Enhancing Captioning Workflows: Efficiency, Compliance, and Global Reach (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Efficiency is good, right? Efficiency is desirable. My name is sana and i'm from intera systems. Today we will be talking about adding efficiency to captioning Workflows. Talking about captions, they are No more a luxury. You must caption your videos. You have created a masterpiece. Why let even a single person be Deprived of it? captioning today, my friend, Depends on three pillars of accessibility, compliance and Globalization. Let me bring to your attention That even in america, around 20 of the population face some or The other kind of hearing disability. We must create accessible videos, compliance. Why create content and avoid fines and some unmet regulations? We must, you know, take full advantage of globalization. You have worked hard and created a beautiful content. Now let it work hard and reach millions across the globe. We at intera systems have been monitoring this space for a While, and we think, in fact, we totally think that time is Ripe in terms of requirement and technological maturity that we Can add real value to this workflow. So thanks a lot for giving me this opportunity at nab 2023 to Talk and share with you our thoughts and ideas on adding Efficiency to captioning workflows. Well, my friends, with the rise in non-linear tv and ott Platforms and subsequent globalization, the landscape of Media consumption has changed totally. Today content is consumed not where it is produced, but it is Targeted for global audiences. Today you need captions and Subtitles not in just one or two languages, but as many as 10, 15, or 20 languages. Maybe for many of them you Might not even have in-house language expertise. Today you need to optimize your content not just for one display Resolution, but for many in ott delivery. Today you need to meet various local regulations and Compliances, which are completely continuously changing And you have to be on toes to be always following them. So what we think is if you do not add efficiency now using Automated solutions, you will be lagging behind, and you will Not be able to take full advantage and monetize your Content and reach global audiences. So we have to add efficiency. But how do we do it? Well, in this era where ai is writing essays for us, we all Would be wondering, you know, if ai is the magic wand that i Wave and it solves all problems in my captions. I wave it and it fixes all issues in my captions. It generates captions for me. Well, we do need an ai-based Solution. What we really need is ai++. We need a solution which is totally focused and appropriate For solving customer solutions. For generating captions, we Just don't need processing of audio, but we need video Processing as well. So as to find the correct Location of captions, so as to find where the scene change Boundary lies. So we need a solution that has Full understanding of your media, the way it is encoded, The way you decode it. We need a solution which Understands the captioning problem, which has the domain Understanding of captions, the pain points, the solution which Can be easily plugged into your media workflows without Disrupting it. Apart from it, given the Inherent nature of ai and some issues where it might have Difficulties in difficult scenes or noisy audio, you need to have A review tool that makes the process a breeze. A review should be only a few clicks, right? Otherwise, whatever efficiency that has been added will be Lost. So we now understand, you know, That we need some ai-based solution for adding efficiency. So let's go and dive deep and see what are the various points Where we can add efficiency in our captioning workflows. So one of them is captions quality control. So let's say you are a broadcaster or an ott platform And you are receiving tons of content on a daily basis and Along with it various captions and subtitles in different languages. What you need is an efficient solution which can tell you what Issues are there in your captions and subtitles as per Your requirement. As per your requirement, that Is what is okay for you, what is an issue for you, and it Corrects them and presents to you for review. What it should check is it should check whether your Captions and subtitles are in sync with the media. It should flag an error when any fcc guidelines are not met. It should let you when the text attributes like reading speed, Display duration, various spelling mistakes, profanity, Positions, et cetera are not met. It should tell you when various Compliances to captioning standards are not met, when the Data attributes for format-specific and Format-independent formats are not met. Let us see a practical example. I'm quite sure you all have Faced this nuisance where you were really hooked to a match, Wanted to see a score, and suddenly the captions were Overlapping with it and you couldn't see it, right? Imagine the efficiency you would get if an automated solution can Automatically detect it and move the captions up or down. This is the kind of efficiency we are talking about, and it is Very much achievable with the current state of technology. The other point where we can add