Review of Sony's Captioning Glasses - Part 2

In the previous blog post Review of Sony's Captioning Glasses, I tried using the Sony Captioning Glasses for the first time. Then flash forward to recently, when I watched Frozen with the glasses.

This time, I found I missed something from the first time I used them. I didn't make an effort to adjust the noserests. Thus, the way the noserests were at the time, no wonder they caused me so much pain. I managed to adjust them just far enough so I wouldn't have the same problem as before, and it worked. I went the entire movie without the glasses hurting me too much, adjusting them here and there.

Still some room for improvements as I mentioned before. One additional suggestion would be adjustable captions color and font size. I'm wondering if this sort of thing would work with Google Glass with the right adjustments and programming.

Review of Sony's Captioning Glasses

I just recently got back from watching The Dark Knight Rises with captions. In this case, it didn't use open captioning or rear window captioning (RWC). The theatre used the Sony subtitle/caption glasses. They do take a little getting used to at first. No captions will show until the beginning of the movie.

They've got their good points and their bad points. But basically, the glasses have room for improvement.

The good:
- Subtitles are easily readable with green letters
- Tapping Menu on the battery pack with + and - adjusts the captioning mode and brightness
- Subtitles show up no matter where you look

The bad:
- After wearing them, they'll feel a bit heavy and the bridge of your nose may hurt
   (in my case, it was painful due to the noserests pinching me, but didn't hurt til I took them off)
- Might cause some eye strain with some people due to the focal plane of the subtitles. Meaning, you're going to be reading subtitles close to you, then look at the movie screen.

The suggested improvements:
- the ear pieces could be made adjustable, like longer or shorter
- the eyepiece connector or middle of glasses could be made hinged to allow for those with one good eye to see more of the subtitles
- the subtitle placement could be made adjustable
- if not hinged, maybe use wraparound glasses?
- the nose rests could be made adjustable
- possible to make "clip-ons" to display subtitles on the person's own glasses?

Came across these pages/blogs mentioning it as well:

Regal Captions All Movies With Special Glasses - A Review
The future of captioned films
My Opinion on the Caption Glasses

And interestingly enough, a Quick Start Guide for the glasses. There's more like this with a little more looking around.

Update: I tried them a second time and posted about it. (Part 2)

New Tech Solutions Needed To Save Captions

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.

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.

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.

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.

Netflix CEO Said No To Captions?

Did I read Jared's Netflix CEO really doesn’t care about subtitles/captioning blog post (including the shareholder meeting post) right? The Netflix CEO said there's no captioning technology or it's not widespread? Picking my jaws up off the floor, I read further...

"Mr. Hastings said other sites didn’t offer captions, and mentioned hulu.com as one of them."

Does he live under a rock? Then he said we could receive DVDs in the mail and most had captions. That's pretty insensitive, ignorant, and dismissive.

Cry me a river, Mr. CEO... You've had two years to add this "nonexistent" tech according to this blog post. Check these sites out which have captioning/subtitling utilities and related forums;

http://www.doom9.org/
http://www.videohelp.com/
http://www.cdfreaks.com/
http://autocaption.com/
http://www.cpcweb.com/

Adobe's Encore has the ability to add subs. We know YouTube, CNET, and Hulu have captions/subtitles. Google has more hits on these using keywords (dvd captions), and/or (dvd subtitles), including (netflix captioning online deaf), minus the (). Check out Hulu Has Captions and Netflix Doesn't. Why?

Care to try that again, Mr. CEO?

Let's get a new Caption Action off the ground!


Update: I neglected to add the Facebook group Netflix Watch-Instantly Needs Closed Captions!

Growing up Deaf - Part 23

Intro to captioning in theatres

When I lived in Illinois, sometimes I watched movies at the theatre, reading the book first. With "Back To The Future" and some other movies, I didn't need to read the book.

In 1996, I was in Michigan with someone and watched Schindler's List. Later on, I watched Titanic in Cincinnati, Ohio. Fortunately, captioned movies became more common, meaning I didn't have to travel so far to see one.

It wasn't often that I would go out to see a movie with friends since I'd usually be seeing them alone. Much of the time, I'd see a movie at their home. My family sometimes rented videos, and sometimes we'd all watch. Not all VHS, Beta, and laserdisc movies had captions. Now, with the new DVD releases, they're either captioned, subtitled, both, or in some cases, none at all.

Next - Summer camps

Growing up Deaf - Part 22

Intro to captioning at home

It wasn't til about 1977 or '78 when I lived in Louisiana when I was given a Sears Telecaptioner as a birthday gift. It was hard if not impossible to understand a lot of the dialogue, but the action wasn't a problem. Many a game show were easy to follow like the The Price Is Right and the $64,000 Pyramid, despite the dialogue.

Sesame Street and Electric Company were fun to watch, though not captioned til maybe 10 years later. I enjoyed Zoom as well as the Mickey Mouse Club and watched Batman with my brother. It was probably every boy's fantasy to meet Julie Newmar's Catwoman character. What a catsuit!

Little House on the Prairie was one of the better shows back then. Nothing is like it today.

I ordered the Telecaption 4000 in 1990 to replace the old captioner. I still have both today. In 1992, the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act mandated TVs larger than a certain size to have the caption circuit built in.

Seems the more modern shows put more emphasis on dialogue than action with some exceptions. Mom would sometimes go out to a movie and tell me if I could understand it or not.

Next - Intro to Captioning in Theatres

Growing up Deaf - Part 16

Attending College - Part 3

I was most likely one of the few deaf people at NTID who didn't have a TTY. My family didn't need it, as I could use voice on the phone and I had hearing aids on. I was able to keep using voice on the phone for a little time til shortly after graduation, then gave up trying as amplified phones were too expensive. I tried a couple things from Radio Shack, but they didn't always help. Speakerphones did nicely for me. Later, I quit trying to use the phone and had a hearing person help out til the relay came along. That meant dialing an 800 number. Cheers of joy were most likely heard when we could use the relay via instant messaging and the web.

Paintball was introduced to me, and I found it to be a rather fun game to play on some weekends. Sure, I had my share of hitting the other team, including being shot in a few spectacular or interesting ways. Another friend was on the other team, and I somehow came across him maybe 100 feet away in the thin trees and despite all our shooting at each other, we never hit each other though his ball bounced off me. My gun jammed halfway through our shooting match when a paintball broke inside. I ran down the hill to a path and I came across the judge who told me that it was the end of the game. Another game I hid behind a dirt 'wall' and kept shooting at this other person, but he managed to nail me first with the paintball bruising the side of my neck before breaking on my arm.

One particular game had us get close up to each other and I was on my stomach on the ground shooting the other team. I was hit, but even after putting my head down quickly after taking a second shot, they were still shooting at me and it took a judge to get them to stop.

Years later, I attended a community college in northern VA, going into their network security program. I was required to take an elective in english or theatre. You can guess what I chose. The class had 3-4 other course sections within, all of whom were studying various aspects of stage. We decided to do Macbeth. Another person and I did some of the lighting and other stage setups. We captioned two of the performances, something the instructor wanted to do. This will be the subject of another blog post, an update of my Poor Man's Captioning (or Subtitling) Device located on About.com.

I graduated in 2005 with honors. The ceremony was at George Mason University. Halfway through the ceremony, the noise started drowning out the master of ceremonies.

Next - Extracurricular/outside of school.