Captioning Hardware Shopping List

Technical Information

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AutoCaption II is the perfect system to caption with.  In our humble opinion, of course.

Now it's time to decide on the scope and nature of the captioning services you're planning to offer.  Depending on what you want to do you'll need a little - or a lot - of video hardware.

The Basics

These two items must be at the top of your shopping list:

• A video source to use when timing and placing your captions.  You'll want to use a disposable format machine, low resolution digital or VHS for example, to shuttle and jog on while making your captions.  Here you have two options:
  1. If you have cooperative clients who will put the audio on one HiFi channel and time code on the other, you can use an ordinary consumer deck.  You would then digitize the video into AutoCaption II and use the random-access/non-linear features to jog and shuttle while scheduling captions.
  2. However, for the most flexibility we suggest a professional video source with a built-in SMPTE time code reader and a RS-422 remote port.

• AutoCaption II and your Windows® computer.  We'll give you one of our interfaces to control the video source and a PCI card to digitize video for on-screen previewing.

To Make Approval Tapes

If you want to make approval copies (and you should) for your clients you'll probably want add these items:

• An inserter/encoder to add captions to the video stream from your video source.
• A consumer VHS video recorder for approval copies.

To Make Captioned Videos

Unless you already have a video production facility, it can get rather expensive to acquire all the equipment you'll need to make a finished captioned master video.

Video technology can get confusing with at least a dozen different video formats (VHS, SVHS, 3/4", 1", Sony BetaCam®, Sony DigiBeta®, MII, D1, D2, and so forth) so don't hesitate to ask questions.

In addition to the captioning video source and a computer you will need:

• A broadcast video source.  These things can run from US$9,000 to more than $50,000 depending on the format and quality.
• A broadcast video recorder.  These things are even more expensive than the corresponding video source.
• Alignment and monitoring equipment.  Most broadcast equipment requires careful alignment and maintenance to get good equipment life and to produce quality video.  This equipment can cost as much as a broadcast video source.

More about costs...

See a comprehensive connection diagram...