Production Glossary
Closed Captioning
Closed captioning is a feature in television and video that supplies a transcription of the audio that is being spoken or narrated during a program. Oftentimes non-verbal actions or sounds are transcribed as well (i.e. “door slams”, “whispering”). The word “closed” means that only those who manually turn the captions on can see them. There is an option for “open” captions that make them noticeable to all viewers.Closed captioning was originally developed for hard of hearing persons and the deaf community to enable them to have an understanding of the contents of a show. This includes spoken words, the name of the speaker, and also the way in which they are speaking. In the 1980s and 90s, the decoders necessary to operate closed captions were not built-in to TV sets and had to be purchased separately. An additional community of closed captioning users, ESL (English as a Second Language) was identified by the National Captioning Institute as the biggest group buying these decoders. Captions are utilized in the hearing community as well. Loud settings such as a bar or eating establishment will often turn on captions so customers can still understand content despite surrounding noise.
In some countries, such as Ireland and the UK, closed captioning and subtitles are interchangeable. In these countries, “subtitle” is the term generally used and “captioning” is another word for “subtitles for the hard of hearing” (often represented on screen by “subtitles 888” or “888”). However, in Canada and the US, “subtitles” indicate that the audience member is not hard of hearing but is unable to interpret the language, accent, or speech used in the program.
Closed captioning transcriptions come about a few different ways. Live programs are transcribed by a speech-to-text reporter by using a stenotype machine. As the words are spoken, the transcriptionist types out the words and the teletext service translates the text phonetically so it will appear onscreen. This process was invented in the 1970s by a college student working with the BBC.
Sometimes an event or show will prepare a transcript prior to airing. These captions are shown during the program after they have been edited. Complete captions, written, edited, and timed in advance, are necessary for shows that are prerecorded.
The Technical Side of Captioning
In order to be seen onscreen, captions are conceled into Line 21 of the vertical blanking interval. This interval is the section of the picture that lies slightly above the portion of the TV screen that is unseen. This is a process used specifically by NTSC programming. NTSC stands for National Television System Committee, and is an analog television system. The digital TV system, ATSC, encodes three streams. Two that are compatible with Line 21 captions and one that contains a set of up to 63 captions streams in EIA-708 format (the standard format for digital televisions).
Closed captioning appears in three Line 21 styles:
1.Pop-up, block, or pop-on. This style displays the captions anywhere onscreen in a complete sentence or phrase. Additional text will follow as the dialogue continues. This technique is most commonly used in pre-taped TV and films.
2. Roll-up, scrolling, or scroll up. Here, words show up left to right, one line at a time. Once a line has been filled, the first line moves up and a new line appears underneath. This style is used most often for live events when continuous word-by-word captioning is necessary.
3. Paint-on. This type of captioning is when a solitary word or line of text will show up onscreen letter-by-letter, from left to right. By the time the phrase is complete, the caption will display like a pop-up caption.
Editing is very important in captioning. At times, the captions get too lengthy and have to be cut down in order to fit the 180 to 300 WPM measurement. In order to meet censorship guidelines, offensive language must be removed as well.
The Line 21 format initially lacked the necessary symbols to accommodate foreign languages. Now, however, they catalog has been updated and allows for captioning in Portuguese, French, and Spanish. Symbols play and important role in captioning. For example, ‘>> <<’ indicates a new speaker, ‘>>> <<<’ indicates a new story (in news programming) or mulitple speakers. Music and lyrics are indicated by a musical note.
