INDIANAPOLIS—WISH-TV is a proud affiliate of The CW Network and delivers the latest breaking news under our News 8 brand. Our owner, Circle City Broadcasting, also owns and operates MyNetworkTV affiliate WNDY-TV (“MyINDY-TV 23”), which provides around-the-clock entertainment, sports and local interest programming to central Indiana viewers.

Until recently, all of our closed captioning was done by human transcribers through a closed-caption service company that would dial in to our caption encoders. The huge amount of local news content we produce—up to 12 hours per day—required a lot of dial-ins. With the rates charged by such services, our captioning costs were very high.

We wanted to find a better way of doing our closed captioning. Our main goal wasn’t necessarily to save money, but more importantly to allow us to caption a larger portion of our content in a more cost-effective manner.

THE EVOLUTION OF CAPTIONING

I had looked at automated speech-to-text technologies around eight years ago, but their accuracy wasn’t good enough at the time. Our chief engineer, Glenn Edwards, kept following automated-captioning technology and read a favorable review of ENCO’s enCaption4 system, which would allow us to caption more of our programs for less money than we were paying for dial-in captioning. So we requested a demo unit for a trial. It worked right out of the box and we were impressed with its accuracy.

The first program we used enCaption4 on was the locally produced TV version of nationally syndicated radio show “The Bob & Tom Show,” which started airing on WNDY in October. Since then, we have expanded our use of enCaption4 across both WNDY and WISH.

enCaption4’s REST API gives us a lot of flexibility in setting up our captioning operations exactly the way we want them and controlling enCaption4 through our own custom software. Our IT developer created an application that runs on a Raspberry Pi platform and enables us to easily start and stop the captioning process.

Our homebrew software also uses GPIOs on the Raspberry Pi to trigger the switching of our AJA KUMO router to the desired SDI source for our enCaption4 system, and to connect enCaption4 to the appropriate downstream caption encoder. In this manner, we can use our single enCaption4 system on our choice of the WISH, WNDY or control room signals.

ONE-CLICK PROCESS

In addition to its cost efficiency, enCaption4 has also benefited our stations by allowing us to quickly respond to unexpected, last-minute captioning requests. When our newsroom notifies engineering that they have a breaking news special they need captioned, we can just click a button to start captioning and another to stop it when the report is done. It’s a very fast and easy process, and we can get captioning on-air right away without needing to make arrangements with an external service.

enCaption4 has enabled us to expand our closed captioning to nearly everything we do. Having a machine that can handle all of our captioning needs is like a dream come true. I’m impressed with how far the technology has come over the years, specifically enCaption4. We had long hoped that someone would offer speech-to-text capabilities that work accurately enough for our on-air needs, so we could just hit a button and have it work. ENCO has done that with enCaption4.

Mike Selby is staff engineer at WISH-TV. He can be contacted at mike.selby@wishtv.com.

For more information, visit www.enco.com.

NOVI, Mich.—To ensure the continued delivery of closed captioning services for its hard-of-hearing viewers, Civic Center Television, part of the City Manager’s Office of San Jose, Calif., began using Enco’s AI-enabled enCaption4 automated closed captioning system.

In previous years, the city had contracted service providers that used human captioners to transcribe content. However, because of budget shortfalls related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the AI-powered captioning service from Enco helped reduce operational costs.

“As a PEG channel, we have a capital fund that’s derived from the franchise and PEG fees the cable provider pays back to municipality,” said Craig Jutson, broadcast engineer and operations manager for the City Manager’s Office. “We can’t use that for operational expenses such as paying human captioners, so I proposed that we save the money we were spending on those contracts and purchase an automated system.”

The City of San Jose purchased a pair of enCaption4 units to support its two live productions simultaneously and provide backup redundancy. The platform stood out based on its form factor, processing quality and interface, according to Jutson. In addition, Enco’s partnership with Tightrope Media Systems make the enCaption4 available to PEG stations as a special package.

Jutson has added the names of council members, neighborhoods and other unique local elements into enCaption4’s dictionary to assist captioning. He also says the systems have learned since their installation on how to accurately generate other hard-to-spell pronunciations.

The enCaption4 units, in addition to covering live events like council meetings, add captions to offline content from other city departments. The platform generates standalone, “sidecar” caption files from on-demand video clips that are copied into a watch folder. Using Tightrope’s support for MCC and SCC caption files, the results are brought into the city’s Cablecast video server and associate them with corresponding media for playout.

