When you are in time-stamp mode, the caption that you see on the screen is not the caption that will appear at the current time (the part of the video that is currently playing).  Rather, you are seeing a preview of the NEXT caption that will appear at the time when you hit the "In" key.  This makes time-stamping much easier, because you can preview the next caption coming up and you know what to listen for.  You simply hit the "In" key when you hear the first words that match the caption currently shown on screen.

When you go to Autosync mode to watch the video in sync with the captions, the correct caption should appear in sync with the video.  If you made a mistake, you can easily correct one (or all) captions using the "Ripple Time Codes" feature, instead of re-doing the time-stamping from scratch.

4. My DVD captions aren't working at all, or are way off.

First, make sure you're viewing the authored DVD in something that can enable closed captions and that the closed captions are turned on.  You will not see the captions in the DVD authoring program.  If you're not sure if your player supports captions or that captions are turned on correctly, try playing a purchased commercial DVD to see if the closed captions (not subtitles) appear.  For info on common DVD closed caption display problems, click here.

Assuming that your player is playing back closed captions from other DVDs but not from the one you authored, the most common issue is a time code mismatch between the DVD project and the SCC file which contains the closed captions.  Many NLE systems use a timeline that starts at 1 hour (01:00:00:00) instead of at zero, and this timing is sometimes preserved when you move into authoring the DVD.

If your SCC file captions start at zero hours but your DVD track or MPEG-2 file starts at 1 hour, then all of the captions will be 1 hour early or not appear at all.  Conversely, if your SCC file captions start at 1 hour but the DVD track or MPEG-2 file start at zero hours, then all of your captions will be 1 hour late (or if your DVD is less than one hour, they’ll never appear at all).

5. My black movie (line 21) captions aren't showing up or are garbled.

See this page for general information about the black movie workflow.  If you are having problems, the most common reasons are:

1. Using DV via Firewire (IEEE1394, iLink): The black movie workflow does not work if the NLE is connected to a DV deck by Firewire, because DV video is only 720x480 and the black movie method requires 720x486.  You must either connect to the DV deck by a video cable (SDI, component, S-Video, composite), or for Firewire use one of the DV workflows instead of a black movie.

2. Wrong Row/Column settings: Click here and follow the calibration procedure.  You must set the correct Row & Column before exporting a black movie.  If you used the wrong settings, you will need to correct them and export a new black movie.

3. Wrong Sequence settings in NLE: they must be 720x486 (not 720x480), 29.97fps, with the proper field order set.

4. Avid users: use "ITU601" Effect Aperture, 1:1 Render setting (not DV), and enable "VBI Preserve" in the Video Output Tool.  To crop the black movie, use the "3D Warp" effect on the black movie track with Crop > Bottom set to 980 (leave Crop > Top at 999), then render the effect.  External link: Avid knowledgebase.

5. Garbled captions (such as dropped or repeated letters) are usually caused by dropped frames in the NLE system output.  You may need to render the video first so it can play out real time without dropping frames.

6. For Avid systems, use the codec "Avid Meridien Compressed" with a color depth of "Millions of Colors" (not millions+).  For other NLEs (Premiere, Final Cut Pro, etc.) the recommended codec is Animation.

6. My caption file (QuickTime or SCC) for Final Cut Pro 7 isn’t working, or the caption timing is off.

This common issue is due to the way FCP7 reads the closed captions track.  FCP7 expects that 00:00:00:00 in the caption file aligns with the first frame of your sequence, no matter what time code the sequence starts at, I.e. the caption file time codes are not linked to the sequence time codes.  See this diagram for a visual explanation.

If your FCP sequence starts at 00:59:50:00 and the first caption is supposed to appear at 01:00:01:00, the first caption time in MacCaption should be 00:00:11:00, because the caption appears 11:00 seconds after the first frame of the sequence.  If you incorrectly set the caption time code at 01:00:01:00 in MacCaption, the first caption will not appear until 01:59:51:00!

The easiest way to work around this issue is to make sure your proxy/reference movie (for time stamping) includes the whole sequence from the very first frame (including any leaders which are on the timeline), and that the Movie Time in MacCaption/CaptionMaker is set to start at 00:00:00:00.  This will ensure that everything syncs up both in MacCaption and in FCP.

Note that the FCP generated leader options in the Edit to Tape/Print to Video dialog (such as FCP’s bars & tone, countdown, etc.) DO NOT count towards the sequence time code.  The caption track will start when the actual sequence starts to play.  However, any bars/leaders/etc. which are in the sequence DO count towards the sequence time code. 

7. My first caption was cut off or appears late.

Pop-on captions need a few seconds to pre-load the data before the caption actually appears.  If you have a caption that starts very close to the start of the program or a cut point, the data for that caption might get cut off and the caption won't appear.  See the "lowest limit" feature in the manual for more information.  The workaround is to either set the lowest limit, or make the first caption in paint-on mode (which requires far less time to pre-load a caption).

