After I posted the "More Info" post, Jamie mentioned something from her time as a captioning activist some time ago;
"Long ago I was told that when the media format changes, e.g. from movie to DVD to television to internet, the closed captions are lost because of the altering of time codes on the media. Closed captions have to match up with time codes.
"In addition, I remember that in the early days there was discussion about how because captioning is a service, there may be issues with payment. That is, if Company A pays for captioning then gives the media in a new format to Company B with captions included, then Company B saves money that Company A had to pay.
"But the bottom line problem is the loss of captions as media formats change. We need new technical solutions or more use of existing solutions. One way to save the captions would be to use the available tools CCExtractor or CaptionKeeper to extract the captions into a separate file before converting the media to another format. Then the captions can be refitted to the new media format (and this is a manual process as explained by Hulu).
"The deaf community and its hearing friends are going to have to pressure the original content providers to save captions before converting the media."
In short, by "issues with payment" in the second paragraph, the business that received the captioning services may not want to just give the captioned file/media to Company B.
Also, some utilities I've seen will remove the subtitles AND captioning when the movie is transferred from DVD to a format like AVI and/or send them to a separate file. One I've seen will do just this in PAL/NTSC conversions. I'm checking on the Matroska (.MKV) (Wikipedia entry) container, as it can hold many tracks in one file.
Showing posts with label Hulu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hulu. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
More Info from Hulu on Captioning
While Jamie and I have been discussing the issues related to Hulu and Netflix, including the upcoming new Epix website, Jamie got a response from two people from Hulu;
Eugene from the help desk writes;
"I think the issue is that often we're sent digitized videomasters that have the captions stripped out. It's not the same as recording media off of TV and then stripping the captions out of it."
Then Rob Post says;
"We use a similar tool to extract the captions from The Daily show and Colbert Report. But we are extracting the live captioning, not subtitles. Very few digital masters we receive have this data embedded within them, when we find them we try to use them."
Vitac gave a similar response.
Taking into consideration these two responses, this means that it is the CONTENT PROVIDERS who are removing the captioning signal, thus reducing Hulu's ability to provide captioned videos. Netflix has also said that it is the fault of the content providers. Now we have two people saying the same thing. However, we still have the Netflix CEO's insensitive and dismissive attitude, saying it's not high on the agenda.
Then came my own questions: Are copyright issues involved? Are the captioning signals analog or digital? Jamie sent those questions to Rob Post and should be getting a response soon.
There's also some other issues related to video and captioning. We'll have another post on this later.
Eugene from the help desk writes;
"I think the issue is that often we're sent digitized videomasters that have the captions stripped out. It's not the same as recording media off of TV and then stripping the captions out of it."
Then Rob Post says;
"We use a similar tool to extract the captions from The Daily show and Colbert Report. But we are extracting the live captioning, not subtitles. Very few digital masters we receive have this data embedded within them, when we find them we try to use them."
Vitac gave a similar response.
Taking into consideration these two responses, this means that it is the CONTENT PROVIDERS who are removing the captioning signal, thus reducing Hulu's ability to provide captioned videos. Netflix has also said that it is the fault of the content providers. Now we have two people saying the same thing. However, we still have the Netflix CEO's insensitive and dismissive attitude, saying it's not high on the agenda.
Then came my own questions: Are copyright issues involved? Are the captioning signals analog or digital? Jamie sent those questions to Rob Post and should be getting a response soon.
There's also some other issues related to video and captioning. We'll have another post on this later.
Friday, June 5, 2009
Correction to the Hulu Blog Post
Jamie and I had some minor errors in our previous post, How Might Hulu Be Showing Its Captions? It's more attitude than software which gets the captioning across the the viewer. Also in the previous post, Jamie got a response from Hulu which was posted in comments and I'll repeat here;
"We ask all our content providers for caption files. Some have them available, others do not or are still working on it. Then we try to read the caption files as there are many formats.
"Then, if we can read the file, we have someone sit and watch the video and sync the captions to the video as timings are often off because broadcast timing may differ from the online video file timing for a variety of reasons.
"We've been able to increase our coverage a lot just by sheer effort. We still have room to improve our coverage through that means. There will be some portion that will require other solutions, and we'll continue to investigate.
"Captions are a priority for us, and we'll continue to push to make them more of a standard for online video."
As we can see, it's not just attitude, but a LOT of hard work and time. I have also attempted to time subtitles with a movie and can appreciate the work that it takes. These utilities can be found with some searching.
Interestingly enough, Marlee Matlin has been tweeting that she wants captions on Netflix as well.
In another interesting area, the government has a YouTube website, but seems it's violating its own laws by not making them accessible in terms of captioning.
http://www.youtube.com/usgovernment
http://www.youtube.com/user/usedgov
Only some videos are captioned, and embarrassingly enough, the Department of Education has almost none! You can tweet complaints to them via @usedgov.
"We ask all our content providers for caption files. Some have them available, others do not or are still working on it. Then we try to read the caption files as there are many formats.
