# Closed Captioning Errors Thread



## HTH (Aug 28, 2000)

I'm not hard of hearing, but I like watching shows with the closed captioning turned on. Sometimes you spot things like dialog that was changed, altered locations and times, alternate musical cues like a song that didn't get clearances before airtime and was replaced with another.

But sometimes, and far too frequently these days, you encounter unforgivable errors, such as dialog from an episode of _Torchwood_ where "Haulage" was spelled "Hollidge" up until it was printed on the side of a lorry, and "abattoir" as "apatow", or a courtroom drama where rights or readings are "waved" instead of "waived".

Tonight, I bring you a bit of dialogue from _Castle_ "When the Bough Breaks" at about 5 minutes into the show. (Original captions were ALL CAPS, adjusted for readability here.)


> You know how the Mayor feels about Castle. If the man is going to write another book about you--
> 
> I am _not_ Nikki Heat, sir.
> 
> Yeah. Well, uh, *Hizzoner* expects your cooperation either way.


The correct words would be "His Honor". "Mayor Hizzoner" would be a pun, and a possibly racist one at that.

You can forgive some mistakes as problems transcribing a live or non-scripted show where captions are stenotyped, painted on and scrolled, but for scripted programming with prepared splash-on captions, there's every opportunity to get it right.

According to the captions on the title card, this episode was "Captioned by Closed Captioning Services, Inc."

I open this thread for other reports of closed captions that disagree with actual dialogue or proper grammar, spelling, or punctuation (such as the continually encroaching hyphenations with an adverb ending in -ly like you _don't_ see in this parenthetical phrase). Maybe even also technical problems if endemic (such as with original captioning of series like _M.A.N.T.I.S._, _Highlander_, and more recently _Supernatural_ save the latest episode).


----------



## BriGuy20 (Aug 4, 2005)

I remember that Gilmore Girls' closed captioning couldn't keep up with their incessant blathering. They just didn't put everything they said to each other.


----------



## Kablemodem (May 26, 2001)

Closed Captioning doesn't even work on my S3s. I get a few words, and then it quits. A few more, and it quits again.


----------



## Unbeliever (Feb 3, 2001)

hizzoner was deliberate. That's the slang, especially with a New York accent, and no racism intended.

It's even in the dictionary:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hizzoner

Another similar slang is Chicago Mayor Daley being referred to as "Da Mare". That's the local accent.

--Carlos V.


----------



## ewolfr (Feb 12, 2001)

I wonder if trainman will see this thread and drop in to give his POV on the subject.


----------



## LifeIsABeach (Feb 28, 2001)

Kablemodem said:


> Closed Captioning doesn't even work on my S3s. I get a few words, and then it quits. A few more, and it quits again.


Do you have the on-screen clock turned on? There is a known bug with that and CC. Every time you do anything such as change programs, bring up the TiVo Guide, etc it will turn off close captioning even though it still says it is on. You need to turn it off and back on again. Aside from this CC works fine on my S3.


----------



## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

Unbeliever said:


> hizzoner was deliberate. That's the slang, especially with a New York accent, and no racism intended.
> 
> It's even in the dictionary:
> 
> ...


This. There are lots of mistakes in closed captioning, and I'm glad this thread was started so I'll have somewhere to post them. But Hizzoner was not a mistake. That's a perfectly acceptable word.


----------



## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

ewolfr said:


> I wonder if trainman will see this thread and drop in to give his POV on the subject.


Yeah, doesn't he do that as a job? EDIT: He was last employed as a captioner in '05.

I am hard of hearing and use CCs on any non-sports programming. When it's a live show, it can always be a challenge for the captioner, so I cut them some slack.


----------



## Kablemodem (May 26, 2001)

LifeIsABeach said:


> Do you have the on-screen clock turned on?


I didn't even know there was an on-screen clock, so no. It just doesn't work properly for me.


----------



## nirisahn (Nov 19, 2005)

I'm always surprised at some of the mistakes in non-live shows. I can understand mistakes during live shows, because either the speech to text software screws up or the transcriber can't type fast enough to correct typos. But glaring mistakes in taped shows don't make sense. They have the time to get it right before it goes out to be aired.


----------



## HTH (Aug 28, 2000)

DevdogAZ said:


> This. There are lots of mistakes in closed captioning, and I'm glad this thread was started so I'll have somewhere to post them. But Hizzoner was not a mistake. That's a perfectly acceptable word.


