Come and meet with our team at IBC 2022!
Our team is excited to be a part of IBC 2022. If you would like to schedule a meeting with us, please fill out the following form and let us know a few days and times that you are available.
Our Spanish captioning service translates English captions to Spanish with high-accuracy and fast turnaround times, starting at just $1.67 per minute. Get a free quote today to get started!
Using the most advanced ASR technology combined with professional translators, our team creates highly accurate Spanish subtitles for English videos. Our solution uses both ASR technology and professional translator/editors to improve efficiency, maintain high accuracy and keep prices low.
For just $1.67 per minute of video content, you’ll receive a Spanish caption file AND a Spanish transcript file. Other companies charge extra for a translated transcript file, but we don’t. We give you the transcription file and the caption file for only $1.67 per minute.
Complete the form below. Indicate how much content you have and we’ll provide an accurate quote and turnaround estimate.
Once you receive your quote, you’ll be prompted to make a payment and upload your files. Our team will begin translating your files right away and send them back to you along with a translated transcription file for each video.
Learn more about our English-Spanish subtitle translation services, as well as our other captioning and subtitling services here:
For over 60 years, we’ve been providing captioning and subtitling solutions for broadcasters to help improve their workflow. Check out our VoCaption Live software to add live captions to your live broadcasts. Our WinCaps software is another great captioning solution for broadcasters to help them edit and create captions for their programs as well add live captions when combined with respeakers.
Freelance captioners all of the world use our WinCaps software to easily create and edit captions. We’ve developed multiple versions of WinCaps, such as WinCaps Q4, Poliscript, and WinCaps for Academic Institutions to provide the perfect solution for each industry.
WVIA, a PBS station operating 3 channels in Northeastern Pennsylvania and the Central Susquehanna Valley, has been using BroadStream’s OASYS Integrated Playout solution and recently added VoCaption, our Automated Speech Recognition solution for live, automated captioning.
Joe Glynn and his staff at WVIA have been providing live captions on a limited basis, but getting live captions on-air took too many steps and had multiple points of failure which increased both stress and anxiety levels beyond what the team needed.
The workflow necessary to launch live captioning each week included having someone call the captioning company to schedule the captioner, provide all the details including date and time of the show, length of the broadcast and arrange for testing prior to the show airing.
On the day of the show an engineer needed to be available at least 15 minutes before the show’s scheduled start to connect the call to the audio bridge and test the outbound audio, which often took a back-seat to microphone checks from the studio. The captioner was required to call-in prior to air to confirm they were available, which didn’t always happen, and connect to the caption encoder so the station could verify that captions would actually appear. If there were issues, those had to be resolved quickly. If the captioner was late, it made things much more difficult and stressful and on several occasions shows aired without captions. WVIA felt the live captioning process was too complicated with too many steps and points of failure and felt there must be a better solution.
Looking to resolve the issues associated with live captioning Joe decided to look at VoCaption to see if automation would help smooth things out. Accuracy was, of course, a concern, but if VoCaption was anywhere close to their current accuracy level it would be worth it to make the switch.
The installation and commissioning hit a few bumps along the way but they were resolved and after a few tests WVIA formally selected BroadStream’s VoCaption, Automated Live Caption Solution.
Joe Glynn, Chief Technology Officer at WVIA commented, “All of the problems and multiple extra steps necessary to put closed captions on-air for a live show were reduced to one single mouse click with VoCaption.” Glynn continued, “While VoCaption did offer us some cost savings, by far the biggest benefit was we now had full control of the process and no longer depended on an outside, 3rd party provider. This change reduced a previously frustrating and complex workflow to a single mouse click.”
With VoCaption, WVIA is saving time, reducing frustration, and improving their workflow by fully controlling their entire live captioning process. Follow Joe Glynn’s lead and install VoCaption to reduce your live captioning frustrations and simplify the process to a single mouse click.
For more information please visit our website to learn more about VoCaption or our Contact Us page to arrange a call or demo.
Duluth, GA, USA – December 15, 2021: BroadStream is keenly aware of the Log4j vulnerability and the concern that our customers may have. We are committed to ensuring the security and reliability of your BroadStream systems.
When news of this vulnerability surfaced our Team of Engineers and Developers immediately reviewed the code base for all of our products and solutions and we can confirm that this piece of code is not used anywhere in the products or solutions we have developed.
However, it has been detected in the EMS local license creation software provided by Thales and they have confirmed that a patch has already been created and installed on the servers that monitor and control the local EMS license network to eliminate the threat posed by the vulnerability.
If you any further questions regarding this, please contact our Support Team via email at this address: [email protected].
