A Better Way to Caption
By: Steve Maggio, The InterpEdge (Mar 01, 1997)
In museums and visitor centers around the world, providing captions for video and film exhibits is no longer a question of "why".
Rather, the issue today is how best to provide clear, legible captioning without interfering with the content on the screen.
Everyone wants to make their material available to people with hearing impairments so that all visitors can fully understand what is being communicated. In fact, the Americans With Disabilities Act makes captioning a requirement for any institution that receives federal funding.
But aside from meeting the needs of the hearing impaired, there are many other situations where captioning is helpful. For example, in:
* multiple language presentations
* noisy environments
* quiet environments, and
* in extremely large spaces like theaters and convention halls.
So what's wrong with the conventional closed captioning that appears at the bottom of the screen? Plenty!
First, consider the impact of captioning on your film or video image. There's no way to avoid the fact that on-screen captioning obscures part of the picture. Film and video makers often feel that the aesthetics of the on-screen image are seriously compromised by the captions.
Then there's the problem of legibility. When the monitor is at a distance from the viewers, the captioning just can't be seen. And in small theaters that are all the rage in museums today, there can be line-of-sight problems, with people in the front rows blocking the captions for those in the rear. Because of these shortcomings, closed captioning is sometimes turned off altogether. But now there's a better way to caption.
Keeping your image clear
The Captioning Board (CC-1000) from Museum Technology Source is a new product which offers an elegant solution. It's a separate unit that keeps the video image clear by moving the closed captions off the screen. It works by pulling off the hidden closed caption encoded onto a video signal, and sending it to an easy-to-read LED display.
The CC-1000 is essentially a sophisticated sign box. The unit contains a small decoding computer that moves the captioning from the video signal - and the computer is so small that it is built right into the box.
The Captioning Board offers a number of features that make it an attractive choice in a variety of situations. For example:
* The box can be ordered in various sizes, from two feet to six feet wide.
* Museum Technology Source offers a four-line LED display. (Words come up as they are spoken in the audio portion - they do not move across the display.)
* The Captioning Board works with standard closed caption video signals from the videodisc player, a tape player, or directly off-the-air.
* The unit is extremely simple to install; connecting directly to your video player with looping BNC connectors.
Getting the word out
Museum Technology Source first got into making the CC-1000 to increase the chances that captioning would be running and available for those who need it. "It comes down to the fact that people are always turning captioning off for whatever reasons," says Adrienne Callahan of Museum Technology Source.
"Usually people will turn captioning off to see the image better. It would then fall upon the people who need captioning to find out how to turn that particular system on - thereby causing a bit of commotion which is going to distract from the exhibit," she explained. It is understandable that many visitors in a public place viewing a public exhibit might be reluctant to do this (assuming they could figure out how).
"We saw a definite advantage with this product because The Captioning Board can run all the time without sharing space with the image," added Callahan. And she has several satisfied customers who agree that The Captioning Board provides a useful new way to communicate.
A place in history
Ann Mateross is the Curator of the Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where The Captioning Board is used in a popular exhibit called "Points in Time: Building a Life in Western Pennsylvania - 1750 to Present."
"We feel that captioning adds to the experience, that it helps everyone. It brings out what the narrator wants to say," she says, "and people have mentioned that it helps."
Mateross explained why The Captioning Board was a particularly good choice in her facility. "It is helpful for everyone to have captioning when the area is noisy ... if the building is especially crowded or if there are other things going on in the building, like when a school group is waiting to get in or there is live music nearby, or simply if the lobby downstairs is crowded."
"The building used to be an old warehouse, and the seats are made from the old flooring. We hung The Captioning Board over the video screen so that all could see it. Because the floor is flat, we felt that if we didn't hang it over, only the people in front would be able to see the captioning."
The team of video producers and installers who worked with Mateross each had their own reasons for preferring The Captioning Board over conventional closed captioning. Greg Kurkjian of Magic Lantern, an AV Design & Installation firm in Pittsburgh, explains, "Everyone put in a lot of time and money and care in making the images. There was the fear that the words would take away from the image, but still, we wanted to recognize the needs of the people with disabilities. With The Captioning Board, the images are intact, and the captions are fully available to those with hearing disabilities."
Peter Argentine, video producer with Argentine Productions in Pittsburgh, concurs. "Cameramen go to great lengths to compose pictures so that every part is perfect," he says. "We definitely want the show to be aesthetically pleasing and to have captioning for those who need it. The Captioning Board system allowed the needs of both audiences to be met."