Yeah, I just thought of searching for it on Google a few minutes ago. Apparently it is a perfectly cromulent word in New York City. (I was struck that that spelling was repeated at the end of the show. I'd fallen asleep due to the late hour and missed it.)


----------



## Havana Brown (Feb 3, 2005)

Thank you!! I've been thinking about posting this topic for a while, but I keep forgetting. 

Hizzoner. giggle.


----------



## Honora (Oct 16, 2006)

With a weekly series the captioning company could be working under a short deadline, but I can't believe that somebody doesn't proof-read the captions afterward. 

I saw the most unforgivable mess in a documentary on PBS of all places. It was in a biography of Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, the New Zealand opera star. Mis-spellings, and just plain wrong words abounded. For example, "she was born of a Maori father and English mother" became "she was born of a married father and English mother".


----------



## trainman (Jan 29, 2001)

I happen to have a former colleague who works for Closed Captioning Services, Inc., and who may very well have been the one to caption that episode of "Castle."



Honora said:


> With a weekly series the captioning company could be working under a short deadline, but I can't believe that somebody doesn't proof-read the captions afterward.


Believe it. Ideally, the captioner checks their own work after they finish, but there's usually not a second pair of eyes to proofread. (Captioning is a situation where the choice is "fast, cheap, perfectly correct -- pick two." Perhaps you can guess which two the networks/production companies usually pick.)


----------



## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

trainman said:


> Ideally, the captioner checks their own work after they finish, but there's usually not a second pair of eyes to proofread. (Captioning is a situation where the choice is "fast, cheap, perfectly correct -- pick two." Perhaps you can guess which two the networks/production companies usually pick.)


And that really trips them up when you run into domain specific acronyms or terminology.

If the captioner doesn't happen to be familar with that domain (computer technology, military, engines, etc) they're left to make a best guess at what they heard. (scuzzy instead of SCSI for example) And without the time or money to run their guess by someone who'd know the cannonical form you get obvious mistakes. (At least obvious to those who have some familiarity with that domain)


----------



## sieglinde (Aug 11, 2002)

I have seen some pretty scuzzy ports in my life time.


----------



## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Jonathan_S said:


> And that really trips them up when you run into domain specific acronyms or terminology.


Yes, they really need to get poker-literate people to do CC for poker shows. I can't think of a specific example at the moment, but I see some fairly common errors -- sometimes when people are talking over each other, but with a bit of poker knowledge it's easy to figure out what they really said.



nirisahn said:


> I'm always surprised at some of the mistakes in non-live shows. I can understand mistakes during live shows, because either the speech to text software screws up or the transcriber can't type fast enough to correct typos. But glaring mistakes in taped shows don't make sense. They have the time to get it right before it goes out to be aired.


The "live" captioning is cheaper than the non-live captioning. Talk shows get live captioning (I'm not sure if it's physically live during the East Coast airing for example, or if they get it between the ~5:30 taping and ~11:35 airing). It also has more mistakes.



Kablemodem said:


> Closed Captioning doesn't even work on my S3s. I get a few words, and then it quits. A few more, and it quits again.


Good, someone else is having at least *A* problem. I thought I was the only one.. and I was starting to wonder if it was due to the fact that I have an amplifier on my cable signal. But no, it is MUCH MUCH more prevalent on the NBC shows, than other channels. Though I admit I don't have a distribution figured out for how much I record NBC vs other channels. (I absolutely do see it sometimes on ABC recordings for example.)

What I see is the intended captions mixed in with the *show's title* over and over. I totally wonder if it's some form of guide data being interspersed with the real CC.

This is happening on analog channels. On my TivoHD, which has cablecards, captions show up much more reliably there.. Except on the Game Show Network, but High Stakes Poker is about the only thing I regularly watch there.. On High Stakes Poker episodes, the captions are still going *THROUGH THE COMMERCIALS*.. but the captions are from other High Stakes Poker episodes, or sometimes earlier in the same episode!!

once in a while, it's been captions for an entirely different episode too. This can't be my cable company, can it?


----------



## Havana Brown (Feb 3, 2005)

Can I get a job close captioning? Is it hard to do?


----------



## LlamaLarry (Apr 30, 2003)

HB, I am totally not stalking you, but I want in on this too.


----------



## plateau10 (Dec 11, 2007)

My favorite live CC blooper was during a football game, when they said the quarterback threw to the "intangible receiver".