Reference article: Non-technical overview of Log4j
About BroadStream Solutions
BroadStream Solutions (www.broadstream.com) acquired Screen Subtitling Systems in 2018 and specializes in the playout of linear television channels, Live Automated Captioning, automated File-based captioning and Subtitling tools for broadcasters, networks, cable, and satellite operations, as well as non-broadcast applications, around the globe. Our expertise is focused on developing solutions that are software-based and consistently deliver flexibility, dependability, improved workflows, operational efficiency and reliability for our clients and customers.
As a broadcast engineer, you focus on solving technical and operational problems. However, the reality is you probably spend a great deal of time talking with sales people and researching equipment.
Most interactions are feature and benefit discussions followed by a transactional exchange of currency for products, solutions or services. I’m sure being on the receiving side of a constant barrage of feature-speak and buzz words can make you a bit jaded. Deep down, you want products and solutions that solve your problems, are reliable so you never worry about them and, if a problem pops up is supported by a company you can trust. What’s important to you is a level of understanding about the company behind the products and services. Of course, you are interested in some of the features and benefits because you don’t want to make a mistake. You want a valuable relationship with a Company you can trust and work with for many years, and this ranks much higher than a few features you may never use.
How do you discover the soul of the companies you work with? Simple, ask what their values are? Do they even know? Knowing their values describes who’s behind the company and why do they do what they do?
We think values speak louder than features and benefits. A company’s values speak to their mindset, mission and culture. In an industry where most competitors offer similar solutions, core values help separate one company from another and provide clues to help you understand what to expect after the sale.
As an organization, BroadStream strongly believes our culture and values play a key role in our success and how customers view us. We live by three core values: Integrity, Respect and Be Your Best.
These core values guide our decision-making and day-to-day operations. We have a “no-blame” culture to ensure that everyone in the organization has a voice at the table and contributes to the discussion while feeling safe and valued. This same “no-blame” culture extends to Support as well. Often, when problems pop-up, there are several companies involved. At BroadStream we don’t point fingers but rather focus on finding a solution to the problem, whether it’s ours or not.
Operationally, we follow the Lean Six Sigma principles of continuous improvement and work to improve every facet of our organization and operations. Every process and every department is evaluated periodically to ensure we are operating as efficiently as possible and that we regularly implement new processes to reduce waste and improve our internal workflows.
Our products and solutions are designed to provide the functionality you need but with a high degree of reliability including multiple redundancy options along with service and support to keep your system running smoothly and with minimal effort.
We’re not the only one’s that think core values matter. Check out these articles for more insight: Values Matter: Understanding Why Core Values are Important and What are Company Values and Why They are Important.
In a world where all of the providers deliver most of the same features, benefits and operational functionality, look beyond the shiny, new objects and dig deep to learn about the core of your future business partners. Want to learn more? Click here to reach out to us.
As I am sure you are aware, global supply chain shortages of certain key components are being seen around the world that impact the auto industry, consumer electronics and other markets. This uncertainty is now beginning to impact the broadcast industry and we are experiencing much longer lead times than normal from our supply chain.
BroadStream Solutions is making a conscious effort to do everything we can to counter this trend and ensure our lead times remain competitive and protect your project timetables as much as possible. Not only are we expanding our supply chain to multi-source components from around the world, but we are also pre-ordering components we know are most scarce to maintain an inventory of these key items to ship against future sales.
A member of our sales team will contact you to discuss the lead times we are currently experiencing and give you the chance to order from our hardware inventory to reduce delays as much as possible. If you have any specific questions regarding timescales and need answers now please visit our Contact Us page. By planning and working together we will strive to meet all of your project timetables.
Best regards,
David Bowes, CEO
BroadStream Solutions, Inc.
Integrated playout and captioning specialist, BroadStream Solutions, is pleased to announce that PBS station WVIA in Pittston, PA went live recently with BroadStream’s VoCaption Live solution for live automated captioning.
WVIA operates 3 channels including PBS, Create and Kids, successfully serving Northeastern Pennsylvania and the Central Susquehanna Valley area. Broadcasting since 1966, WVIA has a long history of service to the community and surrounding area with local programming, educational programming, outreach and services.
WVIA selected BroadStream’s OASYS Integrated Playout and Graphics solution back in 2018 and OASYS automates the playout of their three channels that include PBS, Create and Kids. Adding VoCaption provides the station with an automated solution to generate real-time captions for live shows and emergencies.
VoCaption is a cost-effective solution that uses ASR or Automated Speech Recognition to provide real-time captions at a fraction of the cost of human captioners.
