David Penney raises an interesting question; how hard can it be to add
captions to videotape.

David says that many commercial broadcasts are advertised as being closed
caption, but does not say that he has ever watched such a program while
also listening to the soundtrack.

I have watched closed caption programs, and in some ways, it is not unlike
watching a foreign movie with subtitles.  My personal favorite experience
with subtitles was watching a Japanese monster movie in Crete with Greek
subtitles.

But there is a very important difference between subtitles in a foreign
movie and closed caption instructional videotape.

A hearing person picks up audio cues to supplement the subtitles.  Tone of
voice, background noise, etc.  Movies are a re-telling of familiar stories
and our experience of having watched similar movies (or heard or read of
similar stories), with a sound track in our own language allows us to
follow the action without paying too much attention to those short lines of
text at the bottom of the screen.

Instructional videotapes are different.

It is not simply a matter of typing lines to be stored on disk to be
inserted as needed in a copy of a videotape.  That is the easy part; and it
is not the expensive part.

The expensive part is deciding which words to use to convey the sense of a
scene cogently and succintly.  The time spent reading text is time lost
viewing.  Granted, a hearing impaired person with a VCR and the tape can
view and review the tape many times.  Reading sometimes and viewing
sometimes.  Doesn't happen often in a gallery situation.

But how long is a scene?  How quickly do we incorporate visual information?

Here's an interesting exercise.  Count the number of cuts in, say, a dozen
commercials during prime time.  CNN, or other major broadcast news show.
MTV!

Now write the captions.

Watch a PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) special about something which
bores you.  That'll make it easier to write up a log comparing visual and
audio time.

I have produced, edited, scripted, and narrated a number of instructional
videotapes.  Off hand, I can only think of two which could have captions
added with a minimum of re-writing.  _Paper Cleaning: Wet & Dry Methods_ &
_Building a Medieval Papermill_.  The papermill tape has no narrative,
other than what occured on the soundtrack during recording.

Consider one more thing.  If you have permission to add captions, and have
access to the two VCRs and the character generator mentioned in an earlier
post, you will spend a certain amount of time writing out and then
analyzing the audio track.  Perhaps a committee of your peers will help you
in this work.

Keep track of your time(s).  Sum up the time(s), multiply those hours by
your compensation(s), including benefit packages (if any).

If you, or your colleagues, don't understand the subject matter, then an
outside specialist will have to be hired.  One who understands both the
subject matter and the need to fit words adequately explaining the subject
matter to the available time between cuts.

This is where the clock runs fast.

That is all I have to say concerning this matter.  Without compensation.  :-)

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

Jack


Jack C. Thompson

Thompson Conservation Lab.    Istor Productions     The Caber Press

7549 N. Fenwick
Portland, OR  97217

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