"Then, if we can read the file, we have someone sit and watch the video and sync the captions to the video as timings are often off because broadcast timing may differ from the online video file timing for a variety of reasons.
"We've been able to increase our coverage a lot just by sheer effort. We still have room to improve our coverage through that means. There will be some portion that will require other solutions, and we'll continue to investigate.
"Captions are a priority for us, and we'll continue to push to make them more of a standard for online video."
As we can see, it's not just attitude, but a LOT of hard work and time. I have also attempted to time subtitles with a movie and can appreciate the work that it takes. These utilities can be found with some searching.
Interestingly enough, Marlee Matlin has been tweeting that she wants captions on Netflix as well.
In another interesting area, the government has a YouTube website, but seems it's violating its own laws by not making them accessible in terms of captioning.
http://www.youtube.com/usgovernment
http://www.youtube.com/user/usedgov
Only some videos are captioned, and embarrassingly enough, the Department of Education has almost none! You can tweet complaints to them via @usedgov.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
How Might Hulu Be Showing Its Captions?
How is Hulu able to show closed captions when Netflix does not? That is the $60 million dollar question.
A bit of research online by Jamie and me yielded some clues. First, according to an April 2008 article in Entertainment Close-Up, Hulu is using Signiant Software. Signiant makes digital media distribution management solutions. Google Hulu and Signiant and more articles will turn up.
Poking around Signiant's website led to a blog, Digital Media Galaxy. Searching that blog on "captioning" led to one result, Rhozet Carbon Coder/Signiant Integration Video. That blog post mentions closed captioning extraction capabilities. As best as I understand it, Signiant's software integrates with software from Rhozet called Carbon Coder and through this integration, is able to extract closed captions. A check of the Rhozet website found that the Carbon Coder product is indeed able to extract closed captions.
Not only that, an examination of the Carbon Coder product's additional functions page revealed that under Advanced Operations, Carbon Coder can do subtitle/CC imprint, and line 21/CC conversion.
Last but not least, on Signiant's website there is a page that explains more about Rhozet's Carbon Coder. The information there is so important that I'm quoting it here:
"Traditional broadcast companies continue to grow their content business with alternate media delivery through the web, mobile or Video on Demand (VOD). However, one size does not fit all. They are challenged with the multiple CODECs and containers required to support these delivery mechanisms. Media is often captured in one format; edited in another; delivered live in a 3rd format; stored in a yet another format and so on. With the dramatic increase in the number of formats along with shorter service level agreements and Business To Business (B2B) relationships spanning the globe, content production is becoming more challenging. Rhozet's Carbon Coder is an industry leading transcoder which can simultaneously support all the major formats required in today's media environment."
Based on all this information, I have developed a theory about how Hulu is able to show closed captions. I theorize that Hulu is using the Signiant Software integration with Rhozet's Carbon Coder software to extract the closed captions from DVDs and overlay it onto the streamed media. One of the arguments that we have been given for not having captions on streamed media is that the formats are different between DVDs and digital media; but according to the Signiant page on Rhozet, Rhozet can handle ALL formats.
A bit of research online by Jamie and me yielded some clues. First, according to an April 2008 article in Entertainment Close-Up, Hulu is using Signiant Software. Signiant makes digital media distribution management solutions. Google Hulu and Signiant and more articles will turn up.
Poking around Signiant's website led to a blog, Digital Media Galaxy. Searching that blog on "captioning" led to one result, Rhozet Carbon Coder/Signiant Integration Video. That blog post mentions closed captioning extraction capabilities. As best as I understand it, Signiant's software integrates with software from Rhozet called Carbon Coder and through this integration, is able to extract closed captions. A check of the Rhozet website found that the Carbon Coder product is indeed able to extract closed captions.
Not only that, an examination of the Carbon Coder product's additional functions page revealed that under Advanced Operations, Carbon Coder can do subtitle/CC imprint, and line 21/CC conversion.
Last but not least, on Signiant's website there is a page that explains more about Rhozet's Carbon Coder. The information there is so important that I'm quoting it here:
"Traditional broadcast companies continue to grow their content business with alternate media delivery through the web, mobile or Video on Demand (VOD). However, one size does not fit all. They are challenged with the multiple CODECs and containers required to support these delivery mechanisms. Media is often captured in one format; edited in another; delivered live in a 3rd format; stored in a yet another format and so on. With the dramatic increase in the number of formats along with shorter service level agreements and Business To Business (B2B) relationships spanning the globe, content production is becoming more challenging. Rhozet's Carbon Coder is an industry leading transcoder which can simultaneously support all the major formats required in today's media environment."
Based on all this information, I have developed a theory about how Hulu is able to show closed captions. I theorize that Hulu is using the Signiant Software integration with Rhozet's Carbon Coder software to extract the closed captions from DVDs and overlay it onto the streamed media. One of the arguments that we have been given for not having captions on streamed media is that the formats are different between DVDs and digital media; but according to the Signiant page on Rhozet, Rhozet can handle ALL formats.
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