This may not be a DISH question, but that is how I veiw TV programs. My wife has bit of trouble hearing so we often have the CC turned on. I have noticed the the syncing of the captions to the on screen action can vary quite wildly, from spot on to behind by nearly a minute. I can't say if the issue is by channel or program or DISH itself. Any thoughts?
Closed Captioning
- Thread starter JimWH
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I also have Dish and infrequently use captioning to catch some dialog that was garbled to see what was said. Across all the channels I've used it, captioning does vary wildly from being synced pretty closely to being way behind. I don't know how captioning is added, so I can't address that but can concur that I've seen the same, and I just use them every once in a while. It must be hard on your wife at times to keep it sorted out.
Pre-recorded national shows tend to be fairly close to the dialog. They should be.
Talks show including most news tend to be behind about the screen's worth. Ad lib, I guess.
Some of my local news show have the captions before the head says it except for the weather ad libs, i.e., non-scripted.
Then again you can see when the head goes off script.
I use CC all the time. The Hopper doesn't permit outlining in black of white or yellow with translucent background. This makes it harder to read over the station overlays.
-Ken
Talks show including most news tend to be behind about the screen's worth. Ad lib, I guess.
Some of my local news show have the captions before the head says it except for the weather ad libs, i.e., non-scripted.
Then again you can see when the head goes off script.
I use CC all the time. The Hopper doesn't permit outlining in black of white or yellow with translucent background. This makes it harder to read over the station overlays.
-Ken
KKlare, I posted the very same complaint about the lack of CC options that were on the ViP's such as drop shadow and outlines, etc. just as you stated. One of the DIRT said they would forward that to the engineers. That was months ago.
Yes, KKlare is right again. The live shows like news can suffer terribly from poor CC because of the people inputting it on the fly. They often are hearing the audio of the broadcast via POTS in some far away state and not only SKIP lots of things said on air, but often mis-spell to a laughable degree local names or cities etc because they aint from around the local parts. Right now on the KTLA Morning News (a LIVE broadcast for some 5 hours) has a horrid individual doing the CC as they will skip long segments of speech and just can't keep up at ALL. It is utterly awful and USELESS. A fair number of times, it can be the CC service who is guilty.
However, sometimes, more often than it should be, it is DISH. Right now, on pre-recorded national programming, the CC seems to be synced just about half-a-second too early. This causes problems in following along with the action. This problem occurs across more than one channel on Dish and among several programs recorded recently or some time ago. It would not be the first DISH CC problem. Part of the problem is that Dish has to send the CC data along with the other picture and audio data and they have to sync it up because they are re-encoding everything. Sometimes they get it right. Sometimes they get it VERY wrong.
I do know how CC is added to programming after production, and I won't go into the details, but I will say there are opportunities to mess it up even when it is added to the content post-production. Most of the CC is done by third parties. I can also tell you that the quality of the PERSON doing the CC makes all the difference in the world. Sometimes that person has the burden of having the software and computer at their expense, while some go into an office where equipment and software are provided. Also, while there is a recognized authority or two who have pioneered CC and who publish a guide that is used by MOST CC companies, there really is no official standard for CC. Some are synched by computer, some are hard synched by the CC typist. It is all a really big mess.
Yes, KKlare is right again. The live shows like news can suffer terribly from poor CC because of the people inputting it on the fly. They often are hearing the audio of the broadcast via POTS in some far away state and not only SKIP lots of things said on air, but often mis-spell to a laughable degree local names or cities etc because they aint from around the local parts. Right now on the KTLA Morning News (a LIVE broadcast for some 5 hours) has a horrid individual doing the CC as they will skip long segments of speech and just can't keep up at ALL. It is utterly awful and USELESS. A fair number of times, it can be the CC service who is guilty.
However, sometimes, more often than it should be, it is DISH. Right now, on pre-recorded national programming, the CC seems to be synced just about half-a-second too early. This causes problems in following along with the action. This problem occurs across more than one channel on Dish and among several programs recorded recently or some time ago. It would not be the first DISH CC problem. Part of the problem is that Dish has to send the CC data along with the other picture and audio data and they have to sync it up because they are re-encoding everything. Sometimes they get it right. Sometimes they get it VERY wrong.
I do know how CC is added to programming after production, and I won't go into the details, but I will say there are opportunities to mess it up even when it is added to the content post-production. Most of the CC is done by third parties. I can also tell you that the quality of the PERSON doing the CC makes all the difference in the world. Sometimes that person has the burden of having the software and computer at their expense, while some go into an office where equipment and software are provided. Also, while there is a recognized authority or two who have pioneered CC and who publish a guide that is used by MOST CC companies, there really is no official standard for CC. Some are synched by computer, some are hard synched by the CC typist. It is all a really big mess.
With my vip 211k ( WITH EHD - wow what a great idea) , it takes a lot of key strokes to turn cc on and off. One thing I sometimes do is to activate cc on the TV
in composite mode, watch HDMI with Dish CC off, and switch input modes as needed. I'm almost of the opinion that the CC processor
on the TV works better than the 211k.
in composite mode, watch HDMI with Dish CC off, and switch input modes as needed. I'm almost of the opinion that the CC processor
on the TV works better than the 211k.
The issue I have noticed on BBCA "Ripper Street" is that the CC is out-of-sic with the picture. It not late, but ahead of the picture for a change. Anyone else notice this? Several years ago I believe this could be adjusted on a DVR or maybe a A/V receiver I had, but maybe I'm wrong. Any suggestions? THANKS!
I would guess it's more an issue for the program originator than it would be for Dish. The CC is encoded with the signal, it's not like Dish is going to be able to delay (or advance) the CC once they get it.
As mentioned, pre-recorded programs can get the CC added during post production. How well it syncs...?
Live programs vary. Local news might use the feed from the teleprompter. That would explain why some stuff gets captioned and others don't. I'm guessing that's what talk shows use, but it's just a guess. A delay is put in because of where the prompter sends the text to the caption encoder. That might be adjustable, but maybe not.
Other live events (sports, major market & network news, etc) rely on captioners as Kklare said. They listen to the audio on a phone line, type what they hear, and send it back over a modem to the caption encoder.
As mentioned, pre-recorded programs can get the CC added during post production. How well it syncs...?
Live programs vary. Local news might use the feed from the teleprompter. That would explain why some stuff gets captioned and others don't. I'm guessing that's what talk shows use, but it's just a guess. A delay is put in because of where the prompter sends the text to the caption encoder. That might be adjustable, but maybe not.
Other live events (sports, major market & network news, etc) rely on captioners as Kklare said. They listen to the audio on a phone line, type what they hear, and send it back over a modem to the caption encoder.
I would have thought that automated voice recognition was currently the most often used method, not human beings manually transcribing.
I have seen similar out of synch issue on just about EVERYTHING I watch on Dish. I have Hoppers/Joeys. I think the engineers need to monitor this and fix this. I can appreciate that it is a trick to encode all the data and be certain the CC data is decoded and displayed where it should be. It is VERY annoying.
Welcome to the world of the Deaf and Hearing impaired. I've been fighting this this since day one. The biggest problem is really with the d****d now constant ads and channel cartoons. it's becoming worse as time goes by. Did you notice that a lot of the movies they offer for free (I only have the basic minimum ) often do not even have subtitles? Also if you want to see bad CC watch South Park or Tosh.0 LOL.