----------



## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

mattack said:


> Good, someone else is having at least *A* problem. I thought I was the only one.. and I was starting to wonder if it was due to the fact that I have an amplifier on my cable signal. But no, it is MUCH MUCH more prevalent on the NBC shows, than other channels. Though I admit I don't have a distribution figured out for how much I record NBC vs other channels. (I absolutely do see it sometimes on ABC recordings for example.)
> 
> What I see is the intended captions mixed in with the *show's title* over and over. I totally wonder if it's some form of guide data being interspersed with the real CC.
> 
> ...


I don't have an S3 or TiVo HD, so perhaps I don't know what I'm talking about, but why are you using the CC decoder in the TiVo? Why not just use the CC decoder in your TV? That's what I do and it works great.


----------



## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

DevdogAZ said:


> I don't have an S3 or TiVo HD, so perhaps I don't know what I'm talking about, but why are you using the CC decoder in the TiVo? Why not just use the CC decoder in your TV? That's what I do and it works great.


I'm pretty sure that doesn't work when using a HD set-top-box, or at least when using an HD TiVo. You need to have your TiVo HD do the decoding and video overlay because it doesn't appear to have any way to pass the CC signal over HDMI or HD-Component for the TV to decode.


----------



## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

Jonathan_S said:


> I'm pretty sure that doesn't work when using a HD set-top-box, or at least when using an HD TiVo. You need to have your TiVo HD do the decoding and video overlay because it doesn't appear to have any way to pass the CC signal over HDMI or HD-Component for the TV to decode.


Gotcha. Which is why I said I might not know what I was talking about, and it appears that assumption was correct. Thanks for setting me straight.

So the real question is: Does the S3 suck at decoding CC information, or is the CC information on the digital channels not encoded as cleanly and ubiquitously as on the analog channels?


----------



## tewcewl (Dec 18, 2004)

DevdogAZ said:


> So the real question is: Does the S3 suck at decoding CC information, or is the CC information on the digital channels not encoded as cleanly and ubiquitously as on the analog channels?


This is what I'm curious about. This is why I haven't made the leap to HD yet. I have yet to see a really good HD closed captioning that satisfies me. There have been too many hoops to jump through that I've seen my friends do and the captions they have don't always look that great.

That said, what are the caption options on Blu-ray? Does it come with captioning or are subtitles used?


----------



## That Don Guy (Mar 13, 2003)

Havana Brown said:


> Can I get a job close captioning? Is it hard to do?


It depends. Live shows require "on the fly" captioning. Try playing a show you have recorded on TiVo, and typing in what is being said onto, say, Microsoft Word or WordPad as they say it. How far behind the audio are you? That should be a good measure of how hard it would be.

Here is an eHow article about getting captioning jobs. Something tells me that supply outweighs demand, especially in this economy.

-- Don


----------



## LoadStar (Jul 24, 2001)

DevdogAZ said:


> Gotcha. Which is why I said I might not know what I was talking about, and it appears that assumption was correct. Thanks for setting me straight.
> 
> So the real question is: Does the S3 suck at decoding CC information, or is the CC information on the digital channels not encoded as cleanly and ubiquitously as on the analog channels?


I have no real issues with CC on my TiVoHD... so if there's a problem, it's unique to the S3.


----------



## BobB (Aug 26, 2002)

LoadStar said:


> I have no real issues with CC on my TiVoHD... so if there's a problem, it's unique to the S3.


Actually I'm, pretty sure the aforementioned "clock or CC, not both" bug applies to the HD as well as the S3. Your on-screen clock is probably turned off, so you see no CC problems.

As for the captions themselves, they are part of the overall MPEG Transport Stream metadata included with both SD and HD versions of any given program, there should be no difference between them (certainly no difference relating to the program being in HD format per se).


----------



## DianaMo (Oct 22, 2003)

Check out the screen shots of the closed captioning here:

*Daredevil Movie (When closed captioning goes bad...)*
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=301181


----------



## trainman (Jan 29, 2001)

Jonathan_S said:


> If the captioner doesn't happen to be familar with that domain (computer technology, military, engines, etc) they're left to make a best guess at what they heard. (scuzzy instead of SCSI for example) And without the time or money to run their guess by someone who'd know the cannonical form you get obvious mistakes. (At least obvious to those who have some familiarity with that domain)


Yep -- the ideal captioner is probably the same kind of person who would do well on "Jeopardy!", someone who knows a fair amount about a lot of different subjects. Unfortunately, many of these people won't work for the relatively low salaries paid by closed-captioning companies.



mattack said:


> Talk shows get live captioning (I'm not sure if it's physically live during the East Coast airing for example, or if they get it between the ~5:30 taping and ~11:35 airing).


