Re: [Fwd: Timed Text work]

WGBH and NCAM (National Center for Accessible Media) are heavily involved in  digital captioning research.  More info on our DTV captioning project is available at

http://ncam.wgbh.org/dtv/

And to echo what other have already said, we'll certainly be able to apply some of the digital captioning research to a timed-text format.

>>DVD captioning systems have yet another format, although I am not aware of 
>>the exact standard that covers this or what the encoding is exactly. I 
>>know a person closely involved in DVD standards - if someone cares, I 
>>could inquire.

True DVD closed captions (not subtitles) are of the line-21 variety, similar to regular NTSC broadcast captions.  They're available on Region 1 discs only.

Just for general info, for those who aren't already aware of it:  NCAM is currently working on version 2.0 of MAGpie, caption/audio-description software for digital media.  It's available for free at

http://ncam.wgbh.org/webaccess/magpie/magpie2_beta.html

This is beta software; the final version will be available in March.  

Geoff Freed
WGBH/NCAM


On Wednesday, January 23, 2002, Michael A. Dolan <miked@tbt.com> wrote:
>Philipp thought this note may be of interest to this list.
>
>>Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 07:12:25 -0800
>>To: Philipp Hoschka <ph@w3.org>
>>From: "Michael A. Dolan" <miked@tbt.com>
>>Subject: Re: [Fwd: Timed Text work]
>>
>>Philipp-
>>
>>Both Europe and the US have had captioning and teletext standards for 
>>television for quite some time.  These are old, binary encodings (and 
>>obviously not XML-based).  The US standards are EIA-608 and EIA-708.  The 
>>European standards are in ITU documents I believe, but don't recall them 
>>off the top of my head (could find them if someone cares).
>>
>>DVD captioning systems have yet another format, although I am not aware of 
>>the exact standard that covers this or what the encoding is exactly. I 
>>know a person closely involved in DVD standards - if someone cares, I 
>>could inquire.
>>
>>SMPTE DDE-1 can be used for this purpose with its triggers 
>>(application/tve-trigger), but is a bit heavy weight for just "timed 
>>text".  There were some advanced captioning prototypes developed by WGBH 
>>(public television in Boston) that used DDE-1 to do some really 
>>interesting captioning applications.
>>
>>There are proprietary XML-based solutions in use today by the commercial 
>>producers of captioning. As far as I know, they have not published their 
>>work, but may do so if encouraged.
>>
>>And, the emerging Digital Cinema market is off defining something new and 
>>re-inventing captioning for that market.  I have not kept up with their 
>>work, but understand it is proceeding in parallel.  I can inquire here as well.
>>
>>IETF AVT-WG has had some activity on this topic.  There was an ID 
>>(draft-westerlund-avt-rtp-static-media-00.txt), but you should contact the 
>>AVT chair for where this activity stands.
>>
>>So, the answer is yes, many times now, and it would sure be a shame to 
>>create yet another effort.  All these overlap in varying degrees, but the 
>>closest direct hit is the XML-based proprietary systems in use by the 
>>commercial captioning companies (WGBH Caption Center and SDI Media are two).
>>
>>SMPTE D27 would be very interested in this work, so I would like to remain 
>>informed in detail of W3C's activity in this area.  Where is this WG 
>>organized relative to the reports made in the HTML-CG?
>>
>>Regards,
>>
>>         Mike
>

Received on Wednesday, 23 January 2002 17:17:07 UTC