Captioning weather cutins?

[w9wi]

Here's a "how do YOU do it?" question...

We have three types of locally-produced programs we need to closed-caption:

- Live local newscasts, produced in the Ignite control room.
- Live severe weather cutins, switched on the MCR switcher. (so they don't have to call in an Ignite operator if we have storms at 2am)
- Two locally-recorded programs, produced in Ignite control and recorded to server.

How do other stations handle the need to caption both live cutins through MCR *and* locally-recorded programs?

(I suspect you'll have a few recommendations that have already been ruled out by management, but if I can show "everyone else is doing it" they might rule it back in...)

[w4cl]

For newscasts we use a prompter feed to a captioning encoder. For weather cut ins, we use a crawl that automatically updates all the pertinent information along with LOTS of live weather graphics of the weather. We use Weather Central product along with their Live:Wire master product that has radar and crawls and such that is updated automatically by NWS along with the master control crawl system being updated via the internet where needed so this way you only need one master control op and one weather person to do a major weather cut in. The weather center has a camera fixed mounted and timed into the master switcher and the master control op can switch between the camera and the weather computer (via a frame sync) as the weather person calls for it and with the Live:Wire running crawls and radar and such, there is PLENTY of info on the screen. For programs that require captioning, as we record the posted show to the server, we run it through production control so the prompter system can caption the program.

Little clumsy, but it works.

[rockmanac]

We caption everything *except* tornado warnings using the control room & prompter. So it takes 3 people do do a cut-in. Director, Audio/Camera, & Producer. (Though it works better if we have an MCO as well as audio/camera...so that person doesn't have to do both.) The producer will copy / paste the NWS warnings off of iNews and scroll them on the prompter. For tornado warnings, we have a stand-by, emergency captioning service.

We had been using something called CaptionMic with someone operating it, but well, they were canned in round 1 of layoffs.

-Adam

[w9wi]

For newscasts we use a prompter feed to a captioning encoder. For weather cut ins, we use a crawl that automatically updates all the pertinent information along with LOTS of live weather graphics of the weather. We use Weather Central product along with their Live:Wire master product that has radar and crawls and such that is updated automatically by NWS along with the master control crawl system being updated via the internet where needed so this way you only need one master control op and one weather person to do a major weather cut in. The weather center has a camera fixed mounted and timed into the master switcher and the master control op can switch between the camera and the weather computer (via a frame sync) as the weather person calls for it and with the Live:Wire running crawls and radar and such, there is PLENTY of info on the screen. For programs that require captioning, as we record the posted show to the server, we run it through production control so the prompter system can caption the program.

Little clumsy, but it works.

So your caption encoder is located between production control and MCR.

You don't caption the weather cutins then, you rely on the WxC graphics which everyone sees whether their caption decoder is turned on or not..

Makes sense from here.
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We caption everything *except* tornado warnings using the control room & prompter. So it takes 3 people do do a cut-in. Director, Audio/Camera, & Producer. (Though it works better if we have an MCO as well as audio/camera...so that person doesn't have to do both.) The producer will copy / paste the NWS warnings off of iNews and scroll them on the prompter. For tornado warnings, we have a stand-by, emergency captioning service.

And again it looks like your encoder is wired between the control room and MCR. (this is where I would certainly expect it should go!)

We had been using something called CaptionMic with someone operating it, but well, they were canned in round 1 of layoffs.

I'm curious how well CaptionMic worked. My previous boss & I reviewed it and another similar product at NAB two years ago. One of them, they couldn't get the demo working..... The other one worked REALLY REALLY well. As in, my boss frightened the heck out of the salesguy by grabbing his microphone, handing it to me along with a copy of the Las Vegas newspaper, and having me read one of the stories. It got it about 90% right -- having never heard my voice or the material being read before. Unfortunately I can't remember whether it was CaptionMic that worked that well -- or the other product.

The salesguy was telling customers they needed a dedicated reader for the captions but it sure looked to me like you could just hook the weather guy's mike to the input & it would work fine...
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Problem we've got... we had to wire our encoder downstream from MCR, so we could caption the weather cutins without having to use the control room. (because before captioning of cutins was required, a previous engineer agreed to put the weather gear and weather mike on the MCR switcher so they wouldn't have to call in a TD to run it through production control. We now believe we're required by law to caption everything the weather guy says during cutins. )

But then, when we record, say, a cooking program at 10am, the prompter rolls -- and the cooking program captions go over the soap opera. Not good.

The cooking program records too close to the noon news to roll it back through production control to add captions. (and it airs immediately after the news)

We've ended up instructing the prompter operators to disable captioning (there's a menu option) while doing recordings. I just *know* they're going to forget.....
=============================================================================================================

I wonder if... there exists a plugin for Avid Newscutter... to add captions in the editing process?

[rockmanac]

We caption everything *except* tornado warnings using the control room & prompter. So it takes 3 people do do a cut-in. Director, Audio/Camera, & Producer. (Though it works better if we have an MCO as well as audio/camera...so that person doesn't have to do both.) The producer will copy / paste the NWS warnings off of iNews and scroll them on the prompter. For tornado warnings, we have a stand-by, emergency captioning service.

And again it looks like your encoder is wired between the control room and MCR. (this is where I would certainly expect it should go!)