Since you mention those times specifically: I can tell you from personal experience that the captions for the late-night talk shows (at least those on CBS and NBC, not sure about Jimmy Kimmel) are not being done live; they're prepared in advance. Any errors are the result of the fact that the captions are being prepared based on an audio feed, over the phone line, of the taping of the show, and not very much material is available in advance for the captioners -- the lyrics for the musical guest, and _maybe_ a show rundown, but that's it.



That Don Guy said:


> Live shows require "on the fly" captioning. Try playing a show you have recorded on TiVo, and typing in what is being said onto, say, Microsoft Word or WordPad as they say it. How far behind the audio are you? That should be a good measure of how hard it would be.


This is not really a fair comparison, since live captioners are using stenographic keyboards (i.e., a court reporter's machine).



Havana Brown said:


> Can I get a job close captioning? Is it hard to do?


Not too hard to do "offline" captioning, which is the kind I used to do. But see my note above about the salary. (Here are the exact job requirements for my former position.)

For live captioning, it requires several years of court reporter school -- and you have to be one of the best in your class, since people talk faster on TV, and about a much wider variety of subjects, than they do in court. (Salaries are much better here.)

For the kind of captioning I did, picture spending an entire 8-hour workday going line-by-line through a crappy reality show, having to type in every single word someone says, and then timing out the words so they'll appear on the screen at exactly the right time. I wouldn't call it _hard,_ but it can get tedious -- and it can occasionally be frustrating when you can't figure out what someone is saying, worried that someone on some message board somewhere will be complaining about the captions later. 

If you're serious, one tip I have is that they will give you a test on English spelling and grammar...and my first lesson for you is that it's "close*d* captioning," not "close."


----------



## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

DevdogAZ said:


> I don't have an S3 or TiVo HD, so perhaps I don't know what I'm talking about, but why are you using the CC decoder in the TiVo? Why not just use the CC decoder in your TV? That's what I do and it works great.


I'm using the one in the Tivo because it's more convenient to turn on and off. Also, the built in closed captioning works more reliably (ignoring the previous issue) in 1FF mode.. Yeah, for some game shows, I skim through at 1FF, but leave CC on.

Note I am actually using this on an old CRT (obviously non-HD, 4:3) TV.


----------



## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

trainman said:


> Since you mention those times specifically: I can tell you from personal experience that the captions for the late-night talk shows (at least those on CBS and NBC, not sure about Jimmy Kimmel) are not being done live; they're prepared in advance. Any errors are the result of the fact that the captions are being prepared based on an audio feed, over the phone line, of the taping of the show, and not very much material is available in advance for the captioners -- the lyrics for the musical guest, and _maybe_ a show rundown, but that's it.


Do you mean they actually *go back* and correct errors? That's what I mean by "live captioning". I thought that was the term used. On talk show closed captions, I definitely see them sometimes correct themselves, something like:
>Dave: I went to the stower
-- store



trainman said:


> For the kind of captioning I did, picture spending an entire 8-hour workday going line-by-line through a crappy reality show, having to type in every single word someone says, and then timing out the words so they'll appear on the screen at exactly the right time. I wouldn't call it _hard,_ but it can get tedious -- and it can occasionally be frustrating when you can't figure out what someone is saying, worried that someone on some message board somewhere will be complaining about the captions later.


But it's funny why *I* can figure out what they're saying/trying to say, but the closed captioner can't.

I honestly don't remember the exact instance, but either last night or the night before, I went back about 5 times before I figured out the word that they were saying (the captioning was wrong). Heck, sometimes I'll set a chapter mark (not on my Tivo of course) and go back to try to figure something out again after I've watched the show, right before I delete it. Missing a word/phrase bugs me!


----------



## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

LoadStar said:


> I have no real issues with CC on my TiVoHD... so if there's a problem, it's unique to the S3.


I have a Series 3 (not HD, but original S3), and the CC works very well. I have three other inputs: DirecTV, a cableco HD-DVR box and OTA antenna to compare against. The vast majority of glitches are also on the others.

Now, having said that... one channel here (Houston) is terrible. The local CBS affiliate has some serious CC problems. (KHOU, Channel 11, 11-1 OTA digital, 611 Comcast, yada yada).

* Missing sentences. About 1 of every 4-6 sentences is missing.

*Lots (and lots and lots) of double letters missing (yes, I'm familiar with how captions use dbl letters to transmit).

*Overlap of captions. Part of a sentence will remain on the screen as the next set of captions get displayed.

