Closed Captioning: More Ingenious than You Know

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Over the years I’ve found that there are plenty of people who use captions, not just those who need them. But did you know that it took until the 1970’s for anyone to think of putting captions on TV? I can sort of understand that, since captions might be annoying if you don’t want them, but closed captioning would save the day and provide access to all, but only when needed.
Here's the link for making translated captions for my videos:
kzbin.info_cs_p...
Please don't feel compelled to do it, but if you'd like to give a bit of your time, I promise you'll get that imaginary badge!
Technology connections on Twitter (I’m just as weird on the social Internet as I am here on KZbin):
/ techconnectify
The TC Subreddit (warning: I’m not good at Reddit)
/ technologyconnections
Technology Connections 2 (my second channel where I upload weird stuff from time to time)
/ @technologyconnextras
Here’s that nifty Chicago Tribune article:
www.chicagotribune.com/news/c...
And here’s those captioning glasses:
www.smithsonianmag.com/innova...
(sadly, it looks like the creators had started an indiegogo for this, and it failed pretty badly. Quite a shame, as this could be quite useful! However, I suppose a phone app might be good enough. Might be)
Some history from the NCI:
www.ncicap.org/about-us/histor...
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[@TechnologyConnections]

A few notes/corrections: It's 525 times per _frame,_ not second. I messed that up. It's 15,750 times per second! Many of you have pointed out that you _can_ indeed define the position of captions. But, it's a really clunky ordeal and has its downsides. If I were to upload a specific file type (which funny enough is based on the Line 21 caption standard) then I could do it. However, I hadn't realized that the viewer can reposition them at will, and if I *do* upload the file, this overrides that functionality. So, uh, it's still not great. I would really like KZbin to allow me to move them from their built-in editor, which is what the vast majority of creators use. I admittedly made an assumption about the Rear Window Captioning System, and that assumption was that it's still in widespread use. Nope. It may still be out there, but there are now wireless receivers that can be incorporated as a heads-up display or a little LCD panel, and apparently these are cheaper to implement than the Rear Window system (I'm surprised by that honestly, but whatever). But, I still think that Rear Window is the most clever, if not the most prevalent anymore. Regarding Blu-Ray and line 21--apparently this is kinda supported but it's limited to older players. I guess there was some deal with movie studios where Blu-Ray would phase out analog connections by 2009 or something like that, so the fact that my PS3 couldn't output it was just because it's too new. Or something like that, I'm fuzzy on the details. But now I'm curious if new releases are still encoded with text metadata for line 21 captions. Maybe I need to find an older Blu-Ray player to test it. And lastly, a few people have asked over many videos how I am filming CRTs without flickering or framerate issues. I'm about to answer that in a TC2 video, and you can check it out here! kzbin.info/www/bejne/ZpuTenZml9pmmsk

[@fabianswebworld]

There's another assumption you made and which you might want to have another look into, because maybe it is worth another addendum/correction: you assumed that the "text" mode of the shown decoder relates to Teletext, but this isn't the case. I am from Europe (Germany), and Teletext was (and partly still is) heavily used over here. So I am not *that* familiar with the Line21 (EIA-608) standard, but as I work at a German public-service television broadcast station and am also involved with the technical infrastructure for subtitiling our programmes, I somewhat am, and - all that I know - this standard used four "channels" of subtitles, two of which are transmitted on each field. And each of these channels again can carry "CC" data and "TEXT" data, so there's CC1, CC2, CC3, CC4 and TEXT1, TEXT2, TEXT3 and TEXT4. The TEXT channels were supposed to provide supplementary textual information apart from timed subtitle data, but were rarely - virtually never - used. These channels (also the TEXT ones) were still carried over the Line 21 (or, in the even fields, line 284 actually...) and had NOTHING to do with the european Teletext, which used way more VBI lines and a completely different data structure, and is very different from its design perspective. Teletext *could* also transmit subtitles (and still is used for that as well), but it was organized in pages (also the subtitles were on "pages" actually) and not as a "continuous stream of data" like Line21. Teletext included many features that were later used for other things than originally designed, e.g. the "Alarm Clock" feature what later on was almost ONLY used as "subpages" feature (which explains that there can NEVER exist a subpage e.g. 0099 or 0580, although 1234, 0520 or 2000 is possible) etc. Teletext also allowed for different text and background colors, double height characters (later also double width and double size) and blinking text, but a green "A" could not follow a red "A" without a space in between. And things like italics and underline were never supported (which were in Line21). Later Teletext levels then supported things like arbitrary colors on arbitrary screen positions (like green A followed directly by red A) and even user-defined characters and color tables, but by far not all decoders allow this today - the baseline standard (and somewhat backwards-compatible...) is still the "Level 1.0" teletext from the 70's. I really like Teletext and I'm also somewhat involved in Teletext and its history (by profession), so if you need any in-depