CC-it's the law - Closed Captioning Services by Caption Depot

Closed Captions for Web Videos – It’s the Law

Sample Webcast videos(YouTube, HTML5, VTT, QuickTime, Flash, WMV etc.)

Web Formats that support Closed Captioning

On Friday, October 8, 2010, the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 was signed into law by President Barack Obama. This new law expands the requirements for web video captioning and accessibility services. More specifically, it requires that any closed captioned television program be closed captioned when delivered over the Internet. The law also requires all devices capable of displaying video to be able to display closed captions.

Watch Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA) comment on the passing of his bill (CC).

View Sample Web Videos with Closed Captions Created by Caption Depot

Let the experts Closed Caption your next web video
Caption Depot makes closed captioning software that lets you do all of your closed captioning in-house, but we also can closed caption your project as a service. If you’re on a strict deadline or just need a helping hand, Caption Depot service is here to handle all your closed captioning needs. For costs, click on rates.

WEB FORMATS with Closed Captions

YouTube Closed Captioning
It is easier than ever to caption web videos through YouTube. Not only does YouTube have a speech recognition engine to help transcribe your video, but also an automatic time stamping tool to synchronize an already existing script. If you need the transcription to be perfect it is best to type it out manually in a word processor and upload a .txt file alongside your video to YouTube. This will result in accurate captioning text. However, there are times when you may have a closed captioning file or tape that already has captions but needs to converted to a video that can be uploaded to YouTube.

Mobile Devices Closed Captioning
The iPhone, iPod, and iPads are by far the most common players for portable video and music media. The Apple devices also support closed captioning in video files hosted on your website. MacCaption software can encode closed caption tracks into QuickTime videos with any pixel resolution. The closed captions can be extracted from a broadcast tape or file, converted from other caption formats, or even created from scratch. Simply add the captions to your existing video files with MacCaption.

iTunes Closed Captioning
iTunes software for Mac and Windows now has the ability to display closed captioning for iTunes videos, including video podcasts and iTunes U. All you have to do is add closed captions to a QuickTime .mov or .m4v file. The closed captioning in these iTunes files are called closed caption tracks for QuickTime. MacCaption can create this CC track quickly and easily by embedding them from any caption document or already captioned video into the QuickTime .mov without re-compression or generation loss. Take existing video podcast archives that you are hosting and add CC to them using MacCaption’s batch processing.

Flash Closed Captioning
Adobe CS5, Flex, Flow Player, JW Player, Hulu, and Captionate plug-in support closed captioning files for the web. Flash video is like a sea of different custom video players. There are a variety of caption file formats that Flash video can support. They include .srt, DFXP Timed Text .xml, SAMI .smi, Captionate .xml, and embedded .FLV with captions.

Windows Media Closed Captioning
If you are delivery captioning content to an all-Windows audience then Windows Media closed captioning could be the most compatible option. Windows Media can read the captioning either from a separate SAMI (.smi) file or from an embedded .WMV file with captioning.

WORKFLOWS for Web Closed Captions

Preparing your captioned video for the web
TV broadcast producers now need a way to get their videos that were closed captioned for broadcast onto the web without losing the captions. Our software can easily handle any situation. It can extract and convert closed captions to any required format. If a frame rate or time code change is needed, it has all the necessary tools to easily adjust the closed caption data. Typically this also involves editing the video to remove commercial breaks or shorten the duration. Caption Depot’s closed captioning software can make use of an edit decision list (EDL) from your editing system to automatically conform the original captions to the new web version.

Batch Processing of Closed Captioning
Because TV broadcast producers have been closed captioning video for over 20 years, there are large archives of closed caption files and videos in many different formats. Entire video tape libraries exist with old closed captioned programming that needs to be uploaded to the web with the captions intact. Our software can take entire archives of video and caption files and batch process them for web delivery.

Tape to Web Closed Captioning
Last year Final Cut Pro 7 was introduced by Apple, including a new feature that provides professional video producers an elegant and versatile closed captioning workflow. With Final Cut Pro 7, a Mac user can capture their closed captioned tapes into the QuickTime format without losing the important captioning information. MacCaption software can convert this QuickTime captioning into any other captioning file for the web, including Flash, iTunes, QuickTime, YouTube, and Windows Media.

TV to Web Closed Captioning
There are many devices for watching DTV (on air or cable) broadcasts using your computer. What is critical to viewers who need accessibility is that the closed captioning data can also be viewed and recorded live to a hard drive. Broadcasters who need to post clips to the web now have a simple solution. Our software can extract the closed captions from the live recording and convert them to any other closed captioning file, including Flash, iTunes, QuickTime, YouTube, and Windows Media.

Video files to Web Closed Captioning
There are many different kinds of video files used in the professional editing and broadcast world. MXF, MPEG-2, DV25, DVCPRO HD, QuickTime ProRes, Line-21 VBI, Avid AAF can all have closed captions in one form or another. Our software can batch process or manually extract closed captioning from virtually any video file or format, and easily convert it to any web friendly format.

Create from Closed Captioning for the Web from Scratch
To caption a video for the web, a few ingredients are needed: a transcript of the video, the actual video file, and closed captioning software to format and synchronize the text with the video. There are many tools that can help this process become quick and easy. MacCaption and CaptionMaker, the software we use, are optimized for professional captioning workflows that require speed and flexibility. Once the captioning project is finished inside our software, there are a variety of export options for compatibility with any kind of video.