Speech-to-text technology used for ASR has improved dramatically over the last few years and delivers accuracy comparable to a live human captioner depending on audio quality. With the decline of available professional captioners and corresponding improvements in automated speech recognition, broadcasters can confidently leverage this technology to deliver captions that are accurate, professional and provide much needed cost-savings.
With VoCaption Live, broadcasters get:
You can reach us on our website to learn more about VoCaption Live and how it will save you money while delivering highly accurate live captions.
Captioning and Subtitling are similar but different and rather than dive into the differences we’ll use the word subtitling generically for this article to reference both subtitles and captions.
The beginnings of a wave of change with subtitling are happening in television. You may not have felt the tremors yet, but you will.
Subtitles on television began in the early 1970’s. Live subtitling, however, did not begin until 1982 when it was developed by the National Captioning Institute using court reporters trained to write 225 words per minute using a Stenograph machine. This provided viewers with on-screen subtitles within two to three seconds of the word being spoken and it’s been that way ever since. But…
Stenography, as a profession, has been in decline since 2013. As senior professionals retire they are not being replaced by younger candidates who are passing on this field as a career in favor of other professions. One reason for this is the demanding requirements of the job. Candidates must be able to type at lease 225 – 250 words per minute with limited mistakes. This requires discipline and focus for many hours at a time. Schools that taught stenography typically had a graduation rate around 4% due to the high standards and have seen a gradual decline in enrollment that ultimately forced many schools to close. In the US alone, there are over 5,000 open stenography positions with limited candidates to fill those positions.
At the same time the Stenography profession began trending downward, the demands for live subtitling were rising. This increase was driven by new government mandates in multiple countries, the exponential growth of live and breaking news, 24-hour cable news cycles, and more live sports broadcasts. Additional competition for live captioners is also coming from corporate events, government briefings, meetings and increased usage from the legal system for depositions and trials that are creating resource issues and rising prices for human captioning.
So how do we fill the gap between a decline in human subtitling also facing an increase in market demand? Technology. Specifically, Artificial Intelligence (AI). The technology has been around for many years. In fact, voice recognition dates back to the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. The technology began to show significant improvement beginning in 1971 and continued to evolve into 2014 when it became commercially available. Early efforts suffered from accuracy problems and limitations.
With the acquisition of Screen Subtitling Systems, BroadStream began working to incorporate AI speech engines to create an automated solution we call VoCaption. VoCaption delivers live subtitling for your live broadcast that is more accurate than previous AI implementations and in many cases equal to or better than humans.
VoCaption can be used in multiple applications including:
The two biggest benefits you can expect are:
VoCaption is available in both hardware and software versions for 3rd party caption inserters or as part of OASYS Integrated Playout and Polistream our leading, subtitle inserter. For more information you can contact us here and a representative will be happy to answer any questions, arrange a demonstration or provide a quotation.
Duluth, GA, USA – January 26, 2021: Leading integrated playout and subtitling specialist, BroadStream Solutions, is pleased to announce the Jim Pattison Broadcast Group has selected OASYS Integrated Playout for all three TV stations in Western Canada. Two of the three stations, CHAT-TV in Medicine Hat, Alberta and CFJC-TV in Kamloops, British Columbia were launched in 2020. CKPG-TV, in Prince George, British Columbia is planned for a future date in 2021.
The Jim Pattison Broadcast Group is one of Canada’s premier radio and television companies with station operations in the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
Each television station is replacing their legacy Sundance automation with BroadStream’s OASYS Software Platform to support a three playout channels configured as a 2+2 HD Playout system with Redundancy Manager on the Main channels and a 1+0 Playout system on their secondary channel. Ingest is via 2 HD BroadStream Maker ingest channels and a 72TB NAS with Indexing Services. OASYS is also integrated with Wide Orbit’s Traffic system. Sales, Consulting and Integration Services were performed by VidCom Communications in British Columbia.
“Our timeline was disrupted with COVID-19”, according to Bill Stovold, Director of Technical Services for the Pattison Broadcast Group. But BroadStream and VidCom worked tirelessly with our teams to bring CHAT-TV online before the lock-down. CFJC-TV occurred during the lock-down and the system was installed and expertly cabled by our CFJC-TV team and VidCom while BroadStream configured, tested, trained and launched the station remotely to make up for the lack of on-premise work and skillfully provided excellent virtual commissioning and training to our staff. Having the OASYS system up and running gives us so many more features, flexibility and workflow improvements with station to station interconnectivity that will help us operate much more efficiently. We know, moving forward, our OASYS system and staff can function remotely if necessary, and our ability to broadcast will never be in jeopardy. The change from traditional Master Control to the OASYS Integrated Playout system is a huge step ahead for us.”
