MovieCaptioner allows me to do all of this.
My goal was to find closed captioning software that could work with these tools, allow me to transcribe my show in-house, allowing for a quick turnaround time, and finally keeping costs low. That includes FCPX for editing and Compressor for final output.
I use Apple’s Final Cut Pro X for all my post-production work. There are a lot of industry experts there that can answer your questions. You should also check out this closed captioning forum at the Creative Cow website. Please use the comments area below to ask questions and if I can’t answer them, hopefully someone else will. I hope it helps you, and if it does, I only ask that you watch the car show I host and produce called Motorz and help spread the word (I’m always looking for new distribution outlets online and networks on TV, if you have any leads!) At the time of this writing, my half-hour show is available to over 70 Million homes on DirecTV, DISH Network, and thanks to this software it is closed captioned for the Pursuit Channel and My Family TV (broadcast and cable TV).Īs I learn more about this process, or readers ask questions that are not answered here, I will do my best to keep updating this article with newer information. This information here is provided free, without support or warranty.
My only interest in spending hours writing this article is to help other producers who like me, are trying to figure out how to do something seemingly difficult and unknown–the art of adding text to video.
I paid the full $99 for the software and put it to work. I have no vested interest in the software or the company. I have no relationship with SynchriMedia, the developer of MovieCaptioner. It’s an unknown, surprisingly, and I hope that this article lets other producers find out about it more easily. Fortunately this software can be used by the single producer on a budget, or a large megacompany with an unlimited budget. Excited, I read all the information and watched the videos at their website. I was about to give up and use a service until a friend told me about another software application he found for the Mac & PC called MovieCaptioner (previously called MovCaptioner) from SynchriMedia.
If you are a small video producer or a University this is not an option. Talk about highway robbery and taking advantage of a FCC broadcast requirement. I’m sure they are working very hard to justify that price tag, but c’mon–$7k? Really? I don’t know about you, but I’ve never paid that much money for any software program or a computer for that matter, and I’ve been computing since the days of the Commodore PET. I won’t mention the name of the software, but it runs on a Mac. My previous search turned up software that cost in the neighborhood of $7,000. How hard and expensive could it really be? As you’ll soon learn, it’s not hard or expensive at all. Also consider the turnaround time is slow when relying on an outside service.Īfter being quite disgusted at the thought of using a service, I looked into the option of transcribing my own show in-house using software. If you’re on a budget too, this isn’t easy to stomach. That’s an extra $2,000 or more just to meet a FCC requirement for broadcast. Factor in the cost of shipping, your media, and the number of videos you have (in my case it’s 12 per season). I started looking into these services only to find prices that ranged $100-200 per 22-minute episode.
You’d ship them your videos (digital or tape) and they would pay a transcriber to listen to every spoken word in your content and type those words into a software program that matches the time code of your video.
My first knee-jerk reaction was to call upon other producers to ask how they did it. If you are in the same situation I was in a few months ago when I first found out that I had to include closed captioning for your video content, you are overwhelmed with information and shocked at the cost of doing this. And, depending on their age and method of broadcast you may be required to send in your video content with closed captioning (CC).
As you explore your options for broadcast, you will quickly find that each channel/network has different requirements. Making a commitment to going from a variable length video series to a half-hour (22 minute) episode series is quite an undertaking. Making videos for online is simple enough, but at some point you might want to take your content to television like I have with Motorz.