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Re: Online video with captions

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From: John Foliot - Stanford Online Accessibility Program
Date: Feb 15, 2007 2:00PM

Westlake, Garret wrote:
> My name is Garret Westlake and I am the coordinator of Disability
> Services for Volunteer State Community College outside of Nashville,
> TN. Our college is experimenting with streaming as well as video for
> download for use with a number of college applications. Does anyone
> have any recommendations on the best method for producing online
> video with captions? I have reviewed the resources listed on
> WebAIM.com, but was hoping to hear from those who have experience in
> publishing online video with captions in order to determine the best
> program/route. Thank you.

Garret,

There are a number of "roll-yer-own" solutions to caption videos, but in a
production environment they can be time consuming. I have recently started
to set up some "work-flow processes" here with an outsource company who
produce captioned media.

Automatic Sync Technologies (AST)[http://www.automaticsync.com/] have, as
the name would suggest, automated much of the process of creating captioned
video ready for streaming. They support all of the major formats, and are
great folks to work with.

Pricing is reasonable, and goes down with volume purchases; they have
educational pricing models available. If you have the transcript that goes
with your video, turnaround time is blazingly fast - if you need to have AST
send out the video for transcription (they can do this for you), then factor
roughly 72 hour turnaround.

This is all relatively new for me here, although I know AST have established
accounts with numerous other educational institutions, so they are set and
ready to assist. I am encouraged by what they do, and am in the process of
finalizing work-flows here on campus to take advantage of their service.

Hope this helps

JF