*No caption display for a sentence, then all of a sudden, two sentences will appear back to back, within a 1/2 second or so.

This is evident on all four sources. Even the DirecTV feed, which is at our weekend home 75 miles away, displays the exact same caption problems on this one channel. And yes, it's the same local channel it is retransmitting.

The other channels--ABC, NBC, Fox--have extremely minor caption problems; nothing beyond the expected. An occasional missing dbl letter, not much else.

Why would this one channel have so many problems? Is it CBS local, or do others have this problem across the country?


----------



## taronga (Nov 16, 2006)

My favorite captioning glitches is when words are bleeped (as with films or premium cable shows that now show on basic cable), but no one bothered to change the captions accordingly!  When 'The Wire' aired on BET, _all_ those words were left in...



astrohip said:


> Why would this one channel have so many problems? Is it CBS local, or do others have this problem across the country?


My ABC station (WTVQ, Lexington KY) has had the exact same problems ever since they went HD. At first I thought it was just the cable company mangling the signal, but I've checked OTA and it's exactly the same.


----------



## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

mattack said:


> But it's funny why *I* can figure out what they're saying/trying to say, but the closed captioner can't.
> 
> I honestly don't remember the exact instance, but either last night or the night before, I went back about 5 times before I figured out the word that they were saying (the captioning was wrong).


That reminds me of a captioning error in the musical episode of Buffy. (At least on the TV broadcast, I never checked to see if it was correct on DVD)

Correct: WILLOW: "I think this line's mostly filler"
Captioned: WILLOW: "I think this line's mostly fear"


----------



## Havana Brown (Feb 3, 2005)

trainman said:


> my first lesson for you is that it's "close*d* captioning," not "close."


Duh!! I should have known that too. In my Deaf Culture class we talked a little about open captions.


----------



## trainman (Jan 29, 2001)

mattack said:


> Do you mean they actually *go back* and correct errors? That's what I mean by "live captioning". I thought that was the term used. On talk show closed captions, I definitely see them sometimes correct themselves, something like:
> >Dave: I went to the stower
> -- store


Hmm, based on that, maybe they do "Late Show with David Letterman" captions live.

But it would definitely be a very unusual event for the NBC late-night shows to have live captioning like that, something on the order of a technical glitch with the audio feed of the tapings (which never happened in the time I was working on them).



> But it's funny why *I* can figure out what they're saying/trying to say, but the closed captioner can't.


The audio on your TV usually sounds much better than what the captioners are hearing: the captioners get a mono mix of the audio, and it's often not completely finished. Sometimes the music is too loud, sometimes the sound effects are too loud, sometimes they haven't finished the audio editing and caption viewers get a bonus when there's dialogue that was cut out at the last minute.


----------



## JLucPicard (Jul 8, 2004)

I always had to turn the captioning off on the Tonight Show when Leno was on it because it would wind up being a mix of English and Spanish with no rhyme or reason - pretty much useless.


----------



## trainman (Jan 29, 2001)

JLucPicard said:


> I always had to turn the captioning off on the Tonight Show when Leno was on it because it would wind up being a mix of English and Spanish with no rhyme or reason - pretty much useless.


Sounds like a problem with your TV and/or cable/satellite receiver, where it was mixing the two different "fields" that were being used for the English and the Spanish captions.


----------



## JLucPicard (Jul 8, 2004)

DirecTV HR20s. I use closed captioning quite a bit, and that's the only show I can remember it doing that. I don't disagree that something is messed up in the pipeline somewhere, but I don't see that with other programs - even other programs on NBC.


----------



## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

JLucPicard said:


> I always had to turn the captioning off on the Tonight Show when Leno was on it because it would wind up being a mix of English and Spanish with no rhyme or reason - pretty much useless.


Heh, I forgot that. Maybe I've gotten used to it. (I know I have mentioned it in other threads.)

I was seeing that for a VERY long time, and don't remember if it's still happening -- the thing I NOTICE now is what I mentioned previously -- the title of the show being repeated over and over garbled within the captions.


----------



## DianaMo (Oct 22, 2003)

Do sporting events usually offer closed captions?


----------



## DianaMo (Oct 22, 2003)

One of the things I really like about the Larry King show is that they offer an online transcript on their website from each show.

I suspect its just their closed captions saved and uploaded to a webpage, but I think it is a fantastic idea and more talk shows should offer this on their website.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/lkl.html

I'd like to see transcripts from sporting events too. As a Cubs fan I enjoy hearing stories about the players of the past and if I'm researching a topic it would be so helpful to have those stories available online instead of simply telecasted and then lost to the airwaves.


