BCA Show Preview - 39

SHOW PREVIEW | 26-28 June 2018

A part of

MARINA BAY SANDS * SUNTEC SINGAPORE

SUNTEC SINGAPORE

39

Subtitling Technology
Still in a State of Evolution
Subtitling and captioning technology can often be viewed as being in a state
of stagnation, but that is not quite true, says Dean Wales, Marketing & PR,
Screen Subtitling...

P

Screen Store

eople may ask what has
actually changed to have a
significant evolutionary effect on
it as a technology? It's just text on
a screen, right? Not quite.
As a pioneering subtitle and
caption systems developer and
manufacturer, Screen has had
to rise to a number of tough
challenges over the years,
namely the SD to HD switchover
and rollout, 4K, VOD/OTT,
and possibly one of the most
demanding in the past has got to
be 3D. Our technology has had to
keep up with these developments
to continue to provide reliable
and high-quality subtitles.

New Challenges

An additional strategic angle to the Screen
Store is to offer a sales channel in that space
to relevant third parties with complementary
products which has a substantial and already
established global reach and reputation. We
are inviting companies with appropriate apps
to contact our partnerships team to discuss
inclusion and terms.
Licensing requirements too have extensively
changed and following greater demand from
our customers most of Screen's products are
available with flexible licensing now with our
file-based product MediaMate recently joining
that club.

Speech to Text
Wincaps is industry-standard software

But those really significant advancements
have plateaued more recently so our
challenges have come at us from a different
angle. The first being in the realms of the
'subtitler' itself. There has been a colossal
shift in how the professional subtitler works,
charges for its services, is paid, etc. but also
in who actually needs or wants to create and

prepare subtitles today. Carrying the hefty
weight of creating and maintaining what is
considered an industry standard piece of
software, that's to say Wincaps, presents
a degree of responsibility. We advocate the
need for quality subtitles and feel obliged
to offer software to achieve that in the most
accessible and affordable way possible.

The range of people requiring subtitle
creation and preparation software is far
broader now; medical and education bodies
for instance, religious organisations, in fact
any business that has realised the importance
of having video and consequently captions
on their websites. This has led to a new array
of products and a more convenient delivery
method of existing products.

Subscription Availability

Screen Store is now open

Screen has taken its core professional
creation products i.e. Wincaps (and
associated products), and Poliscript and
has made versions of them available on an
affordable subscription basis via our online
Store. We've been monitoring and surveying
the market closely and have been adjusting
the available feature level of software offered
in this way. Subscription fees have been
examined too so they're suitably aligned with
market subscribing expectations and Wincaps
Q4 is now available from £24.99 per month.
An educational version is also available for
download via the Store and we're working on
a much more convenient enterprise version of
Wincaps.

With many more countries being legally
pressed to provide captions for live events
such as news broadcasts, the need for cost
effective Speech to Text solutions has recently
intensified.
The most significant issue faced with this
new technology however is one of accuracy,
and even with the more advanced speech
engines, the accuracy will still not replace
a human operator. While many companies
are jumping on the Automatic Subtitling Live
bandwagon, we have seen the quality vary.
Depending on location and regulations, for
some broadcasters an accuracy of 90% may
be enough, but with one in every 10 words
being incorrect, for most this simply isn't
good enough.
Screen has been working with this
technology for a number of years now and
it is only recently that the speech engines
available to us have matured to a level where
we are happy to put our name to them and
provide a solution.
We were pleased to offer a preview at IBC
in 2017 and the recent NAB, and with further
development we are delighted to be bringing a
taster of the next stage of this technology to
BroadcastAsia.
www.subtitling.com
https://subtitling.com/products/subtitle-delivery/transmit/polistream/ https://subtitling.com/products-solutions/subtitle-creation-software/ https://store.subtitling.com/ http://store.subtitling.com http://www.subtitling.com
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of BCA Show Preview
