I watch TV with my CC on. I find that most movies have it for the hearing impaired (which I think is a good thing), and most shows too.
Last night I was watching reruns of The Amazing Race on GSN. As usual, it had CC. I noticed that it was REALLY smart CC. It didn’t show messages for subtitles (yet the subtitles were in English, just devised for those lines you can’t hear all that well), and when there were other things at the bottom of the screen, the CC would move to the top. I’ve seen this before as well.
But only yesterday did I ask myself, how do movies and shows get it? Does someone watch the movie/show bit by bit and then type up a script for it to show as Closed Captioning? This is the only thing I can think of that would be the answer. Is it done by a company? Do they have a bunch of people in an office typing up CCs for movies/shows and then attach them every time a movie or show plays?
I also note difference in some of them (since seeing a LOT of movies and shows in CC). For example: Sometimes the CC will include the swearing in a movie shown on basic cable, even though the movie bleeped it out. And regarding songs, there are some movies where, when the tune of a song plays, the CC will actually tell the viewer what the song is called and who it’s by (something I usually wouldn’t know UNLESS I had the CC on). Man, they must have some pretty smart Closed Captioners to do this! And then there’s the kind of CC that scolls (I assume this is only for things that are “live” and thus are typed out right at the moment). But even then, I never see any mistakes or typos. These people must be very good at what they do.
So who does it? Does anyone? Does a computer do it? If it’s a computer, how can it find the difference between putting it at the top or bottom?
How does do movies and shows get their CC?
There are companies that do the captioning for pre-recorded shows. Often they’ll be given a script for the episode, which helps with spelling things correctly and captioning mumbled dialogue. They usually pay attention to what’s on the screen so they can move the captions to the top or bottom if necessary. It’s not very exciting work, but you can make a living at it.
For live shows (news, etc.) there is a stenographer who does the captions live. This often leads to hilarious typos (especially when the predictive text on the captioning machine guesses the wrong word.)
These days there are dozens of agencies doing it, from little mom and pop shops to biggish corporations and nonprofits. Back in the day, there were only two agencies, essentially, both of them nonprofit. But once legislation mandated a certain amount of closed captioning, others got into the business.
As you surmise, so-called offline captioning is done ahead of time by people listening to the program, and synchronizing their captions with the internal clock in the master tape of the show. These captions are encoded as part of the signal, and the decoder chip in modern televisions renders them the encoded data as captions.
You may also see real-time captions (on news or live shows), which are created by trained court reporters on stenographic equiment. Because it’s done essentially in real time, you’ll see more errors.
I pick this up, because CC in Aus must work a different way. The most notable thing I remember is watching an episode of the Simpsons, where Ralph Wiggum clearly says “My cat’s name is mittens” and yet somehow the CC people managed to fill it in as “My catchname is mittens”.
I’d like to get a job doing the closed captions. Or the tv guide ‘captions’ that they have on digital cable over here. I can’t do a worse job than the person who put in a plot synopsis that someone was ‘reeking havock’.