Closed Captions

I can’t see a thread for closed captions anywhere, mods feel free to merge.

This article gave me a chuckle, but at the same time, it does highlight the issues of providing closed captions live in terms of ensuring accurate information is made available to hearing impaired people.

5 Likes

I sonetimes have them on during the footy, and it is interesting some of the stuff they occasionally come up with, or when they struggle with a name or term then get caught behind and miss a line or two to catch-up.

1 Like

Yes, live sport is the worst with captions.

News bulletins for the most part are not bad, as the scripted content (such as what’s on the autocue) appears to be given to the provider of the closed captioning service, Red Bee Media seems to be the most prominent one.

A captioner can often still get player names wrong during a live AFL or NRL match, even when he or she has the starting team list.

1 Like

I always have them on for all content if available as if I miss heard anything I can check.

2 Likes

I notice that during recent episodes of The Cheap Seats, the captions are often shown on 1-2 seconds delay so the dialogue and captions don’t always align.

1 Like

The automated captions spit out some funny ones sometimes…

On the ABC TV NSW weather report tonight, Narrabri came up as “narrow bride”!

:grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

3 Likes

The Federal Government is currently seeking feedback on reform proposals for captioning on subscription television for hearing-impaired Australians. More info can be found here

Submissions close 11.45pm AEDT on November 1.

2 Likes

There were captioning issues with Gogglebox on 10 tonight. First the closed captions missed the start of the show, then they couldn’t keep up with the dialogue, and some sentences were missing.

2 Likes

The Giants Cats broadcast on 7mate last night was unusually captioned, surplus to requirements, running in just the one market on a multi-channel.

I recently also noticed that the News Ltd weekly TV guide supplement last few Wednesdays has had no program captioning information, with a blanket byline underneath saying “all programs are broadcast with closed captions”, which is not true as far as I know.

2 Likes

I notice Seven News Melbourne’s news updates are still captioned in all uppercase, while the bulletins themselves have lower case closed captions. Strange.

2 Likes

Kind of off topic but also on topic. At work we have been captioning things using Premier Pro and it’s Transcribe and create captions feature to make things like this.

It’s a very cool feature that I don’t know about until recently and a cool way to feature audio interviews.

3 Likes
6 Likes

About time, some of them are pretty ordinary.

4 Likes

Subtitles and closed captioning are an important part of programming options, and a new survey shared by preply.com has revealed how surprisingly important it is to younger generations.

The results of this new study have shown that 70% of Gen Z respondents say they use subtitles all or part of the time whilst viewing film and TV content, followed by 53% of millennials, 38% of Gen X, and 35% of baby boomers.

https://www.darkhorizons.com/survey-gen-z-loves-movie-tv-subtitles/

3 Likes

I reckon Gen Zs are watching with the sound off and listening to music whilst watching the show with captions.

I watch most programs I stream with captions (unless I don’t want to spoil a line). You get to see all the dialogue you would otherwise have missed.

I always watch reality shows with captions on so I can see all the dialogue (especially MasterChef where lots of cooking and culinary related terms are used). With shows like Mad as Hell and The Weekly however, I tend to have captions off, because they may contain spelling errors.

2 Likes

Agree, those shows with automated / live captions usually aren’t very good.

1 Like
2 Likes