We had been using something called CaptionMic with someone operating it, but well, they were canned in round 1 of layoffs.

I'm curious how well CaptionMic worked. My previous boss & I reviewed it and another similar product at NAB two years ago. One of them, they couldn't get the demo working..... The other one worked REALLY REALLY well. As in, my boss frightened the heck out of the salesguy by grabbing his microphone, handing it to me along with a copy of the Las Vegas newspaper, and having me read one of the stories. It got it about 90% right -- having never heard my voice or the material being read before. Unfortunately I can't remember whether it was CaptionMic that worked that well -- or the other product.

The salesguy was telling customers they needed a dedicated reader for the captions but it sure looked to me like you could just hook the weather guy's mike to the input & it would work fine...

Yes. Ours is wired between Production Control and Master Control. I needs to be that way because we produce news for Fox 47 and their Master Control is physically located across town from our studio. We send them a feed over fiber and they just switch between that and their commercials.

This is also why Sunday Mass has to pass through the control room before going to air. (Waiting for the day someone fills in for me on a Saturday and doesn't leave TSL1 up on the switcher at the end of the night.)

Problem we've got... we had to wire our encoder downstream from MCR, so we could caption the weather cutins without having to use the control room. (because before captioning of cutins was required, a previous engineer agreed to put the weather gear and weather mike on the MCR switcher so they wouldn't have to call in a TD to run it through production control. We now believe we're required by law to caption everything the weather guy says during cutins. )

All emergency information and calls for action have to be captioned, if I recall correctly. Theoretically a weather cut-in can be done from our Master Control as a last resort, but it won't be captioned.

But then, when we record, say, a cooking program at 10am, the prompter rolls -- and the cooking program captions go over the soap opera. Not good.

The cooking program records too close to the noon news to roll it back through production control to add captions. (and it airs immediately after the news)

We've ended up instructing the prompter operators to disable captioning (there's a menu option) while doing recordings. I just *know* they're going to forget.....

Isn't there a way to put in a switch to say where the captioning's destination is... over air or to a VTR?

I wonder if... there exists a plugin for Avid Newscutter... to add captions in the editing process?

http://www.avid.com/us/partners/viewPartner.aspx?p=29&k=closed%20captioning&pg=1

-Adam

[w9wi]

All emergency information and calls for action have to be captioned, if I recall correctly. Theoretically a weather cut-in can be done from our Master Control as a last resort, but it won't be captioned.

That's certainly what we believe. That rule hasn't been around forever though, and unfortunately we set up the ability to run emergency info through MCR *before* the requirement was established -- and now can't lose that ability...

Isn't there a way to put in a switch to say where the captioning's destination is... over air or to a VTR?

You could put switches on either side of the encoder to switch it between the MCR switcher and the control-room switcher. However, they'd have to be HD switches (we don't have any nor the budget to buy them) and someone would have to switch them.

I wonder if... there exists a plugin for Avid Newscutter... to add captions in the editing process?

http://www.avid.com/us/partners/viewPartner.aspx?p=29&k=closed%20captioning&pg=1
[/quote]

Despite searching avid.com for "closed captioning" I hadn't seen that one.....

But it's not really what I was looking for. It looks (http://www.softni.com/pdf/SoftNI%20Subtitler%20Suite%202003.pdf) like what this software does is spit out text on a COM port (or maybe Ethernet?) to be sent to a hardware caption encoder - apparently you can tie anchors in your text to the Avid timeline so the text gets captioned at the right time, but you have to have external hardware to actually insert the captions.

I found several other products that do the same thing.

But somewhat to my surprise, I can't find any that include a software caption encoder. Is it possible the IEEE-1394 interface ("firewire") simply won't pass Line 21???

[w4cl]

For newscasts we use a prompter feed to a captioning encoder. For weather cut ins, we use a crawl that automatically updates all the pertinent information along with LOTS of live weather graphics of the weather. We use Weather Central product along with their Live:Wire master product that has radar and crawls and such that is updated automatically by NWS along with the master control crawl system being updated via the internet where needed so this way you only need one master control op and one weather person to do a major weather cut in. The weather center has a camera fixed mounted and timed into the master switcher and the master control op can switch between the camera and the weather computer (via a frame sync) as the weather person calls for it and with the Live:Wire running crawls and radar and such, there is PLENTY of info on the screen. For programs that require captioning, as we record the posted show to the server, we run it through production control so the prompter system can caption the program.

Little clumsy, but it works.

So your caption encoder is located between production control and MCR.

You don't caption the weather cutins then, you rely on the WxC graphics which everyone sees whether their caption decoder is turned on or not..

Makes sense from here.

Yes, we have a captioning encoder between production and master for regular newscast captioning. Since WxC has everything needed in a graphic form, including ETA of storm arrivals and real time radar expected paths and tracks, we only real time caption if we go live through production control and it is over an extended period of time where we move from an immediate storm coverage via master control to extended aftermath coverage via production control. We only use the master only mode for weekends and overnights when we don't have a crew in house. We do 8 hours a day of news so between 4am and 11:30pm we have a full crew here, including news people. If things heat up over the weekend, we would call in a crew to go live through production anyway. Master mode is a stop gap while we setup for full wall-to-wall coverage.