NOVI, Mich.—ENCO has unveiled Raptor, a cloud-based live streaming captioning encoder that injects the speed, power and reliability of real-time AI capabilities into the streaming workflow.

Raptor represents the convergence of pure software-defined infrastructure with AI and automated captioning workflows, providing embedded captions in an IP video stream, the company said.

Introduced at IBC2025, Raptor offers a simple, straightforward way to embed CEA-608 closed captions into a live program stream. That process incorporates the AI-based workflow from ENCO’s enCaption solutions to generate captions automatically with high accuracy. Users can also use outside cloud captioning sources.

Requiring no hardware infrastructure, Raptor is consistent with the shift broadcasters are making to move their video workflows to the cloud. Quick to deploy, Raptor offers a powerful new captioning option for live events, it said.

“With no physical encoder to maintain, customers are assured a cost-efficient and agile solution that is quick to configure and deploy,” said ENCO president Ken Frommert. “Raptor represents a new threshold in flexible, cost-efficient live and automated captioning, and we’re excited to present its capabilities to our customers and partners at IBC.”

Raptor was developed as a fully software-defined architecture to allow for customization at any point along the chain to best match the workflows and standards in use. Instead of SDI signals via fixed cabling, the solution employs SRT, RTMP or HLS video streams at the front end. As Raptor’s architecture can be hosted on a variety of public or private clouds, captions can be injected at nearly any stage, offering tremendous flexibility for deployment and operation. Upon engaging and regenerating the stream, captioning text is inserted and the outbound stream is made available to the customer, the company said.

Raptor offers the accuracy of the company’s enCaption universe and ensures compatibility with its enTranslate solutions, enabling translations to dozens of languages. Users can also customize word libraries and employ corrective filters, speaker identification and the ability to recognize music, laughter, applause and crowd noise, it said.

More information is available on the company’s website.

NOVI, Mich.—ENCO will make the international debut of its enTranslate Mobile for real-time, personal content translation in public spaces and showcase its enCaption and enTranslate solutions for broadcaster and live events during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Center.

ENCO developed the enTranslate platform to perform real-time, automated translations of live broadcasts and streams, VOD assets and presentations in cooperation with the fast, accurate captioning performance of enCaption solutions, ENCO said.

ENCO has consistently added support for new languages both on-prem and in cloud, which will be shown live in several on-booth demonstrations, including an enTranslate Mobile demo that will invite attendees to scan QR codes to access the platform’s Language Selector on their mobile devices. Once prompted, users can choose from several languages via the Language Selector menu, it said.

The company’s live demonstration of enCaption’s new speaker identification feature, debuting at the show, highlights the dynamic AI voice fingerprinting solution, which detects and identifies each speaker with more than one contributor. This capability is well-suited for shows with large panels like talk shows and those with multiple commentators like sports, the company said.

The technology’s AI-powered functionality is powered through a single-stream audio mix that dynamically identifies each speaker in real time upon analyzing the pitch, timber, accent and speaking style of each participant, it said.

The company will also feature enCaption feeding live captions into virtual production environments, such as the live Qimera virtual production set at its stand, which will debut at IBC this year. The Qimera demo will include green-screen technology with 3D multi-camera tracking, PTZ camera integration, 3D graphics assets and real-time data feeds, including captions that can be composited along with live camera feeds, ENCO said.

See ENCO at IBC2025 Stand 8.C76

More information is available on the company’s website.

TV Tech: What do you anticipate will be the most significant technology trends at the 2025 NAB Show?

Ken Frommert: AI continues to be the topic that permeates many areas of the broadcast landscape with technologies that are designed to elevate storytelling, improve workflow efficiency and unlock new opportunities for generating revenue. ENCO has been on the leading edge of the movement that has made AI a valuable and increasingly prevalent tool set for TV and radio broadcasters everywhere and we will be showcasing that once again at this year’s show. From leveraging AI and machine learning within our live captioning and translation products to using generative AI for creating dynamic localized and personalized content, ENCO is demonstrating how these innovations can transform audience engagement, enhance accessibility and streamline content delivery in real-time broadcasting environments. I look forward to seeing how others are utilizing AI and how their innovations are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in content creation, distribution, and audience interaction across the broadcast industry.

TVT: What will be your most important product news?

KF: The television side of our business will be represented through our captioning, translation and virtual production systems. We will once again present our Qimera virtual production stage on our booth, which can be found in the West Hall at W1743. There is no question that our enCaption and enTranslate brands will bring the biggest news this year. On the enCaption side, we will introduce dynamic speaker identification capabilities powered through a new AI voice fingerprinting feature. It’s a truly novel function applied to the captioning workflow as a single-stream audio mix that dynamically inserts the name of the speaker as each is identified. These speaker identifications also pass through to translations, powered through our enTranslate solution.

Last year, we introduced the ability to produce Spanish translations on-prem. This year, we will showcase enTranslate’s ability to now translate dozens of languages live either on-prem or in the cloud. We will also introduce enTranslate Mobile, which provides a mobile-friendly alternative to erecting large translation screens for live group events while giving audiences a way to follow along on their personal devices in their language of choice.

At NAB, our enCaption systems will provide accurate, real-time captions on stage-adjacent displays for the fourth straight year. These will happen on five NAB stages across the South and West Halls. For the first time, ENCO will also offer real-time translations directly to mobile devices through its enTranslate Mobile platform. Attendees can simply scan the displayed QR codes to access a mobile site, where they can select from languages including English, Spanish, French, Korean, Mandarin, Portuguese and German. As panels and presentations unfold, users can follow along with live translations right from their mobile devices for a more accessible and inclusive experience.

TVT: How is your new product different from what’s available on the market?

KF: What sets us apart is our ongoing cycle of innovation. While AI has long been a core part of our enCaption platform, ENCO, along with our partners at Benztown and Compass Media Networks, pushed the boundaries even further last year by introducing generative AI into radio advertising. The result was SPECai, a transformative solution that helps radio broadcasters create and sell ads more efficiently. Now live at over 1,000 stations, SPECai exemplifies how ENCO uses forward-thinking technology to deliver real value while redefining what’s possible. That same innovative mindset drives our captioning and translation tools, where features like dynamic speaker identification and on-premise translations set us apart in the market.

TVT: What is it about the NAB Show that brings you back every year?

KF: At the heart of it all is the opportunity to connect with our customers and partners. NAB provides the perfect setting for meaningful, face-to-face conversations where we can truly listen, understand their priorities, and align our solutions with their evolving needs. More often than not, we already have tools that can help move their vision forward. But what’s even more exciting is how these discussions often ignite fresh ideas — ideas that lead to the next wave of innovation for our customers. A walk around the show floor reveals these moments unfolding everywhere, and it’s something we look forward to every year.

NOVI, Mich.—ENCO has announced that it will be showing major advances to its enCaption automated captioning and translation solutions during the 2025 NAB Show between April 5-9.

Within its West Hall booth (W1743), ENCO will demonstrate a powerful new AI-driven voice fingerprinting solution for its enCaption systems that detects and identifies each speaker in real-time, based on each speaker's unique vocal characteristics. The new feature for its voice fingerprinting technology uses AI-powered functionality to dynamically identify each speaker.

“This new voice fingerprinting innovation is the latest in a series of enCaption breakthroughs developed through our adoption of AI, which continue to fuel our cycle of innovation,” said Ken Frommert, president, ENCO. “Our Speaker Identification feature analyzes the pitch, timber, accent and speaking style of each individual and uniquely identifies them as they speak, prefacing their captions with their names in real-time. By calling attention to each speaker, we can bring a higher level of readability and comprehension to the captioning experience for the hard of hearing and for audiences absorbing a broadcast or in-venue presentation in busy or noisier environments.”

During the NAB Show, ENCO will also support live stage captioning of panels and lectures for the fourth straight year, with enCaption services active on five stages across two exhibit halls.

In addition to producing and presenting real-time, live captions on stage-adjacent displays, ENCO will for the first time offer real-time translations to mobile devices via its new enTranslate Mobile platform at the NAB Main Stage in the West Hall. There ENCO will translate live panels and presentations to Spanish, French, Korean, Mandarin, Portuguese and German, made accessible to spectators via posted QR codes at the entrance.

“We are also excited to demonstrate our latest achievements with language translations for non-native speakers, and notably how our enTranslate platform makes broadcasts and presentations accessible to international viewers and audiences around the world,” Frommert added. “As the live stage captioning partner for our fourth straight NAB show, we look forward to presenting the industry’s most accurate performance in live captioning and translations to global audiences in the South and West Halls.”

The company reported that ENCO’s dynamic Speaker Identification introduces another industry-first innovation to the company’s market-leading captioning systems. Based on ENCO’s latest AI implementation, enCaption identifies each speaker and then seamlessly inserts their names when identified, automatically labeling their captions in real-time. Each visual identification is based on speaker profiles added to the system for each presenter.

In addition, ENCO reported that its multilingual capability highlights the possibilities of enTranslate heading into 2025 NAB Show. ENCO, which last year introduced the ability to produce Spanish translations on-prem, will showcase enTranslate’s ability to now translate dozens of languages live either on-prem or in the cloud, along with a new Web app for displaying seven real-time translations. Furthermore, enCaption’s speaker Identification feature can also pass through to translations.

enTranslate Mobile provides a mobile-friendly alternative to erecting large translation screens for live group events while giving audiences a way to follow along on their personal devices in their language of choice. Showgoers can experience its accessibility and convenience for live multilingual translations at the NAB Main Stage and see it in action at ENCO’s Qimera Virtual Production Stage at Booth W1743. Users can scan a posted QR code at each location, choose from one of seven languages and immediately access a text stream to follow along with the discussion or presentation.

NOVI, Mich.—ENCO will debut its first closed-caption encoder during the 2024 NAB Show New York, Oct. 9-10, at the Jacob Javits Center in New York.

The homegrown DoCaption EN848 is now shipping and available separately or as part of ENCO’s enCaption system, giving customers an immediate on-prem or cloud option for fast, automated conversion and delivery of captions and translations, the company said.

