NEW YORK—The captioning products and media accessibility services provider VITAC has announced that it is rebranding as Verbit, its parent company and a leading verbal intelligence platform.

Established in 1986, VITAC has been an important part of the Verbit family since 2021, helping broadcasters, streaming providers and content creators turn spoken audio and video into accessible and actionable text. The company reported that the rebrand represents the final step in integrating VITAC under the Verbit banner as a leader in AI-powered accessibility solutions.

“This transition to the Verbit name underscores our commitment to delivering innovative, AI-powered solutions that meet our customers’ growing demands in media and beyond,” said VITAC general manager Doug Karlovits. “As Verbit, we’ll continue to provide the high-quality captioning, transcription, audio description and localization services our customers rely on while offering enhanced resources and cost-effective options.”

The company noted with the rebrand customers can expect:

• Uninterrupted service: All current and future VITAC projects will proceed as scheduled, with no impact on timelines or deliverables
• Streamlined solutions: Unifying under the Verbit brand allows for better integration of AI-driven tools, offering greater efficiency and accuracy
• Expanded capabilities: Customers will gain greater access to cutting-edge technologies, advanced resources and custom solutions tailored to their evolving needs

“This rebrand represents a pivotal milestone in our company’s journey to becoming a fully unified global leader in verbal intelligence and accessibility solutions,” said Verbit CEO Yair Amsterdam. “By combining decades of expertise with our comprehensive suite of advanced AI-driven products and solutions, Verbit is uniquely positioned to help customers make their content more actionable and inclusive.”

Serving more than 3,000 customers in the education, legal, media, corporate and government sectors, Verbit’s AI solutions are used to capture everyday exchanges, better interpret the information shared and apply these insights in daily work.

For more information about Verbit and its AI-powered accessibility solutions, visit www.verbit.ai.

Missed any of our recent product news? Here is TV Tech's weekly wrap-up of new products, services and deployments we published in our newsletter between July 29 to August 2. The stories are listed from the newest on Friday August 2, day by day back to our stories from Monday July 29

JVC Begins Shipping New KM-IP12S8 Series vMix 4K Video Switchers

The latest JVC Solutions are designed for multi-camera productions of live sports and events.

Vivo Taps Harmonic to Power Caliente TV Sports Channel

Harmonic's VOS360 Media SaaS-based Solution is being used to simplify media processing, playout and primary distribution for a new sports channel in Mexico.

EVS Acquires MOG Technologies

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Ateliere Launches Its New `Connect AI’ Offering

At IBC 2024 Atelier will be showing what it is billing as the industry’s first end-to-end GenAI media supply chain solution.

VITAC To Demo Latest AI Captioning, Translation Advancements at IBC 2024

The company’s AI-powered Captivate captioning solution lowers the cost of captioning.

Sony Ships M2L-X Live Production Switcher

The switcher leverages hybrid procession and operations for on-premises and cloud production.

Comcast, Comscore Expand Cross-Platform Measurement Efforts

Enhanced partnership will allow Comscore clients to tap into Comcast Advertising’s Signal Authentication solution to increase fidelity of measurement and attribution.

Rohde & Schwarz To Showcase Latest Updates To Gallium, StreamMaster, PRISMON At IBC Show

Its Gallium and StreamMaster playout environment now runs on the latest Windows and Linus releases.

Dolby Acquires THEO Technologies

The deal will help Dolby expand its solutions for live sports and entertainment that enable viewers to interact with content while watching on different screens.

Atomos Unveils Shinobi II HDR Monitor

The new high-brightness HDR monitor is designed for vloggers, creatives and photographers.

iSpot Launches Cross-Platform Measurement Offering for TikTok

The solution enables brands to verify the audience overlap and incremental reach TikTok delivers against linear TV.

CommScope Launches STARLINE ESD 1.8 GHz Amplifiers

The ESD amplifiers offer substantial upgrades for DOCSIS 3.1 networks and an incremental path to DOCSIS 4.0.

Bahrain TV Launches Middle East’s First IP Playout System

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Comscore Introduces Comprehensive Cross-Platform YouTube Audience Measurement

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Wohler Announces 3G-SDI To 12G-SDI Upgrade Path

The new module, OPT-RMOC-12G, makes it possible to migrate a 3G-SDI capable monitor to a 12G-SDI (4K) capable monitor.

Wooden Camera Introduces Accessory System for Canon EOS C400

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Avid Unveils Latest Version Of Media Composer

The release adds a new transcript tool, deeper Pro Tools compatibility and enhanced collaboration.

