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.