27 May
2013
27 May
'13
11:25 p.m.
[for those not familiar, Closed Captions were two bytes of ASCII
embedded in line 21 of the vertical retrace interval of analog NTSC,
and using a decoding circuit in the receiving TV to supermpose the
text on the video image. Some people HATED their existence - due
to being upset at having stuff to READ pushed at them, not just
from the possibility that it might cover cleavage.]
On Mon, 27 May 2013, Chuck Guzis wrote:
But you'd think that the broadcast industry would
be more up-to-date,
being electronic in nature and all.
Guess not.
It appears to be the crudest area in the industry.
I once called a local station and let them know that the caption
signal had been missing for a few days. They thanked me, and told
me that they were "UNABLE to tell whether it was working, because
none of the staff is deaf".
Live broadcasts now often attempt to use voice-to-text software,
without any training of the system. That, of course, frequently
leads to totally incomprehensible captions. Even non-live
captioning is often not proofread.
Some captioners are excellent. Some not. Some make the worst of
internet spelling and illiteracy look good. Their knot to good.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com