Vegas Creative Software Launches Vegas Pro 22

Improvements to the video engine enable new AI-assisted features, text-based editing and enhanced audio tools.

Dot Group Showcases AI-Driven Solutions for M&E at IBC 2024

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PMVG Launches NextGen TV Station in Cookeville, Tenn.

The Public Media Venture Group (PMVG), a business development consortium of 32 public stations, has launched NextGen broadcasting service on W35DZ-D, its low-power station in Cookeville, Tennessee.

ADMC Riyadh Deploys Ikegami HDK-99 HDR Camera Systems

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Leader Electronics of Europe to Feature New ZEN-W Series Advanced Analyzers at IBC Show

Test and measurement specialist Leader Electronics of Europe will make the European debut of its ZEN-W Series of advanced analyzers at IBC 2024, Sept. 13-16, at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Center.

V-Nova, Amlogic to Support MPEG-5 LCEVC on Amlogic SoCs

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Pliant to Showcase New Compact Crewcom Radio Pack at IBC2024

Professional intercoms provider Pliant Technologies will highlight its new CRP-C12 Compact Radio Pack at IBC2024, Sept. 13-17 at the RAI Amsterdam.

Disney, NBC and NFL Among IBC2024 Innovation Awards Finalists

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DENVER—Captioning product and service provider VITAC will feature its latest AI technologies and solutions for live captioning and subtitling, live multi-language translation and dubbing and localization at IBC 2024, Sept. 13-16, at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Center.

VITAC, a Verbit company, at the show will demonstrate its full range of media access products, tailor-made for the media and entertainment industry, including:

The company will its proprietary AI-powered Captivate captioning solution. Captivate combines technology with decades of experience providing accurate captions at a lower cost than with human-generated captions, the company said. 

Built in-house by transcription, speech, and machine learning experts, Captivate is trained using diverse language models enabling it to understand languages, accents and speech patterns better than generic ASR engines, it said.

VITAC’s language experts prepare and train the system before, during and after events to ensure consistently accurate results. VITAC will show Captivate generating captions for live video from both U.S. and U.K. customers and offer attendees the chance to evaluate the product live, it said.

The company will also feature live machine translation of multi-language content in six languages. This is especially important for the upcoming European Accessibility Act, where multi-language captioning and subtitling for live events is required, it said.

VITAC also will demo its full localization package of services for content creators spanning TV, YouTube and gamers, the company said.

The company will host an informal cocktail mixer Friday, Sept. 13, on the RAI Convention Center Beach at The Playground for senior representatives from the broadcast, streaming and content production sectors with responsibility for localization and accessibility. Email VITAC to register for this invitation-only event.

See VITAXC at IBC 2024 Stand 6.C29b.

More information is available on the company’s website.

NEW YORK—The local news market is on the receiving end of a personalized captioning solution after the introduction of a new live TV captioning ASR solution.

After the acquisition of the captioning company VITAC in 2021, the Verbit Company announced the release of an as-yet-unnamed automatic captioning system with hybrid capabilities that is based on ASR technology. The solution will be unveiled at the upcoming NAB Show New York event, running from Oct. 19-20 at the Javits Convention Center in New York City.

The new product is a customized, adaptable engine developed with input from captioning, speech and machine-learning experts and includes features such as professional data prep by specialists who research and review content added to the ASR engine before each session starts. Clients are given the option to request a so-called human co-pilot for control of a live ASR session in real time, which provides support in corrections, custom caption placement and domain changes. 

Verbit, which is now comprised of VITAC as well as Automatic Sync Technologies, Take 1, Take Note and US Captioning, employs what it says is the largest professional captioning workforce in the world.

“Verbit is proud to expand its superior AI transcription technologies into the media space through the launch of VITAC’s newest product offering — an adapted and hybrid automatic captioning solution designed for the North American broadcast market,” said Raffi Margaliot, Verbit chief product and technology officer. 

NEW YORK—CBS, The Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing have announced that they will be broadening access to "The 75th Annual Tony Awards" by providing for the first time an audio description of the live telecast. 

The addition of audio description, which provides audio-narrated descriptions of a program's key visual elements, ensures that viewers who are blind and have low-vision will be able to take in all the action occurring on the screen, and provides a much richer experience of the event. 

The audio description will be provided on the Secondary Audio Programming (SAP) channel by VITAC and Audio Eyes.

Live from the legendary Radio City Music Hall in New York and hosted by Academy Award winner and Tony nominee Ariana DeBose, "The 75th Annual Tony Awards" will be broadcast Sunday, June 12 on the CBS Television Network, and available to stream live and on demand on Paramount+. 