A submarine ride
In La Jolla, California, the Steven Birch Museum and Aquarium of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography uses The Captioning Board in an exhibit where they want the audience to feel as if they are looking out of the porthole of a submarine as they "descend" in the ocean. In this case, the desired effect would have been destroyed if there were words on the video image.
The exhibit is a small theater which is mocked up to look like the inside of a submarine. There are three "windows" in the exhibit which are actually video screens. One window has statistics (perhaps depth, water pressure, etc.) running on it, the second has file footage of animals and plants that are being discussed, and the third screen is shaped like a porthole and shows what one would see if the sub were descending.
Director of exhibits, Wendelin Montciel, explains, "We mounted The Captioning Board over the porthole so that everyone could see. It looks good and it adds to the high-tech ambiance. But there were two main reasons we did it this way. First, the porthole is round and therefore the words wouldn't fit. And second, we used it so that people in the back can see the captioning over other peoples' heads."
In other applications, it's not just the aesthetics of the image that require captions to be placed on a separate display. There is often visual information (facial expressions, demonstrations, illustrations and examples) that would be obscured. There is also often text, titles and graphics on screen which would compete with captioning. (This includes monitors which are running stock quotas or sports scores.) And sometimes, the nature of the exhibit itself simply doesn't lend itself to on-screen captioning.
Video wall takes off in Syracuse
Such is the case with an exhibit at the Syracuse Hancock International Airport in Syracuse, New York. This exhibit has a "video wall" with The Captioning Board mounted underneath.
The video wall system takes a video image from one player, dices it into nine pieces, and then ships the pieces off to nine monitors which are configured to produce one big image. In this particular exhibit, the wall shows videos of behind-the-scenes functions and operations at the airport.
A separate "back selector table" allows visitors to select what is shown on the wall from twelve video subjects. There is also a continuous welcoming loop (which plays when no selection has been made) which has the mayor of Syracuse, Roy A. Bernardi, welcoming visitors and giving a brief description of the twelve selections.
These include selections of the control tower, snow removal, "city within a city", central New York aerial tour, Air National Guard, and overnight servicing. The tape has a map of the airport, marked with points that correspond to the twelve video selections. Each selection has a few words of descriptive text and a push-button that calls up the corresponding video selection. The chosen button lights up to let other visitors know which segment is playing.
Because video walls chop one video into pieces and reassemble it spread over a number of monitors, it makes captioning problematic. In the Syracuse Airport exhibit, there are titles on some of the images. Captioning and titles would simply fill too much of the image. This was another case where The Captioning Board provided a simple and effective solution.
In video wall exhibits, like this one at the Syracuse Hancock International Airport, on-screen captioning is not practical. The Captioning Board mounted below provides the perfect solution.
Avoiding on-screen clutter
Boott Mill at Lowell National Historic Park in Lowell, Massachusetts has an interactive voting theater that uses The Captioning Board simply because there are too many words and graphics on the screen already.
Boott Mill is a restored 19th century textile mill. In the gift shop, you can purchase cloth which is made from the more than forty operational textile looms on display. As you enter the museum, a ranger hands you a pair of earplugs to block out the din of the looms. A second floor exhibit are is quieted by strong noise baffles.
The last part of the museum is an interactive theater that shows a presentation called "Work in the 21st Century." The show combines video segments and computer graphics about the future of the workplace. Through the presentation, the audience is asked a number of questions about different issues like job security, pay scales, and training.
As audience members respond to questions through the four-button voting panels in front of each seat, computer graphics on the screen display various charts and graphs that display the answers.
"The Park Ranger who worked on the design of this exhibit requested that it be captioned," said Park Ranger Becky Warren. "It was a grassroots effort."
"It wasn't that captioning had been excluded," she adds, "but I think we were much more in tune with the needs of the hearing impaired because of our awareness of the impact of the noise of the weave room. It was very common for people who worked in the early mills to lose their hearing. The museum has an accessibility committee and we try to use captioning where appropriate."
"In this exhibit, there was so much happening on the screen that it made more sense to separate the captioning," said Warren. The Captioning Board does not interfere with the computer graphics and verbage on screen. The LED display is installed above the screen providing captions that all can see without sacrificing the impact and design of the video and graphics.
Once again, The Captioning Board provided a solution to a unique captioning problem. In a time when it is imperative to make easy-to-read captions available to everyone, and preferable to keep video images free from distraction, this new product is sure to find many more proponents in the near future.
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