Transcription Questions and Answers from Tigerfish Transcribing:
How do you make captions for live television?
Real-time Captioning
Whether making captions for pre-recorded video or a live event, high quality transcription services are needed. In order to make captions you need skilled transcribers — whether they are stenographers producing a transcript in real time, or transcriptionists providing a fully edited transcript.
Real-time captioning (also called online or live captioning) gives viewers access to live news and other time-sensitive programming on television. Using the skills of speech-to-text reporters, trained to type between 180 and 225 words per minute using stenographic machines, captions become visible within seconds. However employing stenography for live captioning results in multiple errors and typos, as you’ve no doubt observed if you’ve watched a captioned live television show. If you require high quality edited transcripts there’s no match for transcription using a traditional keyboard.
For pre-recorded programming, transcripts are made, usually by a dedicated transcription service, then edited and formatted according to the needs of the producers. Transcripts are time-coded, and the captions can then be created and positioned before airing or streaming.
When programs contain a mixture of live and prepared content, an edited transcript is often made ahead of time for the pre-recorded portions, and stenographers create an up-to-the-minute transcript for the live portions. Then captions are created using both of these.
Jason Avery
Local Color
- Topics:
- Best Practices
- Famous Transcripts
- Local Color
- The Wide World of Transcription
- Tigerfish News
- Transcription Technology
- Transcription Tips
- Video Transcription
- What is Transcription?