----------



## Mispelld (May 6, 2009)

plateau10 said:


> My favorite live CC blooper was during a football game, when they said the quarterback threw to the "intangible receiver".


Must've been a Tampa Bay Bucs game. All their receivers are intangible.


----------



## tiassa (Jul 2, 2008)

Jonathan_S said:


> And that really trips them up when you run into domain specific acronyms or terminology.
> If the captioner doesn't happen to be familar with that domain (computer technology, military, engines, etc) they're left to make a best guess at what they heard. (scuzzy instead of SCSI for example) And without the time or money to run their guess by someone who'd know the cannonical form you get obvious mistakes. (At least obvious to those who have some familiarity with that domain)


My favorite example of this was during a Horse Racing broadcast, the captioner was referring to the Stable name of the Sheik of Dubai, which is named for the Godolphin Arabian (one of the foundation sires of Thoroughbreds -- along with the Byerley Turk and Darley Arabian), it kept turning up as "Go Dolphin Stables"


----------



## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

DianaMo said:


> Do sporting events usually offer closed captions?


Almost all of the major channels (OTA & cable) CC their live sports.

And it's one of the only things I can watch *without* captions.


----------



## BobB (Aug 26, 2002)

Watched episode 2 of the Monty Python documentary series with CC on last night and it was so bad it was almost funnier than the show itself. They even managed to get the names of some of the Pythons wrong! It looked like it was done by an American with no concept of Britishisms and no ear for British accents.


----------



## tewcewl (Dec 18, 2004)

BobB said:


> Watched episode 2 of the Monty Python documentary series with CC on last night and it was so bad it was almost funnier than the show itself. They even managed to get the names of some of the Pythons wrong! It looked like it was done by an American with no concept of Britishisms and no ear for British accents.


I did notice that last night when I watched it.

I.E., "Black Hatter" for "Black Adder."

I'm curious about my previous question about Blu-ray. Are captions available on this or is it just a subtitle stream that's turned on from the player?


----------



## trainman (Jan 29, 2001)

BobB said:


> Watched episode 2 of the Monty Python documentary series with CC on last night and it was so bad it was almost funnier than the show itself. They even managed to get the names of some of the Pythons wrong! It looked like it was done by an American with no concept of Britishisms and no ear for British accents.


And this is why, now that I no longer work as a closed captioner, I never watch captions. Too frustrating for me to see something like this -- especially when it's something like Monty Python, which I would know backwards and forwards. I have a feeling this is a "lowest bidder" situation. (It's Federal law that almost all TV shows, broadcast and cable, have to be closed-captioned...but the law says nothing about how accurately it has to be captioned.  )


----------



## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

tewcewl said:


> I'm curious about my previous question about Blu-ray. Are captions available on this or is it just a subtitle stream that's turned on from the player?


I don't have a BluRay player, but I can't imagine it's any different from DVDs -- there's got to be subtitles on the player.

If you connect *via composite*, you presumably would still get line 21 closed captioning.. The TV's closed captioning *cannot* be transmitted over HDMI.


----------



## tewcewl (Dec 18, 2004)

mattack said:


> The TV's closed captioning *cannot* be transmitted over HDMI.


I still can't believe that oversight when the technology was developed.


----------



## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

It wasn't any type of "oversight". HDMI is not a broadcast television system. It's a data transfer interface. Period. It could transfer *any *data.

With HDMI, the expectation is that the captions/subtitles are applied at the tuner or playback device. That's where the data is still television video, and so that's where it makes sense to expect that captioning/subtitles will be addressed.

The failure, therefore, is within *consumer electronic devices* that fail to support captions/subtitles adequately.


----------



## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Huh? Composite video isn't a "broadcast television system" either.. NTSC is.

It seems reasonable to me to have one captioning decoder (to rule them all)..

Then again, I will admit that generally(*), I use my Tivo's CC decoder because it is more convenient to turn on and off.

(*) except the other things I've said in this thread, like it doesn't seem to handle 'garbagey' captions quite as well as my TV's CC decoder.


----------



## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

Composite video does offer a bonus. With analog things worked differently. That doesn't mean that they were better, or (more importantly) that a *data* interface specification should be slaved to how a *television* protocol was defined decades earlier. As you said, there should be one decoder, and that decoder should be at the tuner or playback device, to parallel how subtitles work, i.e., overlaid onto the video *at the playback device*.