The availability of the EN848 allows broadcasters to deploy the system over their IP network, with connectivity to enCaption for cloud-based captioning services such as those offered by ENCO partner VITAC.

The EN848’s dual connectivity options also allow broadcasters to deploy redundant captioning workflows with immediate failover from cloud to on-prem if the network temporarily goes dark.

The solution’s core function is to reliably insert closed captions from any downstream source in compliance with global captioning standards. The EN848 positions ENCO upstream with a truly native solution and pairs the speed and accuracy of enCaption’s automatic conversion with a reliable 1RU solution that maintains broadcasters’ compliance as captions go live to air, it said.

The EN848 conforms to a broad range of closed-captioning specifications, including the encoding and insertion of CEA-608/CEA-708 and Teletext/OP47 ancillary data for standardized and legacy communication protocols, ENCO said.

“While compliance and reliability remain the core function of the closed caption encoder, the EN848 was developed with bigger aspirations in mind,” ENCO President Ken Frommert said.” The EN848 was purpose-built to natively pair with enCaption, removing the need for a third-party device and offer broadcasters a single source of support.”.

See ENCO at 2024 NAB Show New York booth 907

More information is available on the company’s website.

More information on VITAC is available here.

TV TECH: What do you anticipate will be the most significant technology trends at the 2024 NAB Show?

KEN FROMMERT: We have seen significant AI development taking shape since last NAB Show, where the activity was more formative. The media and entertainment industry has now embraced AI to improve business operations and workflows as the technology has matured. We expect to see much more activity this year with AI development, especially as it pertains to content creation. ENCO is leveraging AI for creative workflow purposes within our radio and TV businesses, from spec ad creation to virtual news production to captioning and translation.

TVT: What will be your most important product news?

FROMMERT: ENCO has a lot to talk about at NAB Show. On the radio side, we have integrated our AITrack module into our DAD radio automation system and WebDAD remote control and production workflow. Users can preschedule automated voice tracks (song intros, stations IDs, localized news and weather), by using generative AI and synthetic voice engines to produce natural-sounding, engaging content between songs. We are also demonstrating SPECai, with Compass Media Networks and Benztown, which uses AI to instantly generate fully produced custom spec spots.

We have also added AI functionality within our Qimera virtual production workflow for television. At NAB Show, we will have a full virtual set adjacent to the booth, complete with an AI virtual anchor presenting news stories through synthetic speech.

NAB will also serve as the debut for enCaption Sierra, our next-gen automated closed-captioning solution. Sierra users will see significant improvements in speed and accuracy through GPU processing and large language models as well as flexible deployment options on-prem or in the cloud.

TVT: How is your new product different from what’s available on the market?

FROMMERT: No other captioning product on the market can attain the level of accuracy that we have achieved with enCaption Sierra, which can level on-prem or cloud GPU processing to reach new heights in accuracy. Sierra can also detect audio events such as music, laughter, applause and crowd noise. We had enhanced speaker diarization and improved recognition and accuracy of speech with challenging accents and noisy environments. This is also the industry’s first all-in-one on-prem solution delivered with Windows or Linux OS with the encoder built into the package. That encoder is also new for NAB Show, and is born out of our recent acquisition of DoCaption.

TVT: What is it about the NAB Show that brings you back every year?

FROMMERT: I always refer to NAB Show as being our industry’s “Super Bowl.” Product launches hinge around this time of year and attendees expect to see the latest and greatest innovations from all the vendors. The energy leading up to NAB Show and during is contagious, sparking enthusiasm and anticipation in everyone involved. I’m excited to spend time with our customers and partners all in the same place and learn about their upcoming projects and how we can help. It’s an exciting time for our entire team and I look forward to being in the bright lights showcasing our latest innovations.

NOVI, Mich.—During the 2024 NAB Show, ENCO will be showcasing an AI-driven virtual anchor delivering live news from a realistic 3D virtual news set. 

This innovative presentation will be produced live from a virtual production studio powered by Qimera AR/VR/MR systems in combination with generative AI technologies, ENCO reported. 

Attendees will be able to step inside this virtual production universe at ENCO’s booth (W1743) in the West Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center, taking place from April 14-17, 2024. 

“The convergence of AI with news production technology represents a significant step forward in that it introduces an automated way to create compelling, localized content in real-time,” said ENCO president Ken Frommert. “We fully expect this impressive technology to make a big impact in 2024 because it offers a broad, robust feature set with a simplified, intuitive user experience unseen in the marketplace.”

ENCO first unveiled their partnership with Qimera at NAB last year, where they debuted a complete virtual production in their booth. The AI virtual anchor is an exciting new innovation for this year’s exhibit, leveraging AI models to generate virtual human anchors that speak with human-sounding voices. These are generated by ENCO new SPECai generative AI text and voice creation application. 

More specifically, the Qimera virtual production workflow acquires and summarizes a news story, delivered as synthetic speech through the virtual anchor.

The Qimera virtual production environment accelerates the learning curve by removing all the complexity from the process. The underlying Qimera technology generates realistic, real-time graphical sets by harnessing its integrated Unreal Engine, NVIDIA GeForce graphics card, and 3D asset library. Other integrated features include virtual cameras, tracked/trackless camera systems, a 4-input switcher and DMX lighting controls.

As Qimera’s exclusive North American distributor, ENCO sells and markets Qimera’s virtual production technology and integrates it with ENCO’s automation, studio production and captioning product lines. This NAB virtual production studio experience is designed to call attention to the extensive products offered by ENCO and its partners. 

“Our 2024 NAB Show exhibit is a strong example of how ENCO blends the physical and digital worlds with AI to ignite groundbreaking creative possibilities,” Frommert added. “We are just getting started.”

NOVI, Mich.—ENCO has joined the Ryan Seacrest Foundation’s technology partner community, helping the foundation establish a simplified media workflow at the 14 Seacrest Studios located in pediatric hospitals across the United States. 

The Ryan Seacrest Foundation (RSF) is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to inspiring today’s youth through entertainment and educational initiatives. Its primary initiative is to build broadcast media centers (Seacrest Studios) that allow pediatric patients to explore the creative realms of radio, television and new media and contribute to the healing process for children and their parents.

RSF opened its first Seacrest Studios in 2010 with an emphasis on the radio side of broadcast and production. Over the last several years RSF’s strategy has expanded to include a larger video component.

“There were always video elements so that patients could visually take in what was happening in the studio inside their rooms,” said Nicole Mead, RSF vice president of business development and operations. “As technology has evolved along with the desires of young patients, we have made significant investments on the video production side. Seacrest Studios locations today have the appearance of a combination radio and television studio. The square footage of Seacrest Studios has essentially doubled since our first build.”

With these changes came the need to modernize the technology footprint within both new and existing Seacrest Studios. The radio automation workflow was a specific emphasis. RSF also wanted a solution that offered direct hooks into some of the video production elements as well as a simpler on-air and production workflow, ENCO said. 

These were among the reasons inspired RSF to standardize on ENCO’s DAD radio automation solution across all locations, the company said.

“We spent nine months researching how we could best modernize and simplify the Seacrest Studios infrastructure and workflow,” said Cayce Long, RFS senior communications specialist. “ENCO gives us a very powerful all-in-one solution to handle file conversions, metadata and other production elements that previously required separate components and manual intervention. “

DAD seamlessly interoperates with video technologies added to Seacrest Studios, including new PTZ cameras at many locations. 

More information is on the ENCO and Ryan Seacrest Foundation websites. 

NOVI, Mich.—ENCO has added Keith Lucas, an experienced sales and business development professional with more than two decades of file-based subtitle playout, live captioning and AI experience, to its sales team. 

Keith Lucas joins ENCO immediately as international sales manager, with a focus on building ENCO’s presence in the EMEA and North American broadcast and ProAV markets, including channel partner network growth. He reports to president Ken Frommert.

“Keith brings an exceptional track record of customer relations, business development and technical knowledge to ENCO in key growth areas for the company,” said Frommert. “We have spent the last several years aggressively building out our global infrastructure and technology portfolio to address new markets and business opportunities worldwide. Keith’s talents and experience will only strengthen our sales structure and business operations worldwide, and we are privileged to welcome him to the ENCO team.”

Lucas spent nearly 21 years with Screen Subtitling Systems as business development director, where he was responsible for UK and North American direct sales and managed the company’s European distribution network. He later spent 18 months at Ai-Media, where he served as senior sales manager for the EMEA region. His combined expertise gained at both companies makes him an ideal fit for ENCO, which continues to solidify its leadership position in live translation and transcription captioning solutions.

“I have worked closely with customers to solve problems and ease their transition into new technologies and ecosystems for many years,” said Lucas. “What excites me most about ENCO is that they have their eye on the future, and a desire to innovate new on-premise and cloud solutions, as well as microservices that utilize the cloud. They have a broad captioning and translation family that solves problems for customers today, and can be developed to address future workflows. And given ENCO’s experience in automation playout and their emerging AI toolsets, I see real opportunity for ENCO to evolve the traditional ‘channel-in-a-box’ concept into unchartered territory.”

NOVI, Mich.—ENCO has been named exclusive distributor of Qimera in an agreement that adds a suite of real-time compositing tools for virtual production sets and augmented reality graphics to ENCO's range of broadcast and AV solutions.

ENCO will support all sales and marketing operations in North America, effective immediately. The company will consult Qimera on future product development, including features and integrations with ENCO and RUSHWORKS products, ENCO said.

ENCO will demonstrate Qimera’s technology at InfoComm, June 13-15, in Orlando. The company will demo Qimera’s technology, including recording of a green screen. ENCO will process the recordings live and present the output on a display screen. Those visiting the ENCO booth can interact with the technology and manipulate the virtual production elements, the company said.

ENCO will market the technology to broadcasters for in-studio and on-location shoots of news, event and entertainment productions—both live and recorded, it said.

