Do CNN and like news channels use some voice recognition software, or is someone just trying to type really, really fast?
There are human beings behind the closed captioning on TV.
Basically, these people use special software that allows them to transcribe what’s being said at a fast rate. Essentially, it’s not dissimilar to the stenography machines used by court reporters in that whole words are not necessarily entered, just codes that represent words. The software translates these codes into whole words for the screen. There are also dictionaries and so forth to help with geographic locations and proper names and the like.
I am not deaf, but I often use closed captioning in either noisy settings (like at restaurants) or when I’m on the phone but I’m still trying to follow what I’m watching.
Robin
This does not prevent errors from slipping in, however. After all, humans are humans and they make mistakes. And transcribing a broadcast realtime must be taxing work.
Sometimes, the errors are just random letters, not comprehensible at all, at odd positions on the screen. I notice these types of errors during commercials, mainly. I wonder what could account for them. Is it noise, somehow?
It does appear to be noise, in that the characters are ASCII code, like a printer that doesn’t get all the bits.
Why aren’t all commercials captioned? You would also think that commercials would be pre-capitoned, like movies and be without errors.
Some commercials are captioned but the station didn’t turn the captions on for them, same with some programs. Sometimes when you can’t read the captions its because the recording is old or didnt come in clear, you know when you see things like say, ‘r87r*(&j’. But when you see ‘eye deal’ for ‘ideal’ then its the captioner. Most programs have the website of the people who did the captions displayed & you can write them email about your questions.
Sometimes they use court stenographers-type captioners who type really fast (this is called live captioning & it’s usually used for the national news) & believe me, get paid a bundle. I think $100 an hour & up is not unheard of.
I need to learn to type faster…
Sometimes you’ll see the closed captioning guy screw up. Often you’ll see a word partly typed until the person typing realizes it’s too long to fit on one line and has to delete it, move down a line and retype. Also they have a very difficult time with foreign names.
I have closed captioning on my TV because last year I turned it on and lost the remote. There’s no way to turn it off without the remote.
BTW, I saw a show whose closed captioning was sponsored, ironically, by the game “Mad Gab.” I’ve also seen it sponsored by cell phones and stereos.
Why is it called closed captioning? Not to be a smartass, but is there open captioning? Why not just call it subtitling?
It was called closed captioning because the captions are hidden, requiring a decoder to reveal the caption’s signal. Open captioning refers to captions that do not require a decoder to reveal the signal.
Subtitles are a little different. Many DVDs will have closed captions and English subtitles on them, and there is a difference between them. Closed captions will usually have significant background sounds captioned, such as [doorbell rings] or [dog barking], while English subtitles will print only the dialogue and nothing else. There are other kinds of captioning, and this link to a page at the National Captioning Institute’s website is an excellent summary of the differences between these terms.
This other link to NCI’s website will give details on how captioning is done, including the differences between captioning for live and prerecorded programs.
Pointless Comment: what’s really neat about closed captioning and DirecTV is setting HBO to Spanish (for my wife) and letting the closed-captions play (in English) for me!
Question: when watching Spanish-language TV, the closed-captions help me a LOT. But, for some reason, a show on Telemundo East has closed captions, but three hours later on Telemundo West, there are none! Any ideas?
Balthisar, its up to the station to turn them on or not. That’ s why sometimes you see the exact newsbroadcast captioned on some channels but not the others.