----------



## tewcewl (Dec 18, 2004)

Then I guess my biggest gripe with the Comcast boxes that I've seen my friends use is that they have to go in a secret menu (accessible by a special remote combo) to turn it on from their cable box because their HDTV can't encode it.


----------



## TanyaS (Jun 2, 2007)

My favorite "error" was deliberately done. A grocery store TV ad was describing a sale on beef. The picture was of cows running across a grassy meadow. The voice over said something like "This week, ground beef is on sale for $2.45 per pound." But the closed captioning read . . . 
"I'm going to die, oh my god, I'm going to die."

I laughed, and laughed, and rewound the ad, and laughed some more. Someone has a (my) sick sense of humor.


----------



## Gregor (Feb 18, 2002)

tewcewl said:


> Then I guess my biggest gripe with the Comcast boxes that I've seen my friends use is that they have to go in a secret menu (accessible by a special remote combo) to turn it on from their cable box because their HDTV can't encode it.


Just hit the Menu button while the power is "off". I say "off" because the box is never really powered down unless it's unplugged.

The equivalent FIOS boxes have CC in the regular menu with the rest of the settings for the box.

What I find especially frustrating is the lack of CC in streamed video. Hulu is about the only site I can think of that does have CC in it's content.

Very frustrating that Tivo keeps getting new video content, Amazon, Blockbuster, etc, and none of them have CC in their content.


----------



## Johncv (Jun 11, 2002)

Kablemodem said:


> Closed Captioning doesn't even work on my S3s. I get a few words, and then it quits. A few more, and it quits again.


Turn Digital Closed Captioning off. Work on my TiVo HD, I have no clue why this works.


----------



## Johncv (Jun 11, 2002)

DevdogAZ said:


> I don't have an S3 or TiVo HD, so perhaps I don't know what I'm talking about, but why are you using the CC decoder in the TiVo? Why not just use the CC decoder in your TV? That's what I do and it works great.


Not all HD TV pass the close caption thru HDMI port. Try turning off the digital close caption on the TiVo.


----------



## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

Those two sentences are unrelated. HDMI is a *data* transfer interface (*not* specifically a television-specific transfer interface), so it doesn't have any television-specific artifacts such as support for closed captioning. As a result, for HD, the rule is that closed caption decoding or application of subtitles happens at the tuner or playback device. However, from what I've read (I haven't encountered the problem), sometimes the digital closed caption stream is either empty or otherwise undecodable by the TiVo on playback. In such cases, folks have found a work-around by turning off the TiVo's support for the digital closed captioning and relying on analog closed captioning instead.


----------



## HTH (Aug 28, 2000)

Thursday's _Medium_ "Bite Me" had another example of sound not matching the captions. As Allison watches TV, there was this audio:


> Man in cooking show: "...throw them right into the pot that we cooked the chicken in."
> 
> Woman V.O. on a makeup/face cleanser commercial: "With all organic ingredients, of a--"
> 
> ...


and these captions accompanying it:


> MAN (on TV):
> _This one is nice and fresh,_
> but if this was all brown,
> you just simply want to...
> ...


As a bonus, the last scene has TiVo sound effects, though the depicted DVR display is decidedly not a TiVo. Though nice touch that was 6 minutes into a 7:00P recording in progress scheduled to end at 8:30P. Still, a network repeating the same movie over and over again for three days? It's not like it was the 1983 movie _A Christmas Story_.


----------



## hefe (Dec 5, 2000)

Jonathan_S said:


> And that really trips them up when you run into domain specific acronyms or terminology.
> 
> If the captioner doesn't happen to be familar with that domain (computer technology, military, engines, etc) they're left to make a best guess at what they heard. (scuzzy instead of SCSI for example) And without the time or money to run their guess by someone who'd know the cannonical form you get obvious mistakes. (At least obvious to those who have some familiarity with that domain)


Hmm. That's an interesting problem though...what is really correct in that example? If the person makes the sound "scuzzy" they are using a made up way to say an abbreviation. They are not saying SCSI. that would come out "S-C-S-I." Maybe the correct way is to just put "scuzzy" in quotes or something that hints it's not a literal word, and let the reader get the rest from the context of the sentence as the listener would have to do...


----------



## HTH (Aug 28, 2000)

hefe said:


> Hmm. That's an interesting problem though...what is really correct in that example? If the person makes the sound "scuzzy" they are using a made up way to say an abbreviation. They are not saying SCSI. that would come out "S-C-S-I." Maybe the correct way is to just put "scuzzy" in quotes or something that hints it's not a literal word, and let the reader get the rest from the context of the sentence as the listener would have to do...


