Broadcast Writer

Closed Caption Writing by Vicki Kipp

Captions in Our Culture

  • Why AI Captions Need Better Formatting

    A popular AI broadcast caption service– let’s call it Flexi– ignores a key rule of captioning. It’s captioning canon to start a new caption line after a sentence ends. AI captions don’t bother with a new caption line. After a sentence ends, AI captions start a new sentence on the same line. A human stenographer…

  • Captioning First Nations Languages in Wisconsin

    Wisconsin’s 12 tribal nations include three Indigenous language families: Ojibwe (Algonquian) is spoken by the 6 Bands of Lake Superior Chippewa, making it the most common First Nations language in Wisconsin. Ojibwe (Ojibwa) has an ISO 639-1 language tag (oj) and an ISO 639-2 language tag (oj). Tribe Language Language Family Bad River Band of…

  • NCRA Realtime Broadcast Captioning Style and Format Guides for U.S.

    Live captions start a new line after sentence-ending punctuation.

  • Timing Considerations for Hmong Closed Captions

    DCMP conventions for Broadcast closed captions Character SetTraditional video closed captions only support the basic and extended ASCII character sets.   CTA 608 closed captions can only support standard ASCII letters, numbers, and punctuation  (, . ? / : ; ” ‘ [  ] (  ) ! @ # $ % & ( ) <…

  • Closed Captioning Timeline

  • When your live captioner leaves you hanging…

    The live captioner canceled on us at the last minute because their “caption hardware stopped working.” Our captioning agency was not able to find another captioner until our live-from-tape program aired live tonight.   The caption agency was apologetic. Live captioners are in high demand and low supply. Any captioner that might have been available…

  • Dr. Margaret Pfanstiehl and PBS develop Audio Description (AD) service

    1964 Chet Avery, a U.S. Department of Education administrator who is blind suggests describing educational media. 1981 Dr. Margaret Pfanstiehl invented first ongoing audio description service for adults attending live theater. Dr. Margaret Pfanstiehl trained volunteers to audio describe the PBS series “American Playhouse.” 1984 NTSC adopts MTS / SAP for new TVs. 1985-86 WGBH…

  • So, you want to be a Post-Production Offline Captioner

    Obviously, you do. Don’t we all? Here are some valuable skills to have for post-production closed captioning: _ Ability to memorize and follow the DCMP’s Captioning Key style guide. _ Ability to follow AP Style. _ Awesome at proper punctuation. _ Ability to always spell words correctly– especially proper nouns– by spellchecking, researching, and verifying.…

  • OTT Online Platforms’ Caption Formats

    Caption File Formats  While broadcast caption files are embedded in the video, Internet captions are sidecar files that get uploaded after the video is. IP platforms use many caption formats. The hexadecimal SCC Line 21 caption format carries a timed transcript with formatting and positioning. DXFP, SRT, SVB, and VTT captions are human-readable.  Internet Closed…

  • Online caption requirement depends on broadcast status

    Online captions are not mandate unless video has a broadcast date

About Me

Hello there! My name is Vicki Kipp, and I am a closed caption maker. Making closed captions is time consuming and complicated, so this blog is a collection of all of the knowledge and experiences I have gained. I hope my collection of tips and tricks might help you with your closed caption work the way it has helped me!

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