efficiency in captioning Workflows is when you need to generate captions and subtitles In different languages. The tool should not just help you Transcribe your audio, but it should generate captions as per Your requirements. Like for a mobile display, it Should give you captions which are in single line. For a bigger display, it should give you multiline captions. For kids programming, maybe you should have a slower reading Speed. Let's say for a language like English or spanish, you should have 32 or 42 characters per Line, but for languages like japanese, you should have 15 or 17 Characters per line. So real efficiency would be Added when the tool is configurable and generates real Captions for you. Now, let us understand how a Manual captioner would generate captions for you. It's a very tedious process. One has to listen to the whole Audio, write down the text, and once the transcription is done, We have to generate various segments where the line breaks And display breaks are put at various linguistic points. By linguistic points, i mean, you know, the sentence and line Breaks should not be put anywhere and should not break The idea. It should actually keep the Idea intact. You can just read, you know, These segments, read aloud and you will see how putting breaks, Intelligent breaks at linguistic points help readability and aids Comprehension. Such an efficiency can be Achieved using an automated tool which is enabled with natural Language processing capabilities and can transcribe The text and can segment the text and then put the right Timestamps for the start and end of those segments. Such a tool should give you right punctuations, should be Multi-language enabled, should give you speaker change marks And should be completely configurable via some sort of Schemes where you can specify how you want to generate your Text. The other place where you can Add efficiency is let's say you already have captions. And you wanted to repurpose it for a different delivery. Let's say you want to change the frame rate or maybe the Resolution. Or imagine having live captions With its inherent inaccuracies, some spelling mistakes, some Missing captions here and there. What an efficiency we would Achieve if the tool can directly supply the missing Captions, can convert your roll-up display of live captions To pop on caption for vod display. Can automatically correct the spellings, can correct the Segmentation as well, change the casing and so on. Let's talk about post production where you are continuously Editing your media content. Now you have to go back and Apply the same changes to your captions content. What an efficiency we can achieve if, you know, the tool Is constantly checking what all changes have been done to your Media and apply the same to your captions. You edited out an audio segment and the corresponding captions Are gone. What a breeze localization could Be. If you have captions, perfect Captions in one language and it generates various subtitles in Different languages for you, taking care of various regional Guidelines for profanity and choosing the right spelling as Per the intended locale. These are the various cases, Various work flows where we can add real efficiency using Automated tools. Now let me introduce to you Baten captions, the product we are working on. Baten captions is a must-have tool for all automated Captioning and subtitling workflow. With its cutting edge technology, Advanced algorithms and machine learning based algorithms, Baten captions can not just qc your captions, it can generate Captions, it can repurpose captions, and with its very Easy-to-use user interface, reviewing captions is a breeze And it gives you complete control of your output. It's not just a time saver. It's not just a time saver. In fact, it's a must-have tool to meet all the regulatory Compliances and make sure your content is accessible to one and all. Let me give you a glimpse of the comprehensive checks, the Various checks that are completely configurable as per Your requirements. It comes with a frame-accurate review player. You can see the ease of use through audio waveform panel, The rendering of captions on video, the various text Attributes that can be easily changed through its text editor. It does make reviewing captions a breeze. It is completely configurable and can easily plug into your Workflows using rest-based apis, very scalable, available as On-premise yearly license as well as on-cloud license. You can have a usage-based sas solution as well. It is available on linux operating system, supports all Major languages and is continuously growing. We support all site care formats and the reports can be Taken out in pdf, html and json formats. So batten captions is the latest offering from intera systems. We at intera systems are working on tools for automated qc, Monitoring, compliances and media analysis. For the last 20 years, we have been enabling our customers in Quality video and meet all regulations. Our tools can be plugged into any stage of workflow, right From ingest to delivery. In a nutshell, we help media Companies deliver good quality content, audio, video and Captions. Feel free to drop by at our Booth and you can see our product in action.