Captions were originally developed in order to make videos more accessible to deaf and hard of hearing viewers. They eventually became a requirement for broadcast television in the United States and other countries. Captions are designed to convert all the audio of a video into text. This audio doesn’t only include the words being spoken, but also background noises, music, etc. This text is written in the same language as it is spoken.  

Subtitles were originally introduced in the film industry to make films accessible to individuals who spoke a foreign language. As video content has expanded into television and online streaming services, subtitles continue to hold an important role in making content available across multiple languages. Subtitles appear as text on the screen that translates the audio into a different language for the viewer. 

Live events (such as sporting events, live news, or live award shows) can create challenges for captioning and subtitling. Pre-recorded programming gives broadcasters time to input captions and subtitles and check them for accuracy and readability before the show hits the air. Live programming cannot be preplanned like this. Captions and subtitles must be developed and added to the programming immediately, and they must be added as accurately as possible. 

So how can subtitles and captions be added to live programming? Are captions added by humans or by speech recognition technology? 

Human-Generated Live Captions: 

One method of adding captions and subtitles to live programming is by using “respeakers”. A respeaker is an individual who is present during a live broadcast to respeak what is being said during the program more clearly into a studio microphone that is set up to avoid any background noise. This allows ASR software to better pick up the audio and create more accurate captions or subtitles and add them to the program in real-time. These human-generated live captions can help in situations where the program speaker has a strong accent, talks quickly, or is in an environment with a lot of background noise or multiple people talking at once.  

In the United States, the use of respeakers is not as common as in European countries due to differences in governmental regulations and standards. Many European broadcasters prefer the use of respeakers to improve the accuracy of their live captioning. To help the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of their workflow, these broadcasters often partner the use of respeakers with ASR technology. For example, respeakers need constant breaks and this means that a broadcasting station may need to employ 3 or 4 respeakers for one live program. If ASR technology is used while the respeaker takes a break, the number of respeakers needed during one broadcasting is lowered and the station saves money.  

Computer-Generated Live Captions:  

ASR or Automated Speech Recognition technology has improved dramatically over the years and now rivals human captioners for accuracy and offers greater efficiency and lower costs. VoCaption, from BroadStream, uses ASR technology to deliver real time captions with just the click of a button. VoCaption creates accurate captions from the original audio. Computer-generated live closed captioning is often cheaper than using human-generated live captioning and requires less planning.  

BroadStream Solutions offers a variety of captioning and subtitling software that helps freelancers to quickly and easily create accurate captions and subtitles. Freelancers looking for professional captioning and subtitling software can rely on our Q-Live software to easily create captions and subtitles.  

To learn more about our professional captioning and subtitling software for freelancers, visit our store.