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Video Captioning Software

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From: Jan Heck
Date: Nov 21, 2008 6:00PM

I was checking out two different video captioning software
possibilities--Captionate (http://www.buraks.com/captionate/1.html) and
Hi-Caption (http://www.hisoftware.com/hmcc/).

If I understand the technical descriptions correctly:

1. Captionate actually embeds captioning data into the FLV (Flash video)
file, while Hi-Caption creates a separate SAMI, SMIL, or XML file to store
captioning info and play simultaneously with the video (but the video is
usually in a Quicktime, RealMedia, or Windows Media format). It's not clear
to me whether one approach has a true advantage over the other.
2. Captionate is made to work with Flash (ie, FLV is its native format),
while it appears that Hi-Caption will work with RealMedia or Windows Media
format, but claims full support for Flash is included. I know our Webmaster
is mainly interested in posting Flash videos at this time on the main
college site.
3. In terms of system requirements, I can't see that either one of them
makes any reference to any Windows operating system past Windows XP, so it
makes me a little nervous that maybe they don't update their software very
frequently?!?

If anyone can tell me whether I am understanding the basics correctly and
whether you have strong feelings about one solution over the other (or any
other solutions you recommend), I'd love to hear your views!

Thanks,
Jan Heck
Coastline Community College