On a typical weekend service at Willow, we offer live sign language interpretation at one of our main services, click HERE for more info. Occasionally, we have provided Closed Captioning (CC) for our Global Leadership Summit (GLS), as the embedded captioning information can be transmitted along with the video signal & decoded on a TV easily.
The captioning for GLS is performed off campus at Riverside Captioning Company. The captioner from Riverside calls into a service called iCap that is tied to the EEG HD492 iCap Encoder which is integrated into our system at South Barrington with an HD-SDI video signal from our router that has embedded audio. This gives the captioner live video and audio feeds to caption from.
This connection embeds the live captioning information as Service 1 or S1 of our program video signal for distribution to any HD monitor supporting Closed Captioning. Since the captioning information is now an integrated part of the video signal, it is maintained through our video system, and through the SDI feed to the satellite truck and earth station for distribution. At the downlink venue or at a local location, the viewer can watch the program video feed & easily enable captioning on their local TV monitor or through the satellite receiver.
We have had great success with this method from a system integration viewpoint, an end-user experience, and from a cost-effectiveness standpoint.