For more information, visit www.enco.com.  

SOUTHFIELD, Mich.—To streamline its efforts to meet FCC mandates for closed captions, KTBS-TV3 and KPXJ-TV21, which are owned by KTBS LLC and based in Shreveport, La., installed the enCaption4 automated closed captioning system from Enco.

The stations’ setup prior to acquiring the enCaption4 was the Electronic Newsroom Technique, which converts dialogue on a teleprompter script into on-screen captions. However, this would eliminate closed captioning of informal banter, field reporting or other on-air presentations not included in the teleprompter.

KTBS/KPXJ Assistant Chief Engineer Bob Shafer said that between the two stations they are producing 51 hours of local news programming a week, and much of it contains unscripted content.

Shafer said that the enCaption4 system has produced highly accurate captioning, with caption data sent to two DTV closed captioning encoders that embed the captions into the program video for broadcast. The system also has speech-to-text artificial intelligence that can learn from ingested lists and scripts to correctly spell unusual words, like names and local places. It also doesn’t require the creation of speech pattern profiles for every person speaking, per Shafer.

In the event that two local shows are airing at the same time, enCaption4 handles the flagship over-the-air signal, while the other program audio switches to the alternate teleprompter-driven captions path.

Shafer said that KTBS/KPXJ is likely to acquire a second enCaption4 unit at some point in the future.

For more information, visit www.enco.com.  

SALISBURY, Md.—WBOC-TV, owned by Draper Holdings, is the local news leader serving viewers on the DelMarVa (Delaware/Maryland/Virginia) Peninsula. Our main studio in Salisbury, Md., hosts our two flagship TV channels, WBOC-TV (CBS-16) and WBOC-DT2 (FOX-21).

Due to the ad-lib nature of a local program recorded for broadcast later in the day, we’ve had to add captioning during the editing process. This is extremely labor intensive so we decided to “live caption” the program. However, this in itself presented operational issues with the live captioning service.

At the start of each show, the captioner needed to enter a code that allowed them to transfer their live captions directly into the encoder for processing. But if, at the end of the show, they neglected to enter another code to “hang up” or disconnect the encoder from this bypass mode, the encoder could not pass through the next show’s existing captions—stripping them off instead. This led us to seek other options and, ultimately, take the reins of our live, local captioning efforts ourselves.

SIMPLIFYING THE PROCESS

When we first demo-ed ENCO’s en-Caption4 automated, real-time closed captioning system in our studios, we found it extremely easy to use. We didn’t need to tweak it to make it run better, it just worked. Everybody was happy, and we agreed that we had found the right solution.

Since then, we have been so pleased with the performance of our first en-Caption4 installation for WBOC-TV that we subsequently acquired and deployed a second unit for FOX-21. Today, these two on-premises captioning servers generate real-time closed captions on separate broadcast signal paths for CBS-16 and FOX-21. These software-defined, automated systems generate and feed accurate, real-time closed captions directly into our closed-captioning encoders, which in turn send the output to our ATSC broadcast encoders.

Now, with our enCaption4 servers, the only manual touchpoint is for someone in our production control room to throw a toggle switch on or off to start or stop the live captioning. The switch allows us to remote control the two enCaption4 servers, which reside in equipment racks in master control.

IN ACTION

Our ENCO servers are used during our live local news programming, including the 5 p.m. and 10 p.m. newscasts on FOX-21, as well as daily public affairs shows like “Delmarva Life” on WBOC-TV. While our news teams use AP’s ENPS newsroom computer system (NRCS), which could create captions for news packages and scripts itself, we prefer to have enCaption4 generate the captions for our newscasts and shows during live playout.

We continue to be pleased with how well the enCaption4 systems are performing, and have received zero viewer complaints. Compared to the live captioning services we previously used, our two enCaption4 servers—which we lease—are saving us thousands of dollars per year in operating costs.

With minimal intervention from our engineers, the enCaption4 closed-captioning systems are always ready to go, easy to use and reliable, enabling us to efficiently and cost-effectively meet our FCC mandates and viewer expectations.

Robert “Bob” Guzman is director of Engineering and Operations for WBOCTV (CBS-16), WBOC-DT2 (FOX-21) and additional Draper Holdings TV and radio properties. To contact him, visit www.wboc.com.

