Whether ‘tis more numbing in the mind to suffer the mastery of captioning, language and file delivery service options or to align them with the plethora of automation, coding, and on-air server systems that are installed at the nearly 8,000 TV stations in the country (not to mention worldwide).  The real challenge, surprisingly, not the process of becoming an authority of systems and workflows the world over, but rather the installation of not a workflow, but of confidence in the producer or engineer’s mind.

Thus the science makes cowards of us all.  But surely our company’s history evokes bravery.  Why should I tremble when we were able to lower our producers from the tower by allowing them to master a captioned tape from there NLEs.  Who of us here at Aberdeen could forget how we slayed the Sony XDCAM captioning beast on the floor of NAB in Las Vegas.  Certainly, our next adventure shall be our most exciting as we are in the midst of turning “can’t” into “can” and “doing” into “done.”  In sales guy terms, our stuff just works and works in a way that no one else’s stuff works.  Now how do I get a producer or engineer on the other end of the phone or video chat to buy into that, especially in when talking about dropping a closed captioned, broadcast ready file (better quality mind you) onto a server in a preferred format.  That must be a sheer flight of fancy and the stuff of make believe.

Ahh, but believe they will.  Not at first though.  The truth must be polished like a pearl for the digital age has not brought clarity and simplicity, but rather muck and mire.  “Clear as mud” is a common phrase uttered by the experts in this high-tech, high-demand world of television broadcasting, webcasting and mobile transmission.  Thank goodness for the community of producers, engineers and all others who muscle through technology trends and paradigm shifts together with Aberdeen.  If not for this technology community, or as I prefer, “techmunity” (okay, I admit, it sounds a little more like technology mutiny) there would be little in the way of progress, or more frightening still, no collective commiseration.  What to do if we had to muscle through technology breakthroughs without the pleasure of forging new friendships alongside new state-of-the-just-work-already solutions.

And enterprises of great pitch and moments like these is what being a sales engineer is all about.

This blog was written by By Steve Holmes (with Shakespeare), Sales Engineer for Aberdeen.

If you are interested in buying into what Steve is selling or would like to know more about it, or if you would just like a laugh with this funny guy, he can be reached at 800-688-6621 or info@abercap.com

Needless to say, the many misconceptions and myths that I had about what CC is and how it works have now been completely debunked.

Below are the top five things I was surprised to learn:

1. It’s an FCC requirement

I used to think that it was optional and TV stations did it just out of concern for the deaf and hard of hearing, so I thought I might come across a TV show with CC and another without. It turns out that the FCC is quite serious about this and requires it in all broadcast TV programming. So with a few exceptions, all television programming we come across on a daily basis will have closed captions.

I was impressed to learn that over 31% of Americans uses closed captions. Although the FCC doesn’t have a minimum accuracy rate, Aberdeen Captioning guarantees at least 98% accuracy in its captioning, even up to 100% if the client so desires.

2. Actual people have to do it

I may sound a bit ignorant, but at first I thought the TV did it all by itself. That somehow, it used super-accurate speech recognition software, it was smart enough to organize the text in a clear way and to move captions around in order to clear lower third graphics while at the same time it would avoid covering the speaker’s mouth.

After all, we are in the 21^st century right? I was completely wrong.

There are actual real-life, air-breathing persons behind each caption we see on our TVs. This isn’t something automated that is done through smart PCs; rather, skillful people need to be involved each step of the way. I’m impressed at how Aberdeen has gone above and beyond to tap into the best resources in the captioning business to get the most talented people to create captions because, at the end of the day, it’s people who create the captions, not machines.

3. Closed Captions can be produced in six languages

Spanish being my first language, I think this is pretty awesome. When factoring such obvious things as that hearing impairment doesn’t just affect English speakers and that the latest 2010 US Census shows that the Hispanic or Latino population has grown by 43% since the year 2000, it is clear how being able to caption in various languages increases the reach a program may have.

Currently, the six languages in which closed captions can be produced are: English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, and Dutch.  Of course, when we talk about subtitles, the range of languages expands to many more. It really isn’t surprising that Aberdeen’s multi-language division has taken off.

4. Most producers are still using tapes

This was probably the single most impressive thing to me. After all, the last time I saw a Beta tape I was about 10 years old.

