FOXTEL

GUIDE FOR CLOSED CAPTIONING – QUALITY CHECKING

THIS DOCUMENT SHOULD BE PLACED IN EACH 800 EDIT SUITE AND A COPY GIVEN TO EACH EDITOR UNDERTAKING CLOSED CAPTIONING EMBEDDING

WHAT ARE CLOSED CAPTIONS?

Closed Captions are designed to make a television programmeaccessible to someone who cannot hear the soundtrackwhile preserving the television experience. Captions are not designed to fully replicate the script, include every word or even every. This is not always possible. Captions should:

  • Indicate who is speaking (either using placement or colour)
  • Including sound effects that are relevant to the storyline (eg “DOOR SLAMS”)
  • Not destroy the viewing experience– hearing impaired viewers have chosen to watch TV, not read a book. This often means leaving out non-critical dialogue if speech is particularly fast or the visual content on-screen is critical.

WHAT IS A CAPTIONING ERROR?

It is an errorif the captions do not make the programme accessible or worse, mislead a viewer who cannot hear the dialogue. The following are the major captioning errors:

  1. No captions on a segment
  2. Incorrect/inaccurate captions on a segment
  3. A summary caption is misleading eg. Dialogue:“inflammable”. Caption: “not flammable”
  4. Captions are consistently and significantly out of time (always late or always early by more than 2 seconds)

REPORTING CAPTIONING ERRORS: Editors should report to the Captioning Coordinator any errors they find with the captioning at a particular timecodeand specify which of the 4 error types the error corresponds to or detail how the error would mislead a viewer

WHAT IS NOT A CAPTIONING ERROR?

The following are unlikely to be errors unless they also satisfy the error test above:

  1. Some captions out of time: When faster dialogue occurs next to slower paced dialogue, the captioner may optimise reading speed and sacrifice timing. It should be clear who has said what.
  2. Words or whole sentences missing: To allow the viewer to also enjoy the visual dimension of the television programme, captioners may omit non-essential dialogue.Reading speed guidelines vary from 60 words per minute (for young children) to 180 words per minute.
  3. Someone’s lips were moving but there was no caption: Not an error.
  4. A character’s colour changed from blue to white: Not an error. There are only 4 colours available for captions: white, cyan, yellow and green.Captioners do their best to maintain consistency of colour for each character, however, with more than 4 characters, this can be impossible. It should be clear who is speaking.
  5. The word is misspelled and written phonetically: Captions must also convey the style of speech – deliberate misspelling can be very effective and is not an error eg. (cowboy accent) “Howdy, pardner.”
  6. The style of captioning is completely different between 2 episodes: To keep costs low, FOXTEL sources its caption files from a variety of different caption suppliers worldwide. Some are all in white and in caps, some in mixed case and coloured. Variation in styles is acceptable.
  7. Off-camera conversation: The > sign is acceptable in captioning. It means the person speaking is off-camera (to the right) < means off-camera (to the left).

How To Record Faults - when you encounter the fault type on the left, note them as follows (add any additional information that may help diagnose each
fault as required):
Spelling - / Coronation Street / Ep 6828 / (2941831) / @ 06:16 "If you're the lead like Kenzie" should be "If you're the lead like Kenzie"
Out of sync - / Chuck / Ep 2002 / (3175801) / @ 07:53 Captions come in too early - should come in @ 07:56
Missing caption - / South Park / Ep 5007 / (1313151) / @ 03:04 "Don't you guys know anything" not captioned
Blocking - / Boys Weekend / Ep 1011 / (3137571) / @ 10:30 Captions cover text
Stray caption - / Holby City / Ep 92026 / (3207371) / @ 40:47-40-51 Incorrect captions. Should be @ 40:47 "That's your mom" @ 40:48 "She's hot"
Tape - / Coronation Street / Ep 6823 / (2941481) / @ 02:22 Audio Glitch
STL - / Gilmore Girls / Ep 7003 / (3095271) / File starts at 00:23 instead of 01:31