The audio description on Paramount+ will only be included in post-live air streams.

CBC noted that it has been providing audio descriptions since April 1, 2002 and that the network offers audio description with nearly all its regularly scheduled scripted primetime programs, all movies, selected specials and the entire CBS Dream Team Saturday morning block of educational/informational children's programming.

"For over 20 years, CBS has continually improved upon and increased the availability of audio description in our programming. We are proud to be able to offer `The 75th Annual Tony Awards’ to an even wider and more inclusive audience," said Mark Turits, vice president of captioning and audio description at Paramount Global.

The Tony Awards, which honor theater professionals for distinguished achievement on Broadway, is presented by The Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing and has been broadcast on CBS since 1978.

Audio Eyes is a partnership of audio engineers, producers, accessibility experts, blind professionals and audio description professionals who are passionate about providing high quality services in a creative, inclusive work environment. 

The Audio Eyes production team has more than a decade of experience providing live audio description in theaters as well as recorded audio description for broadcast television networks, nationally distributed DVDs, government agencies and private entities. 

VITAC, a Verbit company, is the largest provider of accessible video products and services in North America. Responsible for captioning hundreds of thousands of programming hours each year, its customers include every broadcast company and most cable networks, as well as Fortune 1000 corporations, educational institutions, government agencies, plus stadiums and arenas.

NEW YORK—Verbit, an AI-powered transcription platform, has announced its acquisition of Vitac, a provider of captioning products and solutions.

Vitac had worked in the captioning space for 35 years, serving customers like broadcast companies, cable networks, program producers, corporations, educational institutions and more. 

With the acquisition, Verbit says that its enhanced transcription and captioning platform will feature industry experts, AI-based tools, establishing integrations with video cloud platforms and be able to translate transcriptions into any language.

“We are thrilled to further strengthen our position as the market leader in the transcription and captioning industries in partnership with VITAC. This opportunity allows us to expand our offerings for the media vertical and provide advanced transcription capabilities to our current education, legal and corporate customers,” said Tom Livne, CEO and founder of Verbit. “The combined company will harness decades of transcription and captioning experience to offer customers a best-in-class solution based on our proven technology. We will continue to invest in our platforms, top talent, and domain expertise to evolve and develop our solutions to meet our customers’ dynamic needs.”

For more information, visit verbit.ai. 

LAS VEGAS–At the 2019 NAB Show, VITAC, a Colorado-based provider of captioning services, launched VPC Control Tower, what the company describes as a “first-of-its-kind” cloud-based application that allows easy, always-on connections between captioners, events, and clients, and serves as a central hub that establishes multilevel monitoring and management of client programming.

The latest part of the company’s VITAC Power Connect product line, VPC Control Tower serves as a “traffic director” for captions, ensuring that captioners using VPC Client, a new, specially developed VITAC software are routed to the proper audio and video sources as well as the correct endpoints. VPC Control Tower enables 24/7 monitoring not only of captions and caption paths, but also of the entire captioning workflow process, including captioner readiness, caption transmission, and transcript delivery, according to the company.

Launched at the 2017 NAB Show, VITAC Power Connect is part of the company’s large-scale initiative to connect, control, monitor, and report on continuous network connections between realtime captioners and live broadcasting encoders, minimizing threats such as captioning loss due to ISP outages and modem disconnects.

The first delivery, the “Connect” phase, announced at the 2018 NAB Show, was the VPC Hardener, which provided a multi-line path from the captioner to the encoder for use in troubled areas. Also in 2018, VITAC introduced the concept of VPC Control Tower, which links together captioners, encoders, and audio and video lines, and enables staff to control and monitor captions and connections at a never-before-seen level of detail, according to the company.

At the 2019 NAB Show, VITAC also introduced another feature of VITAC Power Connect, a reporting function designed to provide dashboards and reporting for clients and VITAC control teams.

STAMFORD, CONN.—NBC Olympics is relying on Vitac Corp. for live closed captioning services for its Winter Olympics production from PyeongChang, South Korea, the company announced today. All Winter Olympics programming across NBCU’s networks, including NBC, NBCSN, CNBC and the USA Network will use Vitac’s live closed captioning coverage.

Trained stenographers transcribing audio at up to 240 words per minute provide the Vitac real-time captioning. For several months, they have been creating custom dictionaries to guide in the correct spelling of the names of the more than 2,000 athletes from 147 countries who will compete in the games.

More information is available on the Vitac website.

For all our Olympics coverage, visit here.