For more information, visit www.enco.com or contact Sam Bortz at ENCO Systems in Michigan at 248-827-4440.

NEW YORK—The NAB Show New York will serve as the background for Enco to showcase its latest advances with machine learning for the enCaption4 automated live captioning system and enTranslate automated live translation systems designed to help hard-of-hearing and non-native-speaking audiences.

The enCaption4 is used to automate and augment live or pre-recorded content with closed or open captions in near real time. New features on display include advanced punctuation capabilities that enhance the accuracy and readability of transcriptions for full stops, commas, exclamation marks and question marks in English, German, Spanish and French. Enco describes the system as being able to detect the context of sentences to insert the appropriate punctuation and capitalization. Other new features offered are an enhanced scheduling interface, a web API for third-party integration and additional boosts to accuracy and speed.

The same speech-to-text engine in the enCaption4 is used in the enTranslate system, featuring advanced translation technology powered by Veritone. The enTranslate platform provides subtitles and secondary or tertiary closed captions in alternative languages, while users can also embed translated captions in VOD content or show live. It features a Neural Machine Translation methodology that blends AI and sophisticated linguistics modelling to provide translations based on context of current words and phrases. There are 46 languages supported by enTranslate.

Enco will display these two platforms at its booth, N355, during NAB Show New York, Oct. 16-17 at the Javits Convention Center.

SOUTHFIELD, Mich.—ENCO will highlight new multi-language capabilities and NDI compatibility for its enCaption global captioning product at the 2018 IBC show, Sept. 13-17 at the RAI in Amsterdam. enCaption4 use artificial intelligence to provide live-action, quick turnaround closed captioning to videos. It also enables users to add new languages on the fly.

The new features include a dictionary database that has, for the first time, been expanded to 29 languages and the ability for users to add new languages on the fly. In addition, ENCO will demonstrate NDI compability for enCaption4 which simplifies the captioning workflow by eliminating the need for specialized encoding hardware. enCaption4 can now automatically generate captions through its NDI input stream, and output an NDI signal with captions keyed directly on top of the video stream

[Read:Automated Captioning Is Here to Stay]

“With more than three times the language support of previous generations, enCaption4 is now helping broadcasters around the world to reduce or eliminate the rising costs and short-notice staffing challenges of real-time stenocaptioners,” said Ken Frommert, president, ENCO. “We have significantly raised the bar for accuracy in live captioning environments and have surpassed the speed of professional human captioners. We’re helping our customers make an immediate on-air impact in news, sports and other programming with automated closed captioning.”

enCaption4 shrinks the gap between live speech and on-screen caption display, while increasing accuracy, according to ENCO. In fact, the company said enCaption4 has a 90 percent accuracy rate.

ENCO will be at Stand, 8.A59.

LAS VEGAS—At the 2018 NAB Show, ENCO will demonstrate the greater speed and accuracy of its enCaption4 automated closed captioning solution. These operational advancements boost accuracy to 90 percent or higher, meeting mandated compliancy requirements for live captioning, while better serving hearing-impaired viewers.

These accuracy improvements result from enCaption4’s advanced speech-to-text engine, which leverages machine learning technology breakthroughs to develop a deep neural network approach to voice recognition. By closing the gap between live speech and corresponding caption displays, broadcasters can offer an improved viewer experience for news, sports, talk shows and other live programming.

Configurable on-premises or as a cloud-based solution, enCaption4 lets broadcasters provide accurate captions, even for breaking news or weather alerts, when it’s often difficult to find qualified live captioners on short notice.

MOS integration with popular Newsroom Computer Systems (NRCS) allows enCaption4 to automatically learn correct spellings from news scripts and rundowns prior to live newscasts. Its multi-speaker identification feature eliminates crosstalk and other on-air confusion when multiple hosts and guests are contributing to live broadcasts. It identifies speech from each speaker through dedicated microphones, and processes each speaker separately, with support for more than 20 languages.

ENCO will also show a cloud-based, file-based service that provides audio transcripts with 99-percent accuracy for rebroadcasts, including re-runs and online distribution. This cloud transcription workflow makes it easy to upload recorded shows from which a transcriptionist will generate a transcript that will be accessible from the cloud within two to eight hours, with the higher accuracy the FCC expects for non-live broadcasts.

The 2018 NAB Show takes place in Las Vegas, April 9-12. ENCO will be in booth N3824. For more information, visit www.nabshow.com.

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