But here I am, coming in to Aberdeen for my first day on the job, and the first thing I noticed is a wall full of Betas and a recording rack filled to the brim with recording decks. Can you believe that in the age of Apple, Android, Wi-Fi TVs and all sorts of “smart” things there are hundreds or even thousands of tapes being shipped around every day from producers to TV stations?

Well, until recently, there weren’t any digital file-delivery systems accessible to small outfits allowing them to transfer long-form content with captions in a reliable way. Aberdeen Captioning has solved this problem with a new digital file-delivery service that delivers files to stations in their play server specs and that are ready for broadcast.

5. It’s not easy

The number one thing I’ve discovered is that closed captioning is not easy. I’ve discovered that there are so many variables from client to client and from station to station, that to excel in this business you really need to know your product.

Aberdeen has really strived to put together a group of dedicated people who have become experts in this area and are committed to the Word. I’m happy to be part of such a talented team.

This blog was written by Rolando Betancourt, Operations Administrator for Aberdeen Captioning.

When you post your video, opt to choose Flash video if possible since Flash is cross-platform so it can play both in Mac or Windows OS. It can also play in Android OS. This means Flash is not operating system specific and will guarantee a broader audience. Though Apple iOS is still not allowing Flash to work on their system, Android smartphones are still the reigning champions in the market share (50% Android OS vs 25% Apple OS, as per Nielsen Mobile Insights, March 2011). Therefore, your video is accessible through all desktop web applications as well as the majority of smartphone web applications.

Another advantage is that Flash video player is currently the only one that can display captions/subtitles in different languages. The other video players (Windows Media or Quicktime) cannot have a CC menu that can display options to choose your preferred CC language. Of course, you would need XML files for the captions/subtitles of each language. Some player, such as Ooyala, can incorporate all languages into 1 XML file.  Then the Flash video player skin need to be customized through some settings and coding in the Flash editing software to incorporate up to 100 different languages. Imagine that! Out of 6809 different languages in the world (as per Ethnologue organization), only 17 languages are spoken by 3.653 billion of people (that’s more than 60% of the world’s population). They are in order of number of speakers: Chinese, English, Spanish, Hindi/Urdu, Arabic, Bengali, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, German, Punjabi, Javanese, French, Vietnamese, Korean, Turkish, and Italian.

Knowing the above exposure and what it can bring to your videos, it is a no brainer as to why you need to immediately start planning where to post your videos and how you can capture the market share easily. It’s just a few clicks and settings away in Flash Video Editing Software. Don’t lose the momentum and this opportunity!

Note about the author: Arif Kusuma is a Chief Technical Officer at Aberdeen Captioning. He has  Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering and Computer Information Systems, as well as a Master of Business Administration. He has a passionate drive for technology, both hardware and software, and like many people, loves to be the first to get the latest cutting-edge gadgets.

The answer is actually quite simple. I find it convenient. My house can be a bit chaotic at times. My son just turned 2 and he screams when he’s upset. He also screams when he’s happy, excited, bored, hurt, scared–I think you get the picture. But it isn’t about being able to watch the television and ignore what’s going on around me. It’s about being able to comprehend what’s being said in the program regardless of how softly or quickly they may be speaking.

I have a secret. I love to watch really bad Kung Fu movies. And I mean REALLY bad ones. If the plot makes no sense, the filming is done poorly, the costumes look like they were made by someone who is going blind and the dialogue is only loosely related to everything else that is going on in the film, then I am in heaven. Sure, I enjoy a well made movie as much as the next gal, but the absolutely, ridiculously bad ones will always hold special place in my heart.

So on Saturday nights my husband and I will watch some absolute stinkers. And when we do, I insist that the subtitles be on, and I have a really good reason. Those horrible voiceovers always use the weirdest voices, and the actors and actresses speak incredibly fast. All the men sound like they are doing William Shatner impersonations, and the women sound like they are 4.

Most Asian languages are very syllable dense languages, while English is a very meaning dense language. That means that if you have a sentence in English and the very same sentence in Korean, the Korean sentence is likely to have more syllables. This is because a meaning dense language packs more meaning into the syllables and words, while a syllable dense language packs more syllables into meaningful words and sentences. You can see this in subtitles all the time. An actor is going on and on in a different language. It seems like he’s saying at least three or four sentences. Then when the subtitle pops onto the screen it says, “No way!” We assume it’s just a bad translation, but chances are you’re hearing a syllable dense language but reading a meaning dense language.

