What are captions?
How do I access captions on my television?
Why are my captions sometimes distorted?
How does the shorthand machine work?

Captions represent in text form the dialogue of a TV program, TV commercial, video, DVD or other cinema screening, including other features of the soundtrack such as sound effects and music. Foreign language subtitles are a translation of the dialogue only.

Captions have certain style characteristics, such as colouring and positioning, (or placement on screen), to assist viewers to follow who is speaking. Captions are commonly displayed at the bottom of a TV or cinema screen but can be placed elsewhere within the screen, such as the top, to avoid covering important onscreen information or people's mouths.

There are two main categories of captions - live and offline.

Live Captions
Live captions are generally used for live, changeable or fast turnaround broadcast environments, such as news and current affairs or special events, such as election coverage.

There are two types of live captions – pre-prepared and realtime.

Pre-prepared Captions
Pre-prepared captions are usually prepared via a qwerty keyboard and are prepared in advance of the program airing. They usually appear on screen as a 2-line block of text. They are manually cued (or synchronised) live to air as the program is being broadcast. While pre-prepared captions are prepared in advance of the program airing, this advance preparation time can sometimes be as little as minutes or even seconds before being cued.

Realtime Captions
Realtime captions are prepared via the use of a shorthand machine by a realtime writer (often referred to as a stenographer). They appear on the screen as scrolling text and are written truly live to air with no preparation time whatsoever.

Offline Captions
Offline captions are used for programs that are produced well in advance of airtime and that are unlikely to change once they’ve been produced, such as a regular drama series, telemovie or lifestyle program, et cetera. Offline captions also appear as a 2-line block of text. Unlike live captions, which are manually cued to air as the program airs, offline captions are embedded into the soundtrack of a program and, therefore, are automatically received by the viewer in their television signal when the program is aired.

There are two types of offline captions - closed and open.

Closed Captions
Closed captions are used when you only want to display the captioned text as desired. In other words, you can turn the captions on or off. They are not permanently on screen. To access closed captions, your TV must have a teletext decoder in its circuitry. Most recently manufactured TVs contain the circuitry, but not all.

Open Captions
Open captions include the same text as closed captions, but the captions are a permanent part of the picture and cannot be turned off. Open captioning is most often used for government or public announcements and does not require you to own a recently manufactured TV with teletext circuitry or own any special equipment.

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To access closed captions, you will need either a television with Teletext capability or a digital set-top box. Teletext is available on all free-to-air channels via page 801 of the Austext service (a free information and news service which utilises Teletext technology). To access this page, take the following steps:

1. Select the channel you wish to watch.
   
2. Press the teletext/text button on the remote control (often depicted as a TV set or square with lines across it to represent text).
   
3. Press 8-0-1. Provided there are captions available on the particular program you have chosen, then the captions will usually be displayed on the TV screen within a few seconds.

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If your captions are missing letters or if numbers, instead of letters, are appearing on your television screen, you may have a problem with your reception. Firstly, check that your teletext television or decoder doesn’t need tuning. If not, you may need to have an outside antenna installed. Alternatively, you may need to have an antenna booster put on your television or video. Contact a specialist TV antenna technician in your area for their advice.

If you already have an outside antenna installed and you are still having problems with your captions, perhaps you have recently experienced a bad storm in your area which may have caused your antenna to be moved slightly. This may require a simple adjustment of the positioning of your antenna to rectify the problem.

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The shorthand (or steno) machine has just 22 keys as well as a number bar. Machine shorthand is a phonetic-based language. Unlike a normal typewriter keyboard where one key is depressed at a time, with a steno machine combinations of keys represent certain sounds and, as such, groups of keys are depressed at the same time.

In order to write machine shorthand, words are written syllabically. Each time a group of keys is depressed, this generally represents a syllable. The steno machine keyboard is divided into two parts – the left-hand side of the keyboard represents sounds at the beginning of a syllable (it is the left hand which is used here), and the right-hand side of the keyboard represents sounds at the end of a syllable (it is the right hand which is used here). The vowels are found the base of the keyboard (it is the thumbs which are used here).

Stenocaptioners can write accurate shorthand at speeds in excess of
220 words per minute.

There are specific software programs which stenocaptioners use to translate instantaneously their machine shorthand into English text. Every stenocaptioner maintains an individual database (or ‘dictionary’) which assigns English words to phonetic shorthand outlines. Stenocaptioners are continually adding new words to their dictionaries due to the wide-ranging vocabulary that confronts them in their daily work. Occasionally a live caption may contain a word that is incorrectly spelled but which translates phonetically on screen and is therefore able to be understood. This may be an example of where a word has not yet been added to the stenocaptioner’s shorthand dictionary.

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If you have any other questions regarding captioning that you would like answered, please contact us.

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