Captioning for Live Events

Any video played during a live event or webcast needs captions. The role captioning plays in live events falls into two different categories.

Live event captions may be open or closed:

Open captions become part of the video and cannot be turned off.
Closed captions use a code that allows it to be turned on and off, but needs a special piece of equipment called a decoder.

Requirements

Any time a video will play during an event, the video should be captioned for playback. Here are some ways this can be done:

If the video will be played back from Youtube or Facebook, make sure the captions have been corrected and are toggled “on” for playback.
If the video will be played back from a file, provide the venue with an open-captioned file.
- A caption layer can be created in Adobe Premiere or a file can be downloaded from a captioned YouTube video and imported into Adobe Premiere.
- Open captions are burned into the video and cannot be turned off.

Streamed webcasts also need captions. Here are some options to do this:

Hire an outside company that can provide the equipment and service to add captions directly to your video source. WVU works with American Technology Rentals for several events each year.
- Phone: 304.586.2804
- Email: info@americantechrentals.com
Use a service like Intellitext that opens a second window next to the user's browser with a live transcript of the audio.

Every system handles captions differently.

YouTube can take closed captions if the proper encoder is used. Other streaming services may only accept open captions.
Facebook Live can be live captioned with 2^nd party vendor support.

Be sure your system includes the ability to include captions.