“We are very proud and honored to work with The Jim Pattison Broadcast Group on these station installations. Their Management, Engineering, IT and Operations teams are top-notch in every way and we are thrilled to have them as part of the BroadStream family,” said David Bowes, CEO and Owner of BroadStream. “Bill Stovold and his team along with Vidcom Communications have been great to work with considering the added stress caused by COVID-19. We are very proud of the way our team stepped up and stuck to the timetable, despite the lock-down. We value our relationship with these great professionals and look forward to completing CKPG-TV, in the coming months and supporting the entire organization for many years in the future.”
###
About The Jim Pattison Broadcast Group
The Jim Pattison Broadcast Group is proud to be one of Canada’s premier radio and television companies. The Group combines over 90 years of broadcasting expertise with Total Team Involvement as it builds a reputation as a committed broadcaster serving the needs of listeners, viewers, advertisers and communities throughout the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
Since commencing operations in 1965 with their first radio station in Vancouver, the Jim Pattison Broadcast Group has been informing and entertaining Western Canadians. Throughout the prairie provinces on its radio and television stations, and increasingly online through their increasing digital platforms, the Broadcast Group offers the very best in local news, information and entertainment.
Commitment to local on-air talent that generates content that is relevant to the audience in every city they service is a key strategy for the Broadcast Group’s award-winning stations and online news portals. The company also strives to do its part when it comes to helping local charitable causes, donating over $23.5 million of air-time in support of their communities in 2019.
About VidCom Communications Ltd.
VidCom Communications Ltd, headquartered in Vancouver, BC, Canada, is the leading systems integrator of high-end hardware and software for the Broadcast, Professional Video, House of Worship, Education and Entertainment Industries in Canada.
For over 30 years, VidCom has been leveraging its expertise in the broadcast, video, film, streaming and graphics industries to elevate our clients’ ability to deliver on their unique talents. Our quality of work has taken us international with systems in the US, Far East & Indian Subcontinent. VidCom’s dedicated support and training has ensured our clients’ advantage in productivity and performance while VidCom’s Rentals and repairs have minimized their downtime.
About BroadStream Solutions
BroadStream (https://broadstream.com) specializes in flexible and highly scalable solutions for integrated playout, live automated captioning & subtitling, file-based, captioning & subtitling, caption encoding and subtitling software tools. Our OASYS Integrated Playout solution is used world-wide by broadcasters of all sizes for Content Preparation, Playout and Management. Designed to improve workflow efficiency, solutions are available in SD, HD, and IP as well as SD/HD-SDI and SDI/IP hybrid playout configurations to provide a solid migration path to future technologies, including the cloud, to make transitioning easier.
In 2018, BroadStream acquired Screen Subtitling Systems in the UK. Screen specializes in products for the preparation and delivery of captions, subtitles and value-add information services across multiple platforms and devices. Our combined 60+ years of hands-on experience consistently delivers quality, flexibility, dependability, improved workflows and operational efficiency that scale from single channel facility to multichannel broadcasters and service providers operating hundreds of channels.
BroadStream is pleased to announce a new software release for Polistream. Since the acquisition of Screen in late 2018 one of our goals has been to double-down on product improvements on all Screen products and you will begin to see new releases on a regular basis. Our two software teams in the UK and Croatia have successfully merged and now work together as one team.
This new release for Polistream provides an initial release of support for DVB-TTML, which is DVB’s new specification for text-based subtitles. The new TTML delivery specification will provide a transitional path to a common TTML subtitle format for both broadcast and Internet-delivered services. This means subtitles used for broadcast can be re-used later for video-on-demand services over DASH/CMAF.
DVB-TTML is especially suited for high resolution content like 4K and higher resolution programming that will be produced in the future. It is also closely aligned with other TTML-based systems including the EBU-TT-D specification, which was adopted for both DVB-DASH and HbbTV. You can learn more about DVB-TTLM here.
Initial Release of support for EBU-TT Live input and output uses Websockets. EBU‑TT can be used in a broadcasting environment to carry subtitles that are created in real time (“live” or from a prepared file) from an authoring station to an encoder prior to distribution, via intermediate processing units. EBU-TT Live Part 3 is carried over Websocket allowing input and output as Client or Server. You can learn more about EBU-TT here.
This new Polistream release includes:
Customers with an active support contract can contact Support(at)BroadStream.com for access to this software upgrade.
CORPORATE HEADQUARTERS
BroadStream Solutions, Inc.
3039 Premiere Parkway
Suite 800
Duluth, GA 30097 USA
Tel: +1 404 327 8300
CONTACT US
cc: Chen, Paulraj (2004)