Captioning with Hi-Caption

The captioning points window

The Captioning Points Window displays the time, class, speaker, and caption content comprising the captions for your media file. The Time Start cell of the grid contains the starting time for each event. The Class cell defines the language of each caption. The Speaker cell defines the speaker of the dialogue and the Caption cell contains the actual transcription of the spoken words. Because long captions can be difficult to read, the Caption cell for each event should contain only one line of text (about eight to ten words).

Captioning from scratch

1) Before you can transcribe dialogue in Hi-Caption, you need to have caption events. To add caption events make sure the media player bar is at the starting point. You can also see if you are at the beginning of a clip by looking at the time elapsed box of the media player. It should read: 00:00.

You can add captions events to the grid in the Captioning Points window by either selecting the Add Current button or by using these keyboard shortcuts:

• Spacebar = Play and Pause: The built in media player (click near the play and pause buttons to activate the keyboard controls).
• F8 = Add Current: Places the current time being played on the timeline into the Time Start cell of the grid and creates a new row if you are working from scratch.
• F6 = Step Current: (For editing the time in a Time Start cell) Places the current time being played on the time line into the Time Start cell of the grid.

2 Start playing your media file by pressing the Spacebar key or clicking on the Play button in the media player.

3) Add caption events by pressing the F8 key or Add Current button. Add a new caption event each time someone new is speaking.

Your Captioning Points window should now contain several empty caption events. You now have space to transcribe the dialogue and speaker for each caption.

After you have transcribed a few lines, check your work by saving your file then selecting Player > Show Captioning. Your captions will then appear in the media player window.

After you have finished transcribing all the dialogue, you can edit any incorrect Time starts by using the Step Current button or by pressing F6 key on the keyboard.

Importing transcripts

Importing transcripts into Hi-Caption greatly speeds up the captioning process. After transcribing all the dialogue in a word processing program, save the transcript file as either a simple text file (.txt) or rich-text file (.rtf).

1) Open Hi-Caption and select your media file by selecting File > Open > Media File.

2) Click OK in the Information dialogue box

Now that you have a default SAMI file created, you are ready to import your existing transcript.

3) From the main menu items in the Captioning Points window select Tools > Import Wizard

4) The Import Wizard dialogue box should appear. In the Import Wizard dialogue box browse your computer for your transcript file by selecting the Ellipsis button.

After you have located your transcript file, the file name and directory path will appear in the File Name field of the Import Wizard.

5) After your selected file is displayed in the file name field, choose the Next button in the bottom of the Import Wizard dialogue box.

6) The Import Wizard should now display the Available Class Selection Options. The class selections define the language of the captions. The default for the United States is ENUSCC. This stands for English United States Closed Captioning. For this tutorial click the check box next to ENUSCC.

7) After you have selected a language class, click the Next button in the bottom of the Import Wizard dialogue box.

8) The Import Wizard should now display the Speaker Selection options. In this window you can define which classes (i.e. if you have more than one language) go with each speaker. In our case ENUSCC goes with Lisa because she speaks English.

Click the Next button

9) Now you should see the Caption Separation Options. Here you define how you want your transcript to be broken into caption events. You can define caption event breaks by either using line breaks or punctuation. In this tutorial we've selected line breaks to keep our captions small.

Click the Finish button to import your transcript and create caption events

You should now see your new caption events without Time Starts. You will notice in our imported text, the names, and captions show up in the Caption field of the grid. This technique saves space when the captions appear in the player window.

Now you are ready to add Time Starts to your caption events. These can be added by selecting the first event row in the grid and pressing the Step Current button or F6 on the keyboard. You already have the caption event rows you need, so the Step Current button/F6 Key simply adds Time Starts in the grid as you pause and play the media file.

After you have added Time Starts, Language Classes, Speaker information and Captions to your file, save your work by selecting File > Save from the Captioning Points window.

RealPlayer

To save your SAMI files as SMIL/RealText files for RealPlayer, Click on the SMIL (RealText) tab in the Captioning Points window. The SMIL (RealText) tab is located next to the Captioning Points window tab.

Once you have clicked on the SMIL (RealText) tab you will see the SMIL (RealText) windows. The first time you open these windows they will both be empty.

Hi-Caption can automatically create SMIL and RealText files from your original SAMI files. To create SMIL and RealText files, click on the Refresh buttons in both the SMIL and RealText windows.

After clicking the Refresh buttons you will see Create SMIL source from SAMI dialogue box. In the SMIL source dialogue box follow these steps to create your SMIL file.

1. Determine your SMIL version. Currently SMIL 1.0 is widely supported.
2. Define your media attributes (the type of file you are using, your source file, and region attribute value).
3. Fill in your text stream information (system-language, title, alt text)
4. Define your layout regions (background color, top, left, height, and width positions in pixels).
5. Select the OK button.

Now your SMIL window should contain your SMIL file. Save you SMIL file by selecting the Save File button in the SMIL window.

To create RealText from your SAMI files, select the Refresh in the RealText window. You should now see the Create RealText source from SAMI file dialogue box. In the SAMI class portion of the dialogue box select ENUSCC as the SAMI class type. Select OK.

Now both your SMIL and RealText file code should appear in their respective windows.

Save both files in the same folder with your media file and they should work once opened in RealPlayer. Remember to make a new folder for your RealPlayer caption files with a copy of your media.

Quicktime

In the Captioning Points window select Tools > Quicktime Text.

You should now see the Create Quicktime Text from SAMI dialogue box. Like the SMIL and RealText window, these areas are empty until you define their properties by clicking on the Refresh buttons.

After you have define the properties for both your SMIL and Quicktime text, save your files in a separate folder. Now when you play the file in Quicktime the captions should appear.

There are many powerful features to Hi-Caption. Explore the software on your own and good luck with captioning!