When non-native English speakers are hired to do voiceovers some speak very quickly for one main reason: they are used to speaking a syllable dense language that must be spoken quickly to relay the same meaning as a meaning dense language. So, they bring that “habit” with them when they speak English. This is one of the reasons why Aberdeen auditions voiceover artists and provides multiple samples to every client looking for voiceover work.

My auditory comprehension is tuned to the average speech rate of English spoken in the US, which is about 150 words per minute. So when I have to try to comprehend someone who is speaking quite a bit faster than that, I get lost. My rate of reading comprehension is faster, as is most people’s, so having the closed captioning or subtitles on means that I can keep up with the horrible dialogue to go along with my ridiculously bad movie.

I started watching television with the closed captioning on when my grandpa, who is almost completely deaf, came to visit me several years ago. I soon realized that closed captions can make watching television a whole different experience. So my grandpa went home, but the closed captions stayed.

Written by Emilia

I regularly work with Spanish translations from very competent people, and although these translations are already great, my job is to make them better.  When reading them, it seems that I’m always faced with the same challenge: How do I make certain words neutral enough so that most Spanish-speaking people will understand them?  The Spanish language is spoken in 20 different countries worldwide, making the task of choosing one single word very challenging.

A word that I came up with a couple of weeks ago was the translation for “hangover.” It was originally translated as “enguayabado.” When I first read this I was clueless as to what it meant. I had never heard this term before. It turns out that it’s pretty popular in South America. My supervisor, who lives in Spain, mentioned they use the word “resaca,” which I wasn’t familiar with either. Growing up in Mexico, I always heard people use the word “cruda” when talking about a hangover, so obviously I was leaning towards using that term.

Here at Aberdeen, every challenge is thoroughly analyzed before making a decision, and that’s why, after taking in consideration the audience that was going to be reading the subtitles, we decided to go with “cruda (resaca)”. Luckily we had enough time and space in the subtitles to use both terms!

Translation is definitely an art. Now let’s see how artistic I can be at translating this blog! Spanish version.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Clara Mendez is a Bilingual Transcriber/Caption Editor for Aberdeen Captioning Inc.  Having acquired English as a second language, she’s aware of the importance of cross-language communication in order to be able to express ideas to a wider range of people.  Clara believes in translating not only the content, but also the flavor of the message and she values the accuracy of a really good English-Spanish translation.  Clara strives to help people communicate better regardless of their familiarity with the English language and to use the information she obtains to expand her knowledge day by day.  To reach Clara, e-mail her at info@abercap.com or call 800-688-6621. For more information on subtitling or closed-captioning, go to www.abercap.com.

¿Cuantas maneras existen de traducir una palabra de un lenguaje a otro?  Algunas veces es tan simple como traducir la frase de Dora la Exploradora “¡let’s go!” (vámonos), pero a menudo es un poco más complicado que eso en el Departamento de Idiomas de Aberdeen.

Usualmente trabajo con traducciones en español que vienen de gente muy capaz, y aunque éstas son muy buenas traducciones, mi trabajo es mejorarlas. Al leerlas, siempre me encuentro con el mismo problema: ¿cómo puedo hacer ciertas palabras  lo más neutralmente posible para que la mayoría de la gente hispanohablante las entienda? El idioma español se habla en 20 países diferentes alrededor del mundo, haciendo la tarea de escoger una sola palabra muy exigente.

Una palabra con la que tuve este problema hace un par de semanas fue la traducción para “hangover”. Originalmente se tradujo como “enguayabado”. Al leer esto por primera vez no tuve idea de lo que significaba. Nunca había escuchado este término antes.  Resulta que es bastante popular en Sudamérica. Mi supervisora, quien vive en España, mencionó que allá se usa la palabra “resaca”, la cual tampoco me resultó familiar. Yo crecí en México y siempre escuché a la gente usar la palabra “cruda”, así que esa era la palabra que yo quería escoger para la traducción.

Aquí en Aberdeen, antes de tomar una decisión, cada problema es rigurosamente analizado. Es por eso que, después de considerar la audiencia que iba a leer los subtítulos, decidimos usar “cruda (resaca)”. ¡Afortunadamente tuvimos suficiente tiempo y espacio en los subtítulos para usar ambos términos!

