Suggestions for Captioning service

PeterWright wrote on 6/8/2005, 12:20 AM
One of my clients, a deaf education service, wants to begin a caption adding service and is asking me how to go about this. They will probably be mostly starting with VHS and putting out DVDs, possibly with optional subtitles, but possibly with open captions.

They think they will employ an individual to run this service, including making their own transcripts of supplied material.
I have described how it is possible with Vegas/DVDA - with the help of multiple instances and/or overnight rendering I can imagine a fairly good workflow with Vegas/DVDA, but I am wondering if this is the most cost effective way - maybe there are hardware solutions which would be better value.

Any suggestions?

Peter

Comments

Grazie wrote on 6/8/2005, 12:39 AM
This is scary! I was talking about this as an option for a client about 12 hours ago!

Peter, alhtough on the other side of the planet, this could take off. I guess there're agencies doing this in loads of places in Europe and the UK. Were you thinking of obtaing a model of best rpactice or what? It all makes good sense.

I often played with idea of "speaking" in text - "Dragon Dictate" or the IBM thing . .
PeterWright wrote on 6/8/2005, 2:32 AM
Small world Grazie!

Well, I've already given the client a list of "best practice" workflow using Vegas & DVDA - I just didn't want to mislead them if this wasn't the most efficient way.

There is a "non-profit" place in Canberra that offers this service - but the job I did through them worked out so expensive that I've done my own since then. First they charged me $200 to transfer my Master tape to Digital Betacam for their titling machine, then it was $30 per minute of finished program, and that was 6 years ago.

Since then I think software may have become a viable alternative. As far as transcribing is concerned, I've heard that although potentially a good idea, voice recognition software such as Dragon can have so many errors that a good audio typist is a better bet, especially with a video program with all sorts of voices and levels.
farss wrote on 6/8/2005, 2:56 AM
Peter,
that "non-profit" place holds an absolute monopoly on captioning in this country and one that I'm told they'll do anything to protect. You should be fine so long as you're not doing captioning for anything that goes to air.
Bob.
PeterWright wrote on 6/8/2005, 5:35 AM
A restrictive trade practice in free Oz? Surely not!
farss wrote on 6/8/2005, 6:29 AM
Oh, very much so. Bit of a wolf in sheeps clothing too. I believe the legislation goes back to Frazer, who I'm told holds a financial interst in said 'non profit' organisation. There also seems to be some tie in with the suppliers of the CC systems.
People I'd spoken to wanted to start up a competitive operation using a more advanced system but I was 'advised' not to get involved.
Bob.