy before you check out the pricing.

--Scott
farss wrote on 7/22/2004, 5:50 AM
The work in Australia is done by auscap, they do pretty well everything that isn't already CCed and I notice all the programs from US seem to use about 2 CC companies.
CC is a bit more involved than subtitles as you can define both the position and the color of the text, I suspect you can even control the font size. CC data is inserted into the teletext stream on page 801 and I THINK the standard is MHEG but I could be way off there.
I'm far from certain that DV25 supports CC in any form, probably only things like DigiBetacam. I could find out for certain but your main issue is going to be getting the software and actually doing the work which may involve a fair bit.
I just checked out www.auscap.com.au but all aimed at marketing their captioning.
Really quite interested myself as it took a lot of work and expense for me to end up with a system where we could not only watch the CCs but also record them burnt in so let us know what you find out.

Bob.
Jay Gladwell wrote on 7/22/2004, 7:11 AM
So they are keeping this to themselves. Before too long, someone will come up with a free-standing version we can buy and use ourselves. I can wait.

Jay
johnmeyer wrote on 7/22/2004, 9:26 AM
Vegas does not do this, nor does it do anything with any of the other line 21 VBI information. It also doesn't do anything with the date/time stamp information that is part of DV.

As a video editor, I view it as my God-given right to have access to every bit of information (literally and figuratively) that is contained on either analog video or DV tape. I find it frustrating that Vegas -- now at version 5 -- stil doesn't provide this access. I wrote a business plan six years ago about all the things that could be done by giving the user total access to the VBI information -- everything from automated transcripts (for video already containing text data) to production notes (there are all sorts of things that can be added to the VBI besides CC).

I hope Sony considers this for future releases.
Jsnkc wrote on 7/22/2004, 9:53 AM
One other point to mention....MiniDV can't carry closed captioning data so you would need to use another format if you want to CC your masters. The only way to do it on a MiniDV tape is to use a DVCAM deck to record the DVCAM signal on a MiniDV tape, then you can have captioning.

This is the system we use for captioning for video's DVD's and Subtitles, it has worked great for us! We have the CPC-700 with Time Code.

http://www.cpcweb.com/Captioning/cap_how_software_works.htm

johnmeyer wrote on 7/22/2004, 10:29 AM
MiniDV can't carry closed captioning data

That is simply not true. Just to make sure I am not talking through my hat, I just captured 30 seconds off the air from CNN to my old Sony TRV-11 NTSC DV camcorder. I played this video back, from the DV tape, via the composite video (RCA jack) input into my monitor. I turned on closed captioning, and up came the captions.
Former user wrote on 7/22/2004, 11:08 AM
This website talks about some captioning programs and DV

http://www.ccaption.com/nccfaq.shtml