La traducción es definitivamente un arte y creo haber sido algo artística al haber traducido esta pieza.

SOBRE LA AUTORA: Clara Mendez es una transcriptora/editora de subtítulos para Aberdeen Captioning Inc. Al haber aprendido el inglés como su segundo idioma, ella se ha vuelto consciente de la importancia de la comunicación intralingüística para poder expresar ideas a una mayor cantidad de gente.  Clara cree en traducir no solo el contenido, sino que también la calidad temática del mensaje y ella valora la exactitud de una buena traducción del inglés al español.  Clara se esfuerza para ayudar a la gente a comunicarse mejor sin importar la familiaridad que ellos tengan con el idioma inglés, y a usar la información que ella obtiene para extender su conocimiento día con día. Para contactarse con Clara, mande un correo electrónico a info@abercap.com o llame al 800-688-6621.  Para más información sobre los subtítulos o closed captions, visite www.abercap.com.

The answer can be complicated.

While it is possible that some joker caption editor intentionally captioned the lyrics incorrectly as a prank, that is unlikely, due to the fact that “Family Guy” is a higher quality pop-on style captioning, and pop-on captions usually receive a QC that would require a second set of eyes to review. With that observation in mind, many people have the opinion that the lyrics were changed to the cleaner version after season one, possibly at the request of FOX Television. If this is the case, then it is reasonable to assume that the captions in question were accurate. But if the lyrics have always been “laugh and cry,” as MacFarlane maintains, then why weren’t the captions eventually corrected?

Well, for all you hyper-perfectionists out there, it may pain you to know that closed captions are rarely corrected for errors once sent to producers. Cost is always a limiting factor in these situations, so even if the words have always been “laugh and cry” the chances that the early programs were sent back for corrections are slim, although it is possible.

Most closed caption companies, Aberdeen Captioning included, will make corrections to overt errors and re-send caption files to clients upon request at no additional cost. However, corrections made for changes in program content are not typically covered in contract argreements. And while the burden on the caption company to make corrections is minimal, for producers, the logistics and time involved in replacing encoded files for a syndicated program that is already airing on multiple TV stations could be too much to bear.

So whether it was a straightforward transcription of lyrics that were eventually changed, or simply a mis-interpretation for whatever reason, keep in mind that all captions are NOT created equal . And while Seth MacFarlane may offer a dismissive in-show critique of the issue as the voice of “Family Guy” character Peter Griffin: “Stewie, go on get outta here…laugh and cry, effin’ cry…what’s the difference?” our response would be that there is a difference, Aberdeen Captioning.

At Aberdeen we always go the extra mile for our clients, which includes in-process communication and customer clarification to ensure accurate captioning.

If you are a producer and have experienced more crying than laughing with your program’s captions in the past, we invite you to contact us at Aberdeen Captioning and find out what the difference can be.

Written by: Rich E., Sr. Caption Editor

Here at Aberdeen, we strive for the best. That expectation starts at the initial point of contact when you first call our office, and it extends all the way down to the accuracy of the captions and subtitles that we ultimately deliver back to you.

One rule that I take pride in is using the serial comma. This is a rule that Aberdeen has decided to put into common practice for all of our captions, and it made the grammar nerd in me very happy.

A serial comma is the comma used immediately before the conjunction that ends a list of three or more. For example: I bought bananas, apples, and oranges. The serial comma is the comma before the “and.”

In the above example, the comma probably isn’t even noticed, and if it were removed the context of the sentence would stay the same. But let’s give a different example.

I dedicate this award to my parents, Jesus Christ and God. Notice the ambiguity? Do I mean to say that my parents are Jesus Christ and God? Or do I mean that the award is dedicated to three separate entities: my parents, Jesus Christ, and God? The simple addition of the serial comma removes all confusion.

Some may argue that the serial comma should only be used in instances where confusion might occur, and that it should be omitted in any instance where there’s no room for ambiguity. However, as the writer of the above examples, I know what I meant when I wrote them. I know that my parents are not Jesus Christ and God, therefore not including the comma could make complete sense to me. In my mind, perhaps that second example leaves no room for confusion because it should be obvious that my parents are not, in fact, Jesus Christ and God. As such, the choice to only use the serial comma in some instances and not in others leaves the rule open to too much interpretation.