Incidentally, the people who made up the abbreviation wanted it to be pronounced "sexy".

Having watched enough captions, there are some literary conventions held, such as if one character uses SCSI knowing what it means and another doesn't, the former would be captioned SCSI the other "scuzzy". Or say characters are talking about things called Chuds but it isn't revealed until later in the plot that CHUD is an acronym; then they're captioned as CHUDs, or C.H.U.D.s if it in all-caps captioning. But if a character spells out an acronym, it is C-H-U-D.

Some take it too far though and consistently call out the abbreviation with dots long after it is has passed into general knowledge that it isn't. For example, M.A.N.T.I.S. and D.A.R.Y.L., and counter-example, Tardis.


----------



## snixe (Jan 2, 2010)

I'm a retired English teacher, so you can imagine how I feel about about spelling and grammar errors in closed captioning. I am hard of hearing and I depend on CC, so it's doubly irritating for me.

One memorable CC error I encountered was on CBS' "Big Brother" where one of the contestants was named "Natalie." The captioner repeatedly spelled "Natalie" G-n-a-t-l-y. Now, I ask you....

I've lost count of the times the possessive pronoun "its" is written i-t-'-s, or "there" is spelled t-h-e-i-r, and vice versa.

There is no excuse for such errors.


----------



## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

snixe said:


> I'm a retired English teacher, so you can imagine how I feel about about spelling and grammar errors in closed captioning. I am hard of hearing and I depend on CC, so it's doubly irritating for me.
> 
> One memorable CC error I encountered was on CBS' "Big Brother" where one of the contestants was named "Natalie." The captioner repeatedly spelled "Natalie" G-n-a-t-l-y. Now, I ask you....
> 
> ...


While I'm not making excuses (since I'm anal about the same things!), if it's a live program, I can understand it. Recorded program, there is NO excuse.


----------



## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

I think it depends on how much money is spent on applying the closed captioning. In some cases, broadcasters spend the very least they can, by law, and we get commensurately crappy captions. Until we get our act together and get the government to establish measurable standards for quality of captions, then there is no reason to expect any level of quality.

And heck, I wouldn't even put that on the top of my list, right now. The incredibly speedy movement towards alternative means of video distribution (Netflix Watch instantly, Amazon Video On Demand, Hulu.com, etc.) prompts me to put the imposition of requirements for closed captioning on those services higher on my priority list than establishing quality standards on the existing services.


----------



## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

bicker said:


> ....The incredibly speedy movement towards alternative means of video distribution (Netflix Watch instantly, Amazon Video On Demand, Hulu.com, etc.) prompts me to put the imposition of requirements for closed captioning on those services higher on my priority list than establishing quality standards on the existing services.


Boy am I with you there, bicker. I just recently got hearing aids, so it's not as big a problem for me as it was, but for anyone who's hearing-impaired, this HAS to be a number 1 priority. I simply would NOT download any video that did not include CCs.


----------



## JLucPicard (Jul 8, 2004)

I'm not normally an O'Reilly watcher, but recorded a few of the "Best of" things that ran Christmas night. Finally got around to watching the segments with Glenn Beck (who I DO like) and he's talking about an oligarchy and the captioning reads "Allah Garky".

Talk about getting it wrong!!!


----------



## zuko3984 (May 4, 2002)

Bierboy said:


> While I'm not making excuses (since I'm anal about the same things!), if it's a live program, I can understand it. Recorded program, there is NO excuse.


A lot of times even though the show is not live the captioning is done live. I know where I work this happens a lot. We get a lot of recorded shows with no captioning that has to be live captioned. It's probably in the 25% range of recorded shows that have to be live captioned.


----------



## Honora (Oct 16, 2006)

I just came across an even harder closed captioning job. I happened to catch the news (in English) at my doctor's office and the closed captioning was in Spanish! Not only did this poor guy have to type quickly, he had to translate on the fly!


----------



## busyba (Feb 5, 2003)

JLucPicard said:


> I'm not normally an O'Reilly watcher, but recorded a few of the "Best of" things that ran Christmas night. Finally got around to watching the segments with Glenn Beck (who I DO like) and he's talking about an oligarchy and the captioning reads "Allah Garky".
> 
> Talk about getting it wrong!!!


If the captioner uses gibberish to caption the Glenn Beck show, would it even make a difference?


----------

