508 captioned videos. Has anyone done these?

Greetings.

I am working on a proposal for a series of videos that need to be "508 Compliant", meaning that they need captions. I have seen on TV's that you can turn captioning on or off, but is this something that is set up in editing? I know how to do subtitles, but 508 involves being able to switch titles on or off....I think.

Can anyone give me insight about this? This is new to me.

Thank you.

Jonathan

It is a data stream inside the video file, it is not done in the editing timeline. You'd get a service to do it for you, or purchase something like MacCaption (which I'm a huge fan of) and do it yourself.
www.telestream.net/captioning/overview.htm

Thanks Ben!

I also found this too:

www.fcp.co/forum/4-final-cut-pro-x-fcpx/...ning-options-in-fcpx

So does any transcription service know how to do this?

Jonathan

Jonathan,
We have used Video Caption Corporation in the past. We prefer to sub this type of stuff out and pass the cost on to the client with appropriate markup. You can contact them at vicaps dot com and see if they can help. We've had good experience with them.

I agree with dgw, sub it out. Only do it yourself if you're going to do a LOT of it, and have good prices, and good working relationship, with a transcription service who can prepare the properly formatted text files (with TC and all). Otherwise, sub it out, charge the client.

I agree with Ben and dgw.

Look for an external company. Ask the station how they want the subs to be embedded.
Some want them to be muxed into the MXF, other use the AV MXF stream plus a .scc stream in one package (like Compressor creates)

Andreas

To clarify... 508 is the section that defines captioning requirements. The actual broadcast caption formats are 608 (analog) and 708 (digital) unfortunately, FCPX is way behind premier in this department. Hopefully that will change. . Yes, you can stitch a caption file using Compressor, but if you need to edit, you're out of luck. We use Zen Captions.. For a buck a minute they can't be beat.

Hi guys and thanks so much for your information. Unfortunately right after I wrote my initial question I found out the client did not get this particular assignment, which means I didn't get that assignment either :pinch:

However, this has been really interesting and fall under the teach an old dog new tricks category.

So just to learn a bit more about this, is it correct to assume that the workflow for this would be to make a low res picture locked QT video that would then be sent out to be transcribed, and then that transctription along with the QT video would be sent to a place like Zen Captions, or Video Captions for them to somehow put this all together?

It definitely sounds like sending this out a few dollars is the way to go, especially since this is the first time in 36 years that this has come across my desk!

All the different formats sound confusing, and to be honest I never got far enough into the project details to even find out if this was to be used for broadcast, computer, DVD, and so on. And I'm guessing that one file type does not fit all.

Thanks again. Really very interesting stuff! I was even playing around with my own TV turning the CC on and off. I did notice that the CC titles fall a little above the lower third on my set.

Jonathan

We send out a low res H.264 or ProRes LT to the company we use. They send us back a .scc file, and we use Compressor to put the two together very successfully. Saves us a few bucks rather than send the transcription company full rez and have them send us back a baked in full rez file. We deliver ProRes files to the network, but that's in the US. Other locations and situations will require a different workflow. A thousand different ways to do this.