You will never come across an example where using the serial comma creates confusion. The original purpose in omitting the serial comma was solely for journalistic reasons, to save column space when writing for a newspaper.

At Aberdeen we provide captions and subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing community. When captions are scrolling past on your screen, there’s not often time to be able to stop and ponder what the meaning of a sentence was supposed to be; by the time you’ve figured it out, the caption is already long gone.

Would you be confused reading this sentence? Today I spoke to my mom, a pastor and a convicted murderer.

The next time you’re writing keep this in mind, because you don’t want people to have to wonder if your mom is a convict or not.

Written by: Jackie Blackwell, Caption Editor at Aberdeen

adverse vs. averse—adverse means unfavorable. Averse means reluctant.

descendent vs. descendant—Apparently, descendent is now considered a dead word. Always stick with descendant when referring to something derived from an earlier person, animal, or thing.

complement vs. compliment—Complement is something that adds to something else. A compliment is something nice that someone says about you.

inequity vs. iniquity— Inequity is an injustice. Iniquity is a sin.

insure vs. ensure—Insure relates to insurance only (think car insurance.) Ensure means to guarantee something.

peak vs. peek vs. pique—Peak is a high point, such as on a mountain. Peek is when you look at something. Pique means to excite your interest.

profit vs. prophet—Profit is a net income or measure of gain. A prophet is someone who foretells future events.

whose vs. who’s—Whose is something that belongs to someone else (Whose idea is this?) Who’s is a contraction meaning who is or who has. (Who’s learning about homophones today?)

We loved the DA-88 for audio because it had 8 tracks and was affordable enough to put in every editor’s rack. We loved the Digi-Beta because, well, it really was digital; and had lots of buttons and lights and it made us feel powerful! You really had to have some sort of engineering degree to use all of its functions but we were generally using it like a tape deck, so we didn’t care, it cost $30,000 dollars and looked cool in our editing suites!

The funniest thing about all of these “technologies” is that, while they were a definite improvement over analog tape, we were still operating in a tape based environment, and to a great degree we still are to this day!

We’ll spend $40,000 on a Media Composer only to have all of this clean digital picture go through two or three generations of export, ingest and transcoding between layback and final broadcast, creating many opportunities for signal and level degradation, errors in closed captioning and subtitling data, you name it.

For some reason though, we cling tightly to our tape decks. They are safe and tangible. We can hold the tapes in our hands and hear the servos winding the tape around the heads when we load a tape into the deck for layback. When we were at NAB this year, to introduce our digital file delivery we actually went “Office Space” on an old Sony BVW deck and smashed it with a sledge hammer in our parking lot to have a nice visual to grab people’s attention. Some of the reactions were hilarious. Many Engineers were absolutely beside themselves with anger because we smashed up a “perfectly good deck”. (Click here to see the result)

In reality, there is no such thing as a perfectly good deck. They are yesterday’s technology that no one wants to put out to pasture. In the process, many studios waste valuable resources in maintenance, tape stock, man hours etc., only to be left wishing there was an alternative at the end of the day.

As a matter of fact there is an easy way and we at Aberdeen are pioneering it! Everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in fully implementing technology to make lives, jobs and our services better. One way we’ve done this is through our cloud-based digital delivery and transcoding service where clients upload their video file and we distribute file-based with closed captions to their airing stations across the country and around the world. As a result, we’ve eliminated tapes from our clients’ workflows!

About the Author:

Mike Lyle was a Sound Effects Supervisor and Picture Editor in Hollywood for over 15 years. He has had the good fortune of receiving 3 EMMY Awards, 5 Golden Reels a CAS award and 26 Nominations throughout his career. He is a member of The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences as well as the Motion Picture Editor’s Guild Local 700. He was involved with setting up workflows for digital workstations beginning with the Wave Frame and Pro tools audio stations; and has edited on all professional picture systems from Lightworks and Media Composer, to Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premier. Currently he is a Sales Engineer working in Compression and Delivery Technologies for Aberdeen Inc. in Rancho Santa Margarita.

For more information on this article, please contact Mike Lyle at 800-688-6621 or info@abercap.com