“Qimera offers advanced virtual production technology at a very affordable price point, opening new doors for small-to-mid market TV stations, corporations, universities and visual radio broadcasters that were once priced out of the market,” said Ken Frommert, president of ENCO. “At NAB, we previewed a full Qimera virtual set with a green screen and augmented reality graphics for product demonstrations and live presentations. The response from broadcasters across the spectrum, from PEG stations to national TV and radio networks, was overwhelmingly positive. We foresee strong demand for this technology across our broadcast and AV customer base, and an opportunity to extend the ENCO brand into new areas of live production.”

See ENCO at InfoComm booth 2816.

More information is available on the company’s website.

NOVI, Mich.—ENCO will feature the ENCO RUSHWORKS PTX Model 3 Pro robotic pan/tilt head used in a variety of production settings, including newsrooms and sports, at InfoComm, June 14-16, in Orlando.

The PTX Model 3 is designed for larger payloads. It provides the torque needed for smooth control of most professional camera and lens combinations, including models from Blackmagic Design, Canon, Panasonic, Lumix, Red, Arri and Sony, ENCO said.

Configuring multiple PTX units on a network simplifies connectivity and control. Camera operators can use any joystick that supports the VISCA over IP protocol to execute commands like pan, tilt, speed, ramp curves, presets and recalls as well as tally. The RUSHWORKS VDESK Integrated Production System or RUSHCONTROL Robotics Control Software also can be used for remote control of positioning and camera functions, it said.

Support for accessories, such as a teleprompter rig, is available. Various wall- and ceiling-mount bracket options are available as well. The PTX Model 3 PRO also offers multiple passthrough connections for cameras and lenses between the base and moving arm, including SDI, HDMI, Cat6, and XLR 4-pin, it said.

The rugged and stable head is constructed of aluminum and steel. It measures 15-by-15-15 inches and weighs 43 lbs.

More information is available on the company’s website.

See ENCO at InfoComm booth 3816.

NOVI, Mich.—ENCO is introducing two new ChatGPT-inspired solutions for the 2023 NAB Show. The new AI products—AITrack and ENCO-GPT, leverage the ChatGPT model to generate language responses from text-based queries added to automated TV and radio production workflows.

ENCO President Ken Frommert says the solutions are ready for use. “AI can be thoughtfully integrated into products like AITrack and ENCO-GPT that solve problems and create new opportunities for broadcasters today,” he said. “It is quick to rollout, free of labor-intensive integrations and fully functional for automated broadcast production workflows.”

AITrack integrates with ENCO’s DAD radio automation system to generate and insert voice tracks between songs. That might include identifying the song and artist of the previous song, introducing upcoming songs, communicating station IDs, or providing localized news and weather. Users can adjust the length of each automated voice track, and AITrack leverages CHAT-GPT and synthetic voice engines to produce natural-sounding, engaging content between songs.

ENCO-GPT simplifies copy creation within TV and radio broadcasts and program streams, according to the company. ENCO-GPT automatically creates ad copy on behalf of sponsors. For example, a producer can leverage ENCO-GPT to produce audio content for an auto dealership that committed to a recent media buy without producing their own ad content. ENCO-GPT ingests text from the producer with details on an upcoming special sale, with highly accurate, immediate turnaround of synthetic speech that is ready to air.

ENCO-GPT can also summarize news stories to fit a specific run time in a broadcast schedule by  condensing a lengthy written news article into a few sentences, or inject breaking news updates within live ad breaks.

Frommert sees an opportunity to go bigger with both solutions, especially in the case of ENCO-GPT. “We see opportunities to convert a morning or afternoon drive radio show into a short-form podcast, or summarize an 11pmlocal news program for the TV station’s website,” said Frommert. “ENCO-GPT offers a compelling glimpse into the future of content repurposing by summarizing long-form segments into smaller bites. It offers our customers a seamless way to publish content in diverse forms.”

ENCO has also built a virtual production studio on its NAB booth using real-time compositing tools from Unreal Engine-based Qimera, one of several ENCO partners on the booth along with Benztown, NewsBoss and StreamGuys. The virtual set will leverage augmented reality graphics to call attention to products from ENCO and its partners while inviting users to step inside the Qimera VR/AR/XR/MR universe.

ENCO will be in Booth W1743 in the West Hall of the LVCC during the NAB Show in Las Vegas, April 16-19.

TV TECH: What do you anticipate will be the most significant technology trends at the 2023 NAB Show?

KEN FROMMERT: AI technology has been evolving at a rapid pace. We all know from experience that IP migration has been gradual over many years, and cloud adoption has been mixed due to costs and the reality that some important functionalities have been slow to develop. AI is being implemented across the workflow now and even reaching into the RF world. It has brought immediate benefits to content creation and is proving to reduce operational costs. The quick rise of ChatGPT, which just launched in November, signals that AI is also entering fast acceptance and adoption in the consumer world. I think 2023 is the year of AI on the show floor and we will see it touch almost every part of the signal chain from origination to content delivery.

TVT: What will be your most important product news?

FROMMERT: Live, real-time captioning and translation with our latest enCaption release. ENCO has been very bullish on simplifying captioning workflows and bringing down the costs of producing and delivering closed captions. With each new version the speed that captions appear on screen accelerates, the accuracy rate increases, and the deployment options expand. Our embrace of AI and machine learning technology for automating captions and enabling competitive price points has positioned enCaption as the top choice for broadcasters of all sizes, from large broadcast networks to local PEG stations.

At the 2023 NAB Show, we will formally introduce the productized version of enCaption 5, which adds new features and flexibility such as a caption editor to view and refine the results of offline or previous live transcriptions. enCaption 5 can now add captions to both live and pre-recorded content in 48 languages, combining machine learning with advanced speech-to-text conversion and grammatical structure analysis to deliver exceptional accuracy with extremely low latency.

enCaption also now incorporates our enTranslate systems as a plug-in, which will be available for customers this spring. This brings two important AI-driven services into a common platform for the customer, which means fewer workflow steps to manage. The new enTranslate plug-in adds live translation for 34 languages. Translated captions can be embedded into VOD content for subsequent viewing. These are big steps forward in our ongoing development process for captioning and translation.

TVT: How is your new product different from what’s available on the market?

FROMMERT: Deployment options is a unique differentiator. enCaption5 is a cloud-native, microservices-based solution that takes full advantage of public cloud infrastructure, eliminating the need for on-premises capital equipment when captioning live or transcribing file-based content. However, it is also available as an on-premises or in hybrid on-prem/cloud workflows for customers who need traditional AV signal connectivity for live captioning and transcription or who prefer an on-premises solution. We even now offer programmable API versions for on-prem or the cloud deployments. But perhaps the biggest differentiation is that our translation engines can now be deployed on-premises. That is something that was only possible in the cloud before, and enCaption 5 is the only solution that can provide an on-premises or cloud solution that integrates captioning and transcription within a common platform and without the need for a third-party closed-captioning encoder.

TVT: NAB is celebrating its centennial this year. How many NAB Shows have you been to and do you have any particular standout memories of past shows?

FROMMERT: ENCO has been coming to NAB Show since 1992, when company founder Gene Novacek came to the show with a hand-built 22-inch touchscreen to automate audio playout for television. ENCO stood out from the crowd then, and over 31 years we have continued to grow in ways that make the company stand out on the show floor, from developing technologies for more businesses and verticals to showcasing a continually growing range of partners that help our customers develop complete TV and radio workflow solutions.

It is a challenge to consider an NAB Show that stands apart from the rest, but I would have to say NAB Show 2022 wins that prize. The uncertainty of how the pandemic would affect tradeshows and gatherings was answered as over the last few years: We still need tradeshows. The value of meeting in person with customers, partners and peers is not arguable. Virtual meetings add value in how we communicate daily, but virtual events cannot match the power of in-person communication that global events like NAB Show offer.

LOWELL, Mass.—Lowell Telecommunications Corp. (LTC), also known as Lowell TeleMedia Center, is a public access TV station that operates three PEG channels. Members of the Lowell community can sign up for a membership to broadcast up to three hours of content per week. Memberships also provide access to equipment rentals and in-studio editing without an additional charge.  

The city of Lowell contracts LTC as a third-party to broadcast government meetings, which occur daily except Fridays. LTC staff monitors meetings onsite to ensure that live broadcasts go smoothly and are archived for public record. 

About 10 years ago we decided that captioning services would be a great help to our viewers, and began working with organizations to fund the initiative. 

Manual Failures
We started by using a live caption company, an expensive endeavor that paid a stenographer by the word. The stenographer was also located halfway across the country, and there was a three- to five-minute delay before captions would appear on a live meeting broadcast. The errors were enumerable, and we realized that manual captioning wasn’t an ideal solution. 

We soon searched for other options that were faster, more cost-efficient, and a lot more accurate. Lowell is a very diverse community, and thick accents can produce embarrassing captioning mistakes. Daniell Krawczyk of Municipal Captioning, an LTC partner that advises PEG stations on technology, suggested ENCO’s enCaption solution. After taking it for a test drive I knew it was a perfect fit.

For one, we can now schedule captioning services for live meetings in advance. As soon as we go live, it just starts working. Previous captioning delays are now gone, and what once took three minutes to start is now instantaneous. 

ENCO’s enCaption’s native AI technology has improved speed and accuracy. Having five minutes of words appear on screens after the program ends helps nobody. The machine-learning has been very fast, and I can’t stress enough how accurate it has been compared to before. It’s one less thing to worry about.

Accent on Accuracy
The solution also works accurately on many different accents, solving one of our biggest captioning conundrums. It even gets complicated names right for the most part. When it doesn’t, we can simply input names into a word bank and the software automatically pulls up the correct name when it hears it. For example, our mayor’s name is Sokhary Chau, which we added to enCaption’s dictionary so that his name is spelled correctly every time.

Our enCaption system is installed on a rackmounted computer on-premises. The workflow is simple: The studio at City Hall sends the live signal back to LTC and into our TelVue system, which feeds enCaption to produce real-time closed captions. Besides adding occasional words to the enCaption dictionary and preparing weekly schedules, we almost never touch it. 

When we started using enCaption, we watched it constantly to see how it fared. There were far fewer errors, and we no longer received complaints from the community about delay and accuracy. We don’t even have to think about captioning anymore, which frees us to focus on other aspects of creating a great broadcast. l 

Dan Bazarian of LTC also contributed to this story. 