8. Transcription issues: How to do it, options, speech recognition, etc.

There is no special trick to transcription. It is by far the most time-consuming aspect of the closed captioning/subtitling process. But, there are methods that ensure that you are transcribing in the most efficient way possible. Below are a few methods to transcribe a video.

Use a Video File
If you are not already doing so, make sure that you are using a video file, and not videotape, as your video source. Trying to transcribe from a tape can wear out your tape deck, and you’ll spend too much time starting and stopping the tape.

USB Foot Pedal
A very popular tool for transcribing is a USB Foot Pedal. The VPedal is a tool that allows you to control QuickTime, Windows Media Video, and a number of other types of digital media. You can start, stop, rewind, and fast-forward your digital video with your foot, while typing directly into your word processor. What makes the foot pedal method so efficient is that you never have to take your hands off the keyboard. Eventually, you’re able to get into a rhythm with your hands and foot so that you are constantly typing.

Speech Recognition Software
At this time, there is no technology that can accurately and reliably take a video or audio file and automatically transcribe all of the text without human intervention.

Speech Recognition Software has advanced greatly in the past few years, and has become a reliable transcription tool. The transcription method using speech-recognition employs "shadow speaking", whereby the user repeats what he or she hears in the video into a microphone. Before you use any type of speech-recognition software, such as Dragon Naturally Speaking or MacSpeech, you’ll need to train with the software. This usually consists of reading stories provided by the software. After you’ve read a story, the software analyzes your voice and compares it to the text in the story. You’ll also need to practice the technique of shadow speaking, which isn’t difficult but takes time to get good at. 

Transcription Service
Often, it is more cost-effective to simply pay a service to transcribe your material. There are many online services that allow you to upload an .mp3 and they will provide you with a text transcription within a day. Ideally, you should be able to find a local individual whom you can trust for quick and accurate transcription.

9. How do I monitor my HD captions?

See this white paper for more information about the difficulties of monitoring HD captions.  Basically, you can't monitor HD captions via HDMI or component outputs.  The only baseband HD video that carries closed captions is HD-SDI.  Also, most devices (except for the Matrox MXO2 and AJA FS-1) do not preserve the captions when down-converting HD to SD.  You need an HD-SDI device that can decode HD (CEA-708) captions.  Not all monitoring devices follow the complete CEA-708 spec, so the captions may not always appear exactly as intended.

10. How do I down-convert HD video with captions to SD without losing the captions?

Only a few hardware devices (such as the Matrox MXO2 and the AJA FS-1) can preserve the closed captioning when down/up-converting a video.  For other devices, you must use a separate workflow or separate output step to create the SD video with closed captions.  For example, if you have a HD sequence in FCP, you can render this into a SD sequence and then use the SD captioning workflow.  Or, you can print to SD tape (taking advantage of hardware down-convert), then capture SD back in and caption it using the SD workflow.

See the AJA / Blackmagic / Matrox workflow pages for more info.

11. My Sony HD deck won't record HD video with closed captions.

By default, most Sony HD decks are factory set to not record VANC Line 9 where the HD closed captions are stored.  You must go into the deck setup or maintenance menu and look for the "VANC Packet RX" setting.  This should be set to: VANC Line 9, DID 61, SDID 01.  The exact menu depends on your deck.  See this page for some of the settings we know, or please contact Sony for more information.

XDCAM EX (solid state) and HDV decks do not support closed captioning.

12. My .CAP file is not working.

Several different kinds of files have the same extension of .CAP.  If the file isn't working then you are probably trying to import or export the wrong type.  If you drag & drop the file into the text area, the software will automatically determine the right file type to import. 

If you need to export a .cap but you don't know what kind, try to determine if the file is supposed to be a CaptionMaker project file (.cap), Cheetah caption file (.cap), or NCI caption file (.cap).  There are some other rare .cap formats as well.

CaptionMaker .cap files are opened/saved in CaptionMaker using the File > Open and Save commands, whereas the other types are imported/exported using the File > Import and Export commands.

MacCaption cannot open CaptionMaker .cap project files, but it can open the other types of .cap files.  To move projects between the two platforms, we recommend using the Ultech .ult import/export for caption files, or the DVDSP .stl import/export for subtitle files.  So if you have a CaptionMaker .cap file, open it in CaptionMaker (you can use your MacCaption dongle to run CaptionMaker and vice versa), and then export the captions as a Ultech .ult file to import into MacCaption.

13.  What's the easiest way to make a proxy movie for transcription or captioning?

You can use QuickTime Pro, Windows Movie Maker, or a number of free video utilities to save your video into a compressed format which is faster to transfer online.

A good recommendation is:
QuickTime: Use "iPod" preset if available, or
320x240, H.264 codec 250kbps, AAC audio 128kbps

Windows Media: 320x240 250kbps (broadband medium quality preset)