Hello, all:

 Our museum frequently plays short introductory videos related to exhibitions,
most often in a space where people are moving through, rustling, and making
other noise. It's not practical to isolate the viewing area or operate the
equipment so that people come and go only between programs. It can be hard to
hear, and there are limits on the volume we can use without disturbing other
visitors.

 We get fairly frequent requests from visitors to provide on-screen captioning
(not sure if this would be considered "closed captions" in the technical
sense, since not broadcast or decoded, but that's the general idea). The tapes
we use are mostly commercial or non-profit produced, but none are produced by
us. I assume there would be copyright implications to altering the programs,
even if we identified the means to transcribe the soundtracks and dub the
captions onto the tapes; but I would hope most producers would permit this for
our purposes. Most of the programs we run are around 30 minutes long, and we
use VHS equipment; we have no studio or dubbing equipment of our own.

 Has anyone tried this? Can anyone help us figure out how hard/expensive it
would be?

 Thanks in advance.

 David A. Penney
 Exhibitions Manager
 The Baltimore Museum of Art

 E-mail from:
 David A. Penney in Baltimore, Maryland
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 19-Dec-1996