For more information, visit www.enco.com. 

NOVI, Mich.—ENCO has acquired  TranslateTV and Sentinel Solutions from Vox Frontera, a Silver Spring, Md.-based provider of televised Spanish language captioning and translation services. ENCO says the TTV acquisition will give the company a broader reach into the growing multigenerational Hispanic television market inside the U.S. and abroad by offering broadcasters an on-premises option for advanced translation of live Spanish-language TV captioning, with plans to develop a global solution specific to AV applications. Sentinel supports cost-effective, real-time quality monitoring solutions for automated captions—an especially valuable solution to keep broadcasters compliant with FCC closed-captioning standards related to accuracy, synchronization, and completeness, ENCO added. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

TTV uses patented software to translate English closed captions into Spanish in real-time. While ENCO offers Spanish translation today within its flagship, automated enTranslate service—along with 45 other languages—enTranslate today only supports cloud-based processing for translation. Offering a fully on-premises captioning and translation system enables new business opportunities with customers that prefer to host their own systems and remain independent of the cloud. 

ENCO will leverage the same technology to develop an on-premises Spanish-language translation and captioning solution for financial institutions, corporations, government bodies and universities that restrict access to sensitive information. TTV’s open development platform will also allow ENCO engineers to make continuous speed and accuracy improvements, and add new languages moving forward for both broadcast and AV customers.

ENCO will natively integrate TTV into its enCaption automated captioning workflow in both broadcast and AV environments, which will allow the platform to be used for open captioning of meetings, classes, worship services and other AV-related events, according to ENCO President Ken Frommert.. 

“We look forward to supporting TTV’s legacy customers and bringing them into the ENCO family,” said Frommert. “Integrated with our enCaption automated captioning and transcription solution, we will enable this technology to natively accept live and prerecorded audio feeds and automatically convert them to text. Our same workflow will inject these translations onto multiple consumer platforms, presenting live, accurate captions on TV sets, desktop, laptops, and mobile devices. We will develop and innovate the TTV platform for new applications and use cases,  while bringing 24/7 product and technical support to the existing TTV client base.”

Frommert adds that with Sentinel, ENCO’s broadcast customers “can monitor and evaluate caption quality from ingest to transmission, while cleaning up inaccuracies, improving timeliness and providing documentation in response to FCC complaints.”

ENCO’s cloud-based enTranslate is available today as a plug-in to enCaption automated captioning and translation systems. Frommert expects to adapt a similar approach to TTV for its customers who want an on-premises version. All ENCO enCaption solutions leverage A.I. based deep learning and speech recognition algorithms “to deliver the most accurate and consistent live captions and translations in broadcast and AV,” the company said.

Gregory Schmidt, CEO of Vox Frontera, confirms that the company has transferred its TTV client base in the US, which includes The Tonight Show and local TV stations throughout the country, along with its TTV and Sentinel technologies. Longtime Vox Frontera Director of Engineering Dave Pinson will also join ENCO to support existing TTV customers and product development initiatives. 

“Vox Frontera has made a strategic decision to focus our company resources on other development efforts,” said Schmidt. “We know that ENCO offers best-in-class in automated broadcast captioning, and is a worthy successor that will serve our customers well.”

NOVI, Mich.—The Veterans Health Administration’s (VHA’s) Employee Education System has deployed the ENCO enCaption automated caption system to increase productivity and reduce time to market for products and services while continuing to offer accurate captioning services, the company announced today.

The education system, which offers training content, wellness programming and departmental communications to VA staff and veterans around the country, adopted the automated captioning system after successfully piloting an ENCO captioning solution, the company said.  

Building on its satisfaction with the pilot and the purchase of its first enCaption unit, the education system is now adding two more enCaption units to dedicate to real-time, live captioning of its two 24/7 satellite program channels, the company said.

The VA Knowledge Network (VAKN) satellite uplink center in St. Louis distributes two programming channels to 250 VA Medical Centers and Community Based Outpatient Clinics nationwide. The VA-1 channel is dedicated to delivering training and communication to over 400,000 VA staff and contractors.

The Veteran News Network (VNN), is also distributed to both internal and external audiences 24/7 on platforms that include YouTube and Roku. VNN offers programming on Veteran’s health issues, benefits, nutrition and other aspects of care. All VAKN content is closed captioned for regulatory compliance and to ensure full accessibility, it said.

“With our previous workflow, we needed to schedule captioners to dial in, but the timeframes for our master control engineers were pretty tight,” said Hugh Graham, telecommunications specialist at the VHA Employee Education System. “The engineer would need to start playback of the original content on one device and record the captioned result on another. It was very labor-intensive, and any technical glitches became a significant bottleneck.”

The accuracy of enCaption’s speech-to-text transcription was particularly attractive. “Human captioners do a great job, but our unique medical terminology can be difficult for them,” said Graham. “We can’t always send them a script of what will be said, so they are at the mercy of the information we give or don’t give them.”

“enCaption allows us to upload word models for spelling things like medical terms and the names of our leadership, which it can then use for all future captioning.," he continued. "Even without the word models, enCaption has proven to be amazingly accurate for most of our content right out of the box.”

Content is played out from a media server into enCaption device. The resulting captioning data and video is fed to an EEG 470 caption encoder and embedded. The closed captioned video can be routed to a record device, uplink channel or to a streaming media encoder for distribution, the company said.

The new enCaption systems will be dedicated to real-time, 24/7 captioning of the VA-1 and VNN satellite channels, YouTube, and Roku distribution. The offline enCaption unit will be used for ad-hoc captioning of real-time sources or file-based content, it said.

More information is available on the company’s website.

CAMBRIDGE, U.K. & NOVI, Mi.—Speechmatics has announced that ENCO has chosen its Autonomous Speech Recognition (ASR) technology for ENCO’s new enCaption5 automated captioning and transcription solution. 

This partnership will enable AV professionals, content producers, and broadcasters to create highly accurate transcripts, adding closed or open captions to both live and pre-recorded AV content regardless of the speaker’s demographic, age, gender, accent, dialect or location, the companies said. 

“Speechmatics’ core technology is without a doubt the most accurate of the AI speech-to-text engines available,” said Ken Frommert, president of ENCO. “More than just fantastic technology, however, Speechmatics has also been a great partner. We worked with them previously on enCaption4 and they have been very responsive to our feedback, helping us drive the enCaption platform forward to meet the unique needs of our markets and customers. We’re excited to use their latest technology for enCaption5.”

Speechmatics are global experts in deep learning and speech recognition working with solution and service providers to integrate into their stack regardless of their industry or use case. Speechmatics’ technology is trained on huge amounts of unlabeled data without the need for human intervention, delivering a far more comprehensive understanding of all voices and dramatically reducing both AI Bias and errors in speech recognition.

The fifth generation enCaption5 harnesses Speechmatics’ technology in a cloud-native architecture – which can also be deployed in hybrid or on-premises workflows – and an intuitive user interface optimized for professional AV deployments, broadcast environments, and conversational AI applications. 

In addition, enCaption5 offers such features as integration with external vocabulary sources; AV signal input and output; media indexing and search; confidence scoring; and the ability to review and edit transcripts – with manual refinements automatically updating the system’s word filters to improve future accuracy. enCaption5 also offers an open, advanced API for third-party developers, and is backed by world-class, U.S.-based support.

ENCO will be leveraging the entire suite of Speechmatics’ market-leading features for enCaption5. These include:

• Coverage of 34 languages
• Advanced Punctuation
• Custom Dictionary (the ability to add context specific words to the Speechmatics dictionary in real-time) and
• Entity Formatting (consistently and more accurately interpret how entities such as numbers, currencies, and addresses should appear in written form)

For more information about ENCO and enCaption5 visit www.enco.com/encaption. For more information about Speechmatics visit www.speechmatics.com.

NOVI, Mich.—The Enco enCaption system has found a place in the Pennsylvania Senate, as the Senate Video Facility has chosen the product to provide automated closed-captioning services for TV and some in-person operations for hard-of-hearing individuals.

The Senate had previously attempted to provide closed-captioning services by pulling data from the court reporter’s transcription system, however the results proved unreliable. Meanwhile, the option of human transcribers presented scheduling issues, the Senate found.

Dave Costanza, the certified broadcast networking technologist who heads up the Senate’s broadcasting operations, eventually tested the enCaption system and opted to make it their permanent solution.

The Senate Video Facility now has four enCaption systems, placed in the Chamber and three hearing rooms. Each space has remotely controlled cameras feeding video switchers, with the program audio feed routed to the enCaption system. The resulting captions are fed to an external encoder for incorporation into the final video signal, which are then sent to the Pennsylvania Cable Network for distribution throughout the state.

In addition to closed-captioning for TV broadcast, the enCaption system is occasionally used for in-room captioning needs, providing openly displayed captions in the event that a participant is hard-of-hearing.

For more information, visit www.enco.com.  

NOVI, Mich.—Enco has a new base of operations, as the company announced it has moved from its longtime headquarters of Southfield, Mich., and headed 17 miles down the road to Novi, Mich., outside of Detroit, and a new state-of-the-art facility.

The newly built headquarters is 12,000 square feet and will serve as the base for Enco’s entire operation effective immediately. The interior of the building is an open floor plan designed to help bring the different areas of the business together and promote collaboration. The facility is spacious enough to ensure social distancing policies are in place as the COVID-19 pandemic continues.

“This is truly a state-of-the-art facility that is the culmination of careful planning and consideration for employee comfort,” said Ken Frommert, president of Enco. “Everyone has a private office and plenty of space for social distancing in the COVID era. At the same time, we have an open production laboratory, several high-tech meeting and conference spaces, and varied seating and lounge settings, all of which encourage collaborative and creative thinking.”

Enco’s new headquarters are located in the Novi Business Park at 41551 West 11 Mile Road, Novi, Mich., 48375.

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.—Enco has announced the hiring of Shane Finch to the role of sales director, effective immediately.

