We keep the captions on quite a bit for movies and television series so that we won’t miss anything. Lately they have become really garbled. Is it possible that this is due to a problem with the cable box?
Did anyone have captions on during The Sopranos Sunday night? This was an example of chunks of words missing, words mashed together, and words totally misspelled. If your captions were normal, I would like to know.
Thanks!
Shows that are “pre-packaged” like The Sopranos usually have high quality closed captioning. I would expect you are likely having a technical issue.
On the other hand, live shows like news programs have someone typing “on the fly” and can be quite humorous to read at times…
A weak or noisy signal, either from your cable provider, or within the house, can cause interference with the captions, often long before the sound and picture are noticably degraded. One quick check would be to make sure the fittings in and out of your cable box are tight.
Why would a weak signal affect the caption stream but not the sound and picture quality?
I’m curious about any answer to this question because I work at a subtitling/captioning company and am familiar with the QC process our files undergo. I’m unfamiliar with the technical aspects of captioning technology, though, and I’d be interested in how a weak signal can cause the problems Zoe described.
Because caption text is encoded in binary and one bit out of place[sup]*[/sup] can make an entirely different letter of the alphabet. Sound and picture quality will degrade more gracefully, perhaps just a bit of noise, slight blurring or muffled sound.
*there is probably some error correction mechanism but a bad enough signal will swamp this
Slight hijack, but another CC problem I’ve noticed besides garbled text is that, when a commercial comes on, the last line of CC text from the program will sometimes linger on the screen for anywhere from half a commercial to two full commercials. Would this be signal-related as well?
May I continue the hijack? I’ve noticed that on some American networks, somewhat garbled closed captions will suddenly come on while I’m watching a show. As described above, they hang there and won’t disappear, even during commercials. Bonus: They’re in Spanish. And no, I haven’t set my TV set or cable box to display them. What’s triggering their appearance and how can I get rid of them?
This is true on analog television channels, where captions are embedded in the VBI (vertical blanking interval) of the television signal. All kinds of things can mess up these captions. I remember a story of a show that the captions messed up because of the pattern of the curtains in the video stream. But with digital television (cable or antenna), everything is binary and a weak signal becomes an all or nothing proposal (either you get the channel or you don’t).
As for the lingering last caption on commercials, I am pretty sure this is part of the closed captioning specification (EIA-608). You leave it up there until told to clear it or something takes its place. But I will have to double check.
And XNYLDER, that sounds like either your TV or cable box has captions turned on inadvertently or is buggy.
I definitely blame bugginess, because it only shows up on certain stations and is completely inconsistent. I’m just contemplating the “why” of the bugginess… My mind is looking for a reason behind the behavior, though of course there might not be any reason at all. 
Interesting. Thanks to you both.
Related note: CC for news and other live programs is usually done by court stenographers. A computer program will take their shorthand and edit common sounds and such and translate that into what it thinks is intended. Normally, stenographers take these notes and revise them before they are final court notes, but with CC, the only edits are by the software, so all sorts of funny translations happen. Gets funny with proper names and the occassional steno error to compound it. Homonyms don’t help.
I was watching the news while on the treadmill at the gym today. The phrase “ab duck tore” came across the CC. Took me a moment to figure out that they were talking about a kidnapping (ab duck tore = abductor).
I also saw a sports segment about the Towanda baseball team. This was backspaced and corrected to Toronto. I didn’t know they could backspace and retype. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen it.
There you go. That’s the sound based steno process in action. Backtyping: if they’re fast and there is a pause/ooportunity.