Closed Captioning Services

closed captioning services transcription servicesGet FCC compliant while making your program available to the tens of millions of hearing-impaired and non-native English speakers who rely upon closed captioning services every day.

ProCaption may have the best rates in the industry for EIA(CEA)-608/708 compliant Roll-Up and Pop-On closed captioning!

Avid, Final Cut Pro & Premiere Pro Editors
We author and edit all popular closed captioning file formats (Cheetah .CAP, SCC, MCC, Avid AAF, etc.) and can deliver them to you for use in your NLE timeline.  We also offer turn-key captioning and encoding, for those times when you just don’t need one more thing to do!  We are professional Editors ourselves. We know how to support your workflow with closed captioning services.

Why Use Closed Captioning Services?
Here’s three great reasons:

  • It’s the law.  FCC regulations require programming being broadcast over the air to contain closed captions. Unfortunately, not even churches qualify for exemptions. Because the fines for non-compliance can be extremely costly, there really isn’t any wisdom in not using closed captioning services.
  • Closed Captioning services make your program accessible to tens of millions of deaf and hearing-impaired individuals. It is also used by many who rely upon closed captioning to help them better understand the English language, such as those for whom English is not their first language.
  • BONUS:  It makes your program an excellent teaching tool for millions of children and adults.  Many people increasingly utilize closed captioning as a part of their every-day linguistic education.  Research has shown that the use of closed captioning improves literacy rates in children and adults who use it.  More and more households are turning the captions ON. Make sure they can see yours!

Methods of Captioning
There are two basic methods for creating and synchronizing closed captions. (And then there’s the ProCaption way!):

  • Live Captioning
    ProCaption does NOT currently offer Live Closed Captioning services.  In this process a professional Caption Transcriber or “Live Writer” will connect to a production facility, transcribing and creating the closed captions in real-time.  No editing or error correction is possible.  This is a widely used method for news and sports programming.
  • Offline Captioning
    We DO offer fully-offline caption editing and synchronization!  When done “offline,” a professional Caption Transcriber/Editor will transcribe and manually syncronize (time-stamp) each line of captioned text.  This ensures the most accurate rendering of the program content.  Fully-offline closed captioning services are the most time consuming and therefore costly method of caption creation. (Although our rates are still perhaps the lowest in the industry!)

ProCaption’s Cost-Effective, Computer-Assisted Method of Captioning
When your budget doesn’t allow for fully-offline closed captioning services, ProCaption utilizes a more cost-effective, hybrid method. We actually developed it for our own use. Ours is technically an “offline” process, because it can be done at any time using pre-recorded media.  We pair an experienced Transcriber and Caption Editor (the human kind) with the most advanced software in the industry. This allows us to achieve an average accuracy rate that is even higher than that of real-time, Live Captioning, without the more time-consuming process of fully-manual synchronization. It’s a method we developed after significant research and experimentation. Because our clients love the savings our computer-assisted method provides, we will use this method unless you request otherwise.

Types of Closed Captions

  • Roll-Up
    At ProCaption, we uses Roll-Up captions unless otherwise requested. This is the traditional style of captions with which most people are familiar. It utilizes two to three lines of text, and as each new line appears at the bottom, the others “roll up” one line.  This style is commonly used for live captioning, as it is more forgiving from a word-synchronization standpoint.  It is also less time-consuming to format and edit offline and is therefore often used as a more cost-effective alternative to Pop-On captions.
  • Pop-On
    We offer Pop-On captions (by request) at NO ADDITIONAL CHARGE for all short-form spots! Pop-On captions are also available for programs of any length, although additional charges may apply for long-form programs due to the additional time required to sync Pop-On captions. This style of captions uses smaller lines of fewer characters which appear and disappear as words are spoken.  This method is most often used with “offline” captioning, where word synchronization and caption timing are more easily controlled.

See our Closed Captioning Prices