Finch, who will report directly to Enco President Ken Frommert, will focus on global sales and business development for all markets and Enco’s entire product line, as well as introduce Enco’s automated workflow services into new business verticals, the announcement says.

Finch joins Enco after more than 40 years in the broadcast industry, having served in both on-air and director-level management roles in radio before transitioning to the technology space, where he was vice president, business relations, at MusicMaster.

“Shane’s experience with sales management and customer relations, along with his direct familiarity with Enco’s technology and business culture, makes him a natural fit for this important role in Enco’s continued growth,” said Frommert.

For more information, visit www.enco.com.  

MINNEAPOLIS & SOUTHFIELD, Mich.—Tightrope Media Systems and Enco Systems have agreed to a strategic partnership that is designed to help community media organizations incorporate automated closed captioning into their broadcast, online and OTT workflows.

With the new partnership, Enco’s enCaption automated captioning platform is being made available to Tightrope’s Cablecast Community Media customers at a special price. The Cablecast customer service team will also offer support for integrated Cablecast and enCaption workflows. Tightrope and Enco are expected to continue to explore other opportunities for technical integration between the two products.

Cablecast is designed to help community media organizations reach audiences across cable television channels and OTT services. With integrated enCaption technology, users will be able to add closed or open captions to live and pre-recorded content in near-real-time, according to the companies.

“[B]y partnering with Enco to offer this proven combination, we can save community media centers the time and effort of separately researching, purchasing and implementing a captioning solution,” said Steve Israelsky, president, Cablecast Community Media.

The enCaption platform, which uses AI technology for things like word recognition and spelling precision, has already been a popular service among community media organizations, like North Penn Television in Southeastern Pennsylvania.

For more information, visit www.cablecast.tv or www.enco.com.  

The art and science of automated real-time captioning for television has evolved considerably in the last several years, with continually increasing accuracy thanks in-part to Artificial Intelligence-based learning (where the speech recognition “learns” via human feedback), faster processing and more innovative approaches to embracing the broader captioning workflow. 

Even before adding additional guidance from the creation of unique word lists, the finest automated captioning systems are delivering accuracy percentages in the mid- to high-90s today. Additional accuracy comes from ingesting unique words, people’s names, regional words and spellings that help to dial-in the AI’s accuracy (“does she spell her name as Kris or Chris?”).

IMMEDIATE NEEDS

Totally on-premises captioning systems are generally the “Best in Class” option, and you can't find a much faster way to caption. That’s because where most human captioners are remotely located, often working out of their homes and only listening to an audio feed via phone, an on-premises solution seriously shortens the complexity of patching-in and scheduling a remote human captioner—and if breaking news means you have to caption immediately, just flip the switch and you're on. 

The speed of automatic speech recognition (ASR) has also improved a lot, and is faster than humans captioners today. The smarter AI-based systems, (such as ENCO’s enCaption product), know the words almost immediately, but pause a second or two to gain further accuracy via on-the-fly statistical analysis, predicting what words generally work together and which don't. That, coupled with being on-premise, makes for quick captioning (if your workflow requires cloud processing, there are many solutions for that as well). 

Captioning workflows are now far more than just embedding CEA-608/708 data into your transmission signal, too.

THE ‘THIRD RAIL’

Captioning is the “third rail” of your transmission media—you have video, audio and you have captions. While traditional captions have just included the dialog, today we see more value-added captions, such as the name of a song that’s playing or sound effects in the program. This means as a broadcaster, you have more ways to address your viewers than just video and sound.

Though there’s an estimated 48 million Americans who report being hard of hearing or deaf, captions serve an even larger audience than that. Ever been in a restaurant with lots of TV’s on a weekend—how many different sports games are on at the same time? And yet, the PA system is likely playing only one play-by-play. Thanks to captions, you can still gain insights into any of the other games being shown by reading their captions. Then there’s the opposite scenario, where your viewers are watching from a quiet location where they don't want to disturb anyone near them—captions make it possible for them to enjoy your content there too (you do caption everything, right?).

When you caption everything, interesting possibilities start to emerge.

With more television broadcasters using automated video logging and compliance software, they may already have a powerful tool there to make captions even more useful. Many of these types of products allow for the logging of all the caption data—aligned with the video—such that you can jump to an index point just by just clicking on the caption.

It then quickly becomes an easy task to search across all the feeds you’re recording, making it instantly possible to find the conversation, brand or person’s name you're looking for, with “point and click” precision. Moreover, this capability doesn't just have to be available to your producers, as you can easily bring such access online to your website and your viewers.

CAPTION EVERYTHING

Nowadays you can search YouTube videos with the results limited to only videos that are captioned—if you have any video that’s not captioned, it won't even show up in the results. Automated captioning means the more you caption (both live and offline files), the more economical ASR products become. Which means—caption everything.

Since it costs less using smart AI automation, why not use it to caption more of your audio feeds? How about captioning the audio associated with ISO camera feeds you may have at sporting or other special events? You don't always have enough resources to monitor all the audio or video coming in from these ISO feeds, but by using an ASR to caption automatically, you can set up software to alert you when certain keywords are said on these audio feeds—helping improve your real-time access to more content faster and automatically (whether producing a live broadcast or in post production).

PLUS: The Importance of Automating Live Captioning in Broadcasting

Be sure to consider what you're captioning online, as well. While the FCC regulates only some captioning for online streaming and OTT/VOD applications, the Americans with Disabilities Act may impact other aspects, and there are many organizations committed to growing accessibility standards across all media (some who are not afraid to bring lawsuits in the process).

Therefore, if you’ve got an on-premises captioning system that’s not being used for real-time all the time, why not use it in file-based mode and caption the thousands of hours of legacy video you already have? Just like with live video, this can make your content more accessible to more people (and search engines), is good for business and it gives your content that “third rail.”

There’s a lot of innovation taking place in the captioning industry, bringing more value to more people, and in the process, giving you more ways to keep in touch with your audience.

Bill Bennett is media solutions account manager for ENCO Systems.

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—Eugene Novacek, who founded broadcast technology company ENCO and led it for decades, has died. He was 61.

According to a statement from the company, he died on New Year’s Day in New York, from pancreatic cancer.

Survivors include his wife Judith Novacek, daughter Kristin Heinbockel, son Andrew Novacek and granddaughter Evany Novacek. “His legacy lives through his family, the company he founded and the industry he loved and changed,” the statement reads.

Novacek was a professional engineer (P.E.) who held engineering degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He had early jobs at Bechtel Power Corp., Barton Malow Co. and Alberici Constructors before founding ENCO Systems Inc., whose acronym includes his initials.

ENCO is now based in Southfield, Mich., but began in St. Louis is 1983 by providing computer-based process control for critical industrial applications. “We started providing industrial process control and automation to manufacturers like GM, Ford, Chrysler, Monsanto, Anheuser Busch, General Tire, Waste Management, etc. in 1983,” Novacek wrote in a 2008 blog post celebrating the company’s 25th anniversary.

But it was in broadcast that the firm grew, becoming a prominent supplier of automation for radio and TV stations. Its first digital audio delivery system was introduced in 1991; its product lines have since grown to encompass playout automation, captioning, scheduling and streaming. Its markets also include A/V, events, concerts, worship and retail environments, according to enco.com.

Among other accomplishments, Novacek wrote the chapter on automation and audio storage in the latest edition of the NAB Engineering Handbook. He also held a private pilot’s license.

ENCO is currently led by Ken Frommert, who in 2017 was promoted from general manager to president and has been the more public face of the company in recent years. Frommert is part-owner of the company, along with other Novacek family and members of the executive team.

PHILADELPHIA—FISM TV is a “postcable” television network offering edgy and informative Christian television programming for a cable-cutting world. Available on a wide range of platforms—Roku, Amazon Fire TV, YouTube, Android and iOS apps, and online at www.fism.tv—FISM TV features preaching and teaching, news, financial, business and documentary content.

Our cornerstone show, the nationally-syndicated radio and TV program “Financial Issues with Dan Celia,” has been on the radio for more than two decades, and we started building our own OTT and online television channel around it in 2016. Soft-launched with a handful of shows, FISM TV will officially roll out an expanded mix of original and syndicated, live and prerecorded programming in the coming months.

When we started FISM TV, we were happy with a third-party vendor’s playout and scheduling system for our initial needs, such as basic scheduling, but we had to do many things manually. We outgrew its limited capabilities, and our workflow became very tedious.

A cloud-based channel playout service proved to be a poor fit for our needs. The solution couldn’t provide the speed we needed for uploading shows or changing out spots, and it required multiple steps for things we needed to do quickly.

GOOD OLD MOM & DAD

Having used ENCO’s DAD automation system for our radio programming for many years, we decided to look at their comprehensive MOM (Media Operations Manager) television automation and integrated channel playout platform. Our DAD system just hums along without issue, giving us peace of mind that its TV counterpart could be exactly what we needed. We purchased MOM in May 2019, and it enables us to do a lot of things quickly while delivering the same rock-solid reliability we knew from DAD.

The ENCO system now handles all automation of FISM TV, including scheduling our live segments and breaks, as well as playout of pre-recorded content, commercials and bumpers. Live programming from our studio is fed to it from our NewTek TriCaster production switcher through a Blackmagic Design VideoHub. For file-based content, our ENCO platform is connected to a network-attached storage (NAS) system. Users in different locations can remotely access the system to upload or replace files, and the ENCO DropBox utility automatically adds them to the media library.

EASY ADJUSTMENT

Getting up to speed with MOM was almost instantaneous, since everything works basically the same way as DAD. Its Presenter on-air interface lets us see quickly and clearly where all our elements are and what time they’re going to play.

The ENCO automation system’s approach to replacing cuts saves us a lot of time. Rather than having to access the playlist, we can simply change the files assigned to those cut numbers. We also do a lot of show replays when our host is out—we can simply replace the existing cuts from our originally-defined live segments, and the system will play the replay.

Placing bugs on the screen is also easy. We can take a playlist for a previously recorded live show and assign key overlays that say “Previously Recorded” to the existing cut numbers. In contrast, with our previous system, we would have needed to individually put the key on every single clip or segment, which took a lot more time.

We have been so satisfied with MOM that we recently added ENCO’s ClipFire system to provide instant clip playout during our live productions, feeding multiple outputs to our TriCaster switcher. Overall, the ENCO platform has proven very valuable to us. We can count on its reliability, and its efficient workflow enables us to quickly do what we need to do.

Krunti “Kae” Hester is senior producer and engineer at Financial Issues Stewardship Ministries (FISM). He can be reached atkhester@financialissues.org.

For more information, contact Ken Frommert at ENCO Systems or visitwww.enco.com.

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.

AMSTERDAM—ENCO announced it will make the first showing outside North America of its new enTranslate automated live translation system during IBC 2019, Sept. 13-17, at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Center.

The translation system makes it easy and affordable for broadcasters, media producers and live presenters to perform automatic translation of TV programs and other content. With enTranslate, broadcasters can offer subtitles and secondary or tertiary closed captions in alternative languages, the company said.

The system combines the accurate, low-latency speech-to-text engine from ENCO’s enCaption open and closed captioning solution with Veritone’s translation technology to enable automated, near-real-time translation of live or pre-recorded content for multi-language captioning and subtitling, said ENCO.

The enTranslate system blends artificial intelligence with sophisticated linguistics modelling as the foundation of its Neural Machine Translation methodology, which provides translations based on the context surrounding current words and phrases. Currently, the system supports 46 languages, including English, French and Spanish.

The system, which can be deployed on-premise or in the cloud, offers a flexible architecture supporting a wide range of live baseband and network-based audio and video inputs, including analog, AES, HDMI, SDI, AoIP, NDI and MADI.

Translated results can be output in standard caption file formats; embedded as closed captions using an external or optional integrated encoder; or keyed as open captions over an SDI, HDMI or NDI output.

For offline, file-based applications, audio or video clips can be ingested and captioned with translations in any supported language.

See ENCO at IBC 2019 Stand 8.A59. More information on enTranslate is available on the ENC website.

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.

AMSTERDAM—ENCO will launch the latest version of its HotShot audio playback appliance at the 2018 IBC Show, Sept. 14-18 at the RAI Amsterdam. HotShot3, introduced at IBC2017, adds new features that tighten interoperability with other pertinent workflow systems and now offers customizable, automated features across logging, compliance, rights management and royalty reporting.

“HotShot3 simplifies how broadcasters and production teams manage both the entertainment and legal requirements of their operations in one easy to use package,” said Ken Frommert, President, ENCO. “Interoperability with royalty reporting is perhaps of most interest, ensuring that artists are paid for their intellectual property and creative endeavors. Collectively, we are ensuring that our customers are protected by seamlessly feeding important data to logging and compliance systems that they can leverage upon request.”

Along with these new workflow interoperability benefits, HotShot3’s inherent flexibility gives customers creative freedom to inject excitement into a variety of events across sports, performances and live TV broadcasts, for example. To optimize efficiency, HotShot3 provides instant access to local and network audio assets, with a user-friendly design ideal for control rooms, audio suites and mobile production trucks. Stereo and surround sound capability ensures that HotShot3 can be utilized for any broadcast and live event audio requirements.

HotShot3 provides several playback options, including on a pre-labeled 80-button keypad or touchscreen operation—as well as remote operation using an iPad—to support all broadcast and production applications. The layout adopts ENCO’s on-screen “button box” layout to accelerate learning curves and allow users to navigate up to hundreds of active icons with ease, each displaying a visual thumbnail with clip information.

In addition to HotShot3, ENCO will demonstrate ClipFire, its companion instant playout system for video; as well as MOM and DAD, ENCO’s flagship automated production and playout systems for television and radio, respectively.

ENCO will be in Stand 8.A592018, which takes place September 14-18 at the RAI Amsterdam

TV TECHNOLOGY:What do you anticipate will be the most significant technology trend at the 2018 NAB Show?

KEN FROMMERT: The recent usual suspects will remain at the forefront—IP, 4K and the cloud. Beyond these umbrella topics that cross the broadcast workflow and infrastructure, there are some more focused topics bubbling to the surface this year, one of which is automated captioning. As TV networks and independent stations grapple with compliance and the high costs of (and difficulty of securing) live stenographers, new software-defined solutions are coming to market that automate captioning workflow with much greater speed and accuracy then before. We believe this is an area to watch closely.

TVT:What will be your most important product news?

FROMMERT: Our latest automated captioning solution, enCaption4, will make its U.S. debut with new enhancements that will eliminate all concerns with accuracy and speed-to-air. Additionally, we will showcase our MOM solution for organizing, managing and automating critical production and channel playout tasks, with an emphasis on robust integration with NDI and newsroom workflows.

TVT:How is your new product different from what’s available on the market?

FROMMERT: enCaption4 just takes automated captioning to an entirely new level. For one, it’s deployable in the cloud or on-premises; second, it optimizes compliance with expanding regulatory requirements. But there is no question that nothing else comes close to enCaption4 when it comes to speed and accuracy. With our new patented technology, enCaption4’s new speech-to-text engine leverages breakthroughs in machine-learning technology to develop a deep neural network approach to voice recognition. Accuracy is further enhanced by a dictionary database for 28 languages—three times larger than previous enCaption solutions—while integration with popular newsroom computer systems (NRCS) takes advantage of news scripts and rundowns to learn and validate the spelling of local names and terminology.

As for MOM, there is no other solution of its kind that provides as much for such a reasonable cost. It is truly an all-in-one solution, which brings graphics, media ingest, playout automation, media asset management into one flexible solution. It is software-based and unlike the convoluted spreadsheet-like automation systems that permeate the industry, MOM is easy to navigate thanks to an intuitive, legible interface with clear and colorful on-screen arrays.

TVT:What is it about the NAB Show that brings you back every year?

FROMMERT: The NAB Show is all about relationships. It’s impossible to overstate the value of meeting with our customers and partners from around the world in one place. Hearing from our customers that they are happy, satisfied and interested to learn about our latest innovations to bring them into the future is an amazing opportunity. And their feedback on what we can do to further improve our products and solve their problems is invaluable.

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.

Read up on all of TVT's NAB Show Sneak Peeks and other 2018 NAB Show news here.

SOUTHFIELD, MICH.—United States patent number 7,047,191 B2 now belongs to Enco, per a company press release. Entitled “Method and System for Providing Automated Captioning for AV Signals,” the patent encompasses captioning technology and methods that help automate and accelerate speech-to-text translation to deliver open or closed captions; it specifically relates to Enco’s enCaption series of technology.

Enco’s software-defined enCaption systems provide accurate captioning for live and recorded content in near real time. The patent covers new advances that improve accuracy of enCaption’s speech-to-text engine, using advances in machine learning technology to develop a deep neural network approach to voice recognition.

This new technology includes a method that separates an audio signal from a combined AV signal and converts the audio signal to text data. The original AV signal is then encoded with the converted text data to produce, record and display a captioned AV signal. The patent also covers automatic translation of spoken words of a first language into a second language, with the translated words included in the captioning information.

NEW YORK—ENCO will debut the latest addition to the company’s enCaption family of automated closed captioning solutions. The new enCaption4 builds on the product line with advances in accuracy and speed, while offering flexible on-premises or cloud-based deployment options.

Helping broadcasters, content producers and end users in professional AV environments comply with expanding regulatory requirements, the company says its software-defined enCaption solutions provide accurate closed captioning for both live and pre-recorded content in near-real time. enCaption4’s new speech-to-text engine takes this accuracy to a new level, leveraging breakthroughs in machine learning technology to develop a deep neural network approach to voice recognition.

The dictionary database is three times larger than previous enCaption solutions, while integration with popular newsroom computer systems (NRCS) takes advantage of news scripts and rundowns to learn and validate the spelling of local names and terminology. The result is greater automated captioning accuracy across a full array of program types, ranging from fast and dynamic sports play-by-play to slower-paced informational shows.

ENCO will exhibit in booth N376.

SOUTHFIELD, MICH.—Enco is set to introduce new software-defined tools to its TV automation systems that are designed to amp up production value for studio and remote productions at this year’s IBC show. Among these are updates to its Media Operations Manager system.

Enco will demonstrate updates to its MOM system that extends it beyond standard automation-related tasks and deeper into TV production infrastructure. The updates include an integrated graphics generator for live channel branding, support for NDI connectivity and the ability to produce a live show with live camera and NDI inputs. With support for NDI-connected devices, users can share bi-directional SD, HD and 4K/UHD video over a single Gigabit network.

Virtualized automation for TV will also be a point of focus for Enco with discussions on how broadcasters can implement Enco automation systems running off a single Enco1 virtualized server. Enco1 enables Enco software systems to run in a virtualized environment by leveraging existing IP audio and video technologies.

IBC 2017 will take place from Sept. 15-19 in Amsterdam. Enco will be located at booth 8.D74 throughout the show.

SOUTHFIELD, MICH.—Beligum-based broadcast compliance monitoring provider Actus Digital is heading to North America with the help of Enco. The two companies have announced a new partnership that will see Enco handle the North American distribution for Actus’ media intelligence platform.

Actus-View

The Actus platform is a recording and compliance system designed to ensure broadcasters meet regulatory requirements including closed captioning and audio loudness limits. Among the features of the platform is the Actus-View application, which provides broadcast video logging and compliance monitoring through a HTML5, web-based user interface. Using Actus-View, operators can record and monitor channels, create clips, retrieve recordings and send captured media to editing and media asset management systems from the system that is accessible through connected workstations, tablets or mobile devices.

The deal also covers the Actus Clip-Factory, a platform that provides an integrated solution for repurposing broadcast content into video clips for web and mobile viewing, OTT, VoD, catch-up TV and social media. Clip-Factory combines video recording, content extraction, editing, metadata application, transcoding and delivery management.

In addition to the Enco sales team managing North American distribution for the Actus platform, Enco will also provide its customer service capabilities to Actus users.

Enco is expected to feature the Actus-View and Actus Clip-Factory at its NAB Show booth, N2024.

The author is broadcast automation specialist at ENCO Systems Inc.

SOUTHFIELD, MICH.—As broadcast facilities and media groups look for ways to reduce their overhead, upgrades to their existing hardware and software might not be the first idea to come to mind. However, the transition from traditional workstations to a virtual environment can help a broadcaster realize cost savings and increased reliability of their automation system throughout their facility.

Paul Stewart is broadcast automation specialist at ENCO Systems Inc.

WHAT’S A VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT?

Imagine replacing all of your production, scheduling and playout computers throughout your facility with one unit complete with individual operating systems and applications. Suddenly the large form-factor PCs and the noisy fans used to cool them disappear from the studio and are replaced with a thin client small enough to be attached to the back of a monitor mount.

Despite the workstations having been replaced with silent, passively cooled devices, the user will not notice a difference. The operating system and all applications will function as usual and it will appear to the user that the software is running on a conventional, physical computer.

Immediately, this architecture presents a few advantages over using traditional workstations in a studio. The thin clients do not require a fan to manage their internal temperature so the noise floor in the studio is reduced. Furthermore, with the mission-critical hardware out of reach of the operator, the unit is protected from accidents and can be properly maintained in a rack room down the hall. As you will see, a virtual environment presents numerous other advantages besides protecting hardware from physical wear and tear.

COST REDUCTION

One of the principle advantages of virtualization is the reduction in total cost of ownership. While the initial capital outlay may be higher than traditional automation workstations, the cost savings are realized in lower maintenance costs and lower costs of hardware upgrades.

Additionally, the cost of powering and cooling the system is drastically lower than powering and cooling the multiple computers of a traditional system, especially considering the power drawn when systems are in standby.

When contemplating the system used for a new studio build, a virtual environment may reduce deployment costs as control points are connected by simple network cabling for both AoIP and the thin clients. This simplicity is also helpful when relocating the virtual system or making additions or modifications to the virtual environment such as adding a new virtual automation workstation to a new studio.

With the virtual computing model, hardware resources are shared among the different virtual workstations. This means that when station personnel decide it is time to upgrade the hardware, the upgrades can be done quickly and with less downtime, avoiding the cost of being off the air when performing upgrades.

When all virtual workstations share a common set of hardware components, routine maintenance of the system is far less expensive than replacing or upgrading the same components on each hardware workstation. Along with being cost-effective to replace or upgrade hardware components, a virtual system also makes it easy, as there is only one centralized hardware unit on which to perform maintenance.

Many of today’s hardware units allow components and drives to be hot swapped so the virtual machines do not need to be shut down to render maintenance. This provides better uptime over traditional hardware units and allows the on-air program to continue running uninterrupted.

While a virtual environment can realize cost savings for a broadcast facility, it also provides users with numerous advantages on a day-to-day basis.

CENTRALIZED STORAGE

With a virtual system, all configuration files and assets are stored on a single hardware unit and can be accessed from any client with little effort. There are, however, inherent risks associated with centralizing data in the event of hardware failure or physical damage to the hardware unit.

To mitigate these risks, a virtual environment should be highly redundant and safeguard backup copies of assets and other mission critical files. The same principle applies to the virtual workstations. Just as some engineers insist on having a backup automation workstation or two in the event of a hardware failure, a virtual environment can include backup virtual workstations to prevent downtime. Some hardware, such as ENCO Systems’ ENCO1 units allow for a seamless recovery in the event of a hardware failure in the unit. In most cases, the operators are not aware of the failure until they receive an email notification.

Traditionally, studios have been functionally fixed; that is, an air studio was an air studio and a production studio was used for production. To create multipurpose studios was certainly possible but not always practical. Within a virtual environment, workstations are not assigned to any particular control point, thus any client can control any workstation.

With this level of versatility, and the flexibility of an AoIP routing system, any studio can be used for any purpose regardless of its original intended use. This highly redundant environment allows for easy reconfiguration, virus removal, and cloning of virtual workstations to scale upward as your facility’s needs change.

Being able to create these multipurpose studios is tremendously efficient, and allows any user to use any available studio for their needs.

Furthermore, a virtual workstation can remain powered on and playing through the playlist even if it is not assigned to a studio. The ability to run in the background can make another studio available during pre-recorded or voice-tracked shows.

A virtual automation environment has some clear benefits over the traditional workstation model and broadcasters are beginning to take advantage of the ease and versatility. It is important to assess the needs of a station and determine how a virtual environment can improve the workflow, data security, and maintenance requirements. The next time you are evaluating the automation system hardware at your facility, it may be worth your time to take a serious look at what a virtual system can do for you.

This story originally appeared on TVT's sister publication Radio World.

SOUTHFIELD, MICH.—WTAT-TV, aka Fox 24, in Charleston, S.C., has chosen to go with Enco’s software-defined enCaption3R3 system to assist with the station’s closed captioning workflow. Fox 24 deploys the enCaption3R3 system for its local newscasts, including its live show “Fox 24 News Now.”

The enCaption3R3 features a closed captioning speech-to-text engine that can convert the spoken word into text in near real-time. Program audio is sent to the enCaption3R3 for processing and feeds the closed captioning data to an HD/SD-SDI encoder, which then embeds the captions into the vertical ancillary portion of the SMPTE 292M HD-SDI video stream for live broadcast.

In addition, the enCaption system produces live captioning that is compliant with all FCC mandates.

Fox 24 uses the enCaption system with its Link Electronic encoders.

SOUTHFIELD, MICH.—WCTV and WCPS, public, educational and government (PEG) channels in Chesapeake, Va., are going live with their closed captioning capabilities with the help of Enco’s enCaption3R3 system.

The enCaption3R3 system is designed to deliver captioning in near-real-time and near total accuracy. The system also has the ability to learn the correct spellings of unique words, including local streets, landmarks and names of local leaders.

WCTV covers local government events, while WCPS handles local school board coverage and other related school activities. The enCaption3R3 is being utilized wherever local government or school board meetings are held, like broadcast studios, City Hall, the School Administration building and the Chesapeake Conference Center.

The stations use a Blackmagic Design 40x40 house router to move audio sources into or out of the enCaption device, thus sending a live audio feed with the caption data/text through a serial connection to an Evertz HD9804 closed captioning encoder. The encoder marries the video, embedded audio and caption text data to send to an automation system for SDTV broadcast.

With the addition of the enCaption3R3 system, two out of three of Chesapeake’s PEG channels have live closed captioning capabilities.

NASSAU, BAHAMAS—ILTV is a cable television channel operated by Island Luck, a Bahamas lottery retailer and gaming lounge operator. Our programming is anchored by Quick Draw, a “three-ball” drawing game, shown live every half hour. Between live draws, we feature music videos, promotional announcements and original programming.

We launched ILTV using an aging automation system and found its scheduling capabilities very inflexible and difficult to use. Operation was automated and scheduled, but the scheduling tools and the process itself was cumbersome, not intuitive and time-consuming.

We needed an automation system that supported an efficient and versatile scheduling interface; a solution that would tightly integrate with a traffic system for ad sales; work with a radio automation platform for our planned radio offering; and had the scalability to add more if we expand.

The MOM platform features a built-in scheduler that allows users to drag-and-drop clips.FINDING THE SYSTEM

We visited all of the popular vendors at the 2016 NAB Show; many were more complicated or costly than we wanted. Few came close to the features and integration we needed. We visited the ENCO booth near the end of our search and its new MOM (Media Operations Manager) solution caught our eye. We were quickly impressed by its graphical interface, simplicity of operation, and rich feature set.

We purchased ENCO MOM as a turnkey system. Migrating our existing content assets into the MOM library was remarkably straightforward—existing files were graphically dragged and dropped into the library from our centralized storage, and MOM was instantly able to play them to air. We fully transitioned after running MOM in parallel with our old system for just one day.

NUTS AND BOLTS

All playback of pre-recorded content is done by the MOM system, pulling files from our shared storage. MOM switches easily between pre-recorded content and our live draws at the top and bottom of each hour, with direct control of our AJA Kumo router and NewTek TriCaster Mini production system.

ENCO MOM’s built-in scheduler offers a much friendlier interface than our previous system; letting us simply drag-and-drop clips from the library to the schedule and align them to our clock. It’s now fast and easy for us to create a schedule, get it on air, graphically rearrange the schedule, adding or deleting entries on the fly. MOM also integrates tightly with the traffic and billing system we received as part of the solution.

The multi-codec flexibility of MOM has been an added benefit. We use a mix of production formats, but with our old system, we were forced to transcode everything into one format to get it on air. With MOM, we simply drag our content into the system regardless of its format, and it’s immediately playable; no file or format conversions are required.

We are now in the process of acquiring an FM radio broadcast license, and we have purchased a Visual Radio package from ENCO—including the company’s DAD radio automation software—to run the radio station and provide an audio/video stream on the internet. The common platforms and designs of ENCO automation systems will ensure that the two stations can share resources. We also plan to feed the Visual Radio programming to MOM as additional content for our cable channel between live draws. We are very happy with MOM and are excited about our future plans.

Karlyle Harris is a digital media specialist at ILTV Studios. He can be reached atkharris@ilstudios.com.

For more information, please visitwww.enco.comor call 248-827-4440.

When the government comes to check on your compliance, will you be ready?

That’s a question content creators of all stripes must ask themselves as the industry attempts to keep on top of the growing deluge of content that must now be captioned.

In years past, the only captioning you’d be likely to see was on mainstream broadcast programming. No longer. The newly enacted Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) has mandated that anyvideo that’s been broadcast on television must have captions—even those programs that go on to be streamed over the internet.

That means everything, including full-length programming and even short video clips. Yes, even those.

For OTT operators, broadcasters and other content creators, the question to ask is: Now what? The first step is to determine how to create timely and accurate captioning for all different types of video in a way that allows you to keep up with the deluge of content that will only grow over time—and keeps cost in mind.

enCaption3 R2 Automated Captioning—ENCO’s latest solution is always on and always available, and addresses the issues facing content creators fed up with the high price of closed captioning,

GETTING STARTED

For a growing number of broadcasters and content creators, the first step is to look at technologies that are automating the captioning process. This type of technology can address several key issues:

• Minimizing human error by automating the captioning process for live video;

• Offering audio transcription in near-real-time (typically within six seconds);

• Improving accuracy with an enhanced recognition engine that picks up patterns of speech from any voice;

• Providing around-the-clock generation to ensure that captions are being created when needed, as opposed to caption generation only when a captioner is on staff;

• Setting up personalized localization features, which ensure that local venues, individuals and locales are spelled accurately;

• Reducing overall cost;

• Providing multiple language functionality;

• Offering minimal operator intervention.

Those features led one local broadcaster to look at automated captioning for its city council, school board and planning commission meetings. WCTV Chesapeake Television wanted to reach additional residents throughout the Chesapeake, Va., viewing area, and looked toward an automated system that could be customized to the Tidewater area of Virginia, which has its own unique diction and dialect. The system could “learn,” too, as it went along.

That was the just one of the goals for captioning company ENCO, which saw broadcasters and PEG channels like WCTV attempting to meet the demand for captioned programs.

“It has been so hard for content creators to stay compliant,” said Ken Frommert, general manager of the captioning company ENCO.

The issue was even more complicated for a local government channel in Colorado. The channel serves a politically active and civically minded city of more than 103,000, and found itself in a unique position after the local city council asked the station to provide closed captioning of every city council meeting for the city’s hearing-impaired viewers.

The concept was admirable, but having an on-call captioner on-staff would be a costly venture. With the channel’s limited staff and budget, this kind of undertaking would undoubtedly be expensive, said the station’s senior producer and engineer.

The station found a solution in an automated captioning system. The PEG channel installed an automated system that the station’s operators can turn on and off during live programming as needed, which directly addressed the cost issue. Installation ended up being less than half the cost of operating a traditional closed captioning process, the producer said.

There’s a similar story being shared by a 24/7 home shopping cable TV network. The Liquidation Channel, a network based in Austin, Texas, has expanded its reach to more than 80 million households by doing what home shopping networks do best, connecting with consumers through a series of animated, ironic, funny and engaging hosts—all who speak with unique lilts, accents and patterns of speech that could be hard for a live captioner to decipher.

The answer was to install a new closed captioning system that automatically and accurately converts all that speech in near real time.

For the home shopping network, the biggest selling point was cost.

“When it comes to live closed captioning, especially for a 24/7 broadcast network like this, you can be looking at a multimillion-dollar investment to retain a live captioning service,” said Jeremy Mott, senior broadcast engineer for the Liquidation Channel. “But with the enCaption3R3, we can have live closed captioning around the clock for an affordable monthly fee, making it a very cost-effective way to caption 24/7 broadcasts.”

That’s the feedback ENCO has been hearing from its customers on its enCaption3R3 system. “Our product allows content creators to have captioning available to them 24/7 at a much less-expensive cost,” Frommert said. “In a lot of cases, it’s cost prohibitive to have certain content captioned. This allows both small and large broadcasters and content creators to improve their offerings.”

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

ENCO Announces Launch of Next Gen Automated Closed Captioning System — In the fall of 2016, ENCO launched the latest version of its enCaption automated closed captioning system.

The Case for Automating Closed Captioning — A look at current closed-captioning rules, and what features and functionality broadcasters and content creators should be on the lookout for when it comes to selecting a captioning provider.

Liquidation Channel — A look at how this 24/7 home shopping channel accelerated and refined its closed captioning efforts while simultaneously minimizing the costs typically associated with captioning.

WCTV Chesapeake Television — In an effort to reach additional residents and address the concerns of unique audiences, WCTV Chesapeake Television has begun offering automated closed captioning on local city council, planning commission and school board meetings.

enCaption3 R3 brochure — The company’s current captioning system tackles the high-cost of traditional captioning by offering an automated solution. 

SOUTHFIELD, MICH.—Based off of its enCaption3 system for live speech-to-text conversion, ENCO has announced that it has delivered a new automated closed captioning system that works with pre-recorded content, the enCaption3R2. New features for the next-gen system include an updated speech engine and a file-based ingest workflow.

The enCaption3R2’s speech engine is based on deep neural network acoustic modeling for greater accuracy, including enhanced representation of voice and punctuation for the hearing impaired. The system’s file-based ingest workflow is used to automate the process of preparing content for captioning.

Additional features of the latest enCaption system include greater spelling accuracy with direct verification with news rundowns; is speaker-independent; and has the ability to place content online.

ENCO will demonstrate this new product at the upcoming IBC 2016 show in Amsterdam at their stand, 8.A59.

BAYSIDE, CALIF.—StreamGuys and ENCO are entering into a new partnership that will focus on the tightening of automation and streaming workflows, the companies announced in a press release. The companies plan to offer a single system that will integrate advertising options, video resources and virtualized platforms in the cloud.

Enco Visual Radio

As part of the partnership, StreamGuys will host live streaming, podcasting and monetization services, while ENCO will deliver multichannel audio, video and metadata from its DAD radio automation, MOM TV automation and Visual Radio systems to StreamGuys’ cloud-based CDN architecture. The companies will promote each other’s products and services in ongoing sales initiatives, according to the press release.

StreamGuys President Kiriki Delany specifies that the integration between the two companies will provide playout and monetization services including ad insertion options and metadata triggering. StreamGuys will also offer multi-format encoding to deliver ENCO program content to web, mobile and OTT devices.

Ken Frommert, ENCO general manager, says that a main goal of the partnership is to help terrestrial broadcasters extent their over-the-air signal to audiences that consume radio and TV through fixed and mobile streaming.

SOUTHFIELD, MICH.—Ask a program manager to describe one of her most frustrating moments on the job, and it almost always begins with a story.

A program is set to air—graphics are complete; ads are scheduled—and then moments before it’s set to roll: change.

The client wants new media, a revamped graphic, revised audio. All of which needs to be shuttled over to the traffic and billing, rescheduled through automation and then prepped again for playout.

It’s a challenge that is the same whether it’s at a television station, cable network or video streaming provider: how to react quickly to last-minute changes, keep tabs on key media items and play material out in a workflow that works with a facility’s needs, not against them.

The industry has experimented with a number of options in the search for the right workflow. For a number of facilities, a potential solution is to daisy-chain together a series of standalone systems: ingest on one end, plugged into an asset management system and graphics engine in the middle, and connected to a playout automation system at the other end.

This type of legacy system does have benefits; for one, it allows facilities to cherry-pick individual solutions.

But on the downside, it can lack cohesion. Certain systems are not always compatible with third-party solutions. And interoperability can wreak havoc on the ultimate goal of any management system: a smooth, seamless workflow.

A number of facilities are cueing in to the benefits of comprehensive platforms out there—one that allows users to organize and automate a wide array of video and audio content. Newer solutions are packaging together a stacked list of capabilities into one device: ingest, media asset management, graphics and playout automation.

One such system being used by one mid-marketmulti-station operator is leveraging a configurable frontend layout and automatic ingest of the Media Operations Manager (MOM), a solution from ENCO that allows a single operator at the outset to ingest, schedule, edit and playout media from a single system.

The goal is to unify all of the network’s media workow operations within one automation operations management system.

The facility takes advantage of several features within the MOM, such as the system’s user interface, which is used to manage log changes, enable manual playback and control live insertion as needed. The system also offers drag-and-drop scheduling and internal graphic tools that allow a user to preview, trim and cue. At the other end, the OnAir interface allows the user to see log changes and take manual control of playback and live insertion when the situation calls for it.

The MOM provides up to four channels of simultaneous record and playout, and can be integrated with other devices—such as switchers, routers, EAS devices and scheduling system—via industry standardized GPI, serial and IP interfaces.

RESOURCES

Insider’s Tour — Dave Turner with ENCO Systems offers a behind-the-scenes look at some of the MOM’s key features, including the system’s touchscreen capability and drag-and-drop functionality.

Media Operations Manager: An Overview — An overview of the MOM Media Operations Manager, a complete automated playout system that brings automatic ingest, media asset management, graphics and playout automation together into one platform.

Key Benefits — The Media Operations Manager offers television stations, cable networks and video streaming providers a cost efficient and comprehensive platform for organizing and automating content.

NAB Crowd Gets First Glimpse of Media Operations Manager — Attendees at the NAB2016 show got a first-hand look at ENCO’s new automated playout system, the Media Operations Manager. 

LAS VEGAS—Enco will launch its new AIM-100 audio insertion manager, which automates text-to-speech conversion, at the 2016 NAB Show. Designed to ensure 21st-CVAA-regulatory compliance, the AIM-100 delivers clear, concise emergency alert audio to visually impaired audiences. This compact 1RU system brings lifelike sound to automated audio content on primary TV channels, and enables TV stations to provide audio descriptions of emergency information on their Secondary Audio Program (SAP) channels.

AIM-100 monitors incoming XML or TXT files from news tickers and other master control systems, and prioritizes and converts the information to audio. ENCO’s built-in automation intelligence delivers the audio in a natural sounding, non-fragmented human voice, and keeps precise records to prove compliance. It can also be used to automate voice delivery of weather, sports, bilingual programming, ticker tape information and other urgent headlines.

With its flexible customization features, the AIM-100 ensures that broadcasters can assign specific parameters for prioritization and program interruption, including the insertion of audio tones and alert loops to ensure that visually impaired audiences are aware of the emergency information being broadcast.

The 2016 NAB Show takes place in Las Vegas, April 18-21. Enco will be in booth N2518. For more information, visit www.nabshow.com.

Gilbert Felix

SOUTHFIELD, MICH.—Playout and automation system provider Enco has brought on Gilbert Felix to its sales organization. Felix will be responsible for expanding the company’s business and relationship in Latin America and to help reinforce its U.S. sales efforts.

Felix has more than 20 years of experience in the television and radio industry. He most recently worked at Telos Alliance, where he led Latin America sales for Telos brands Linear Acoustic and Omnia. In addition, he previously worked as the director of international sales at DNF Controls, and held sales and operational management roles for SPF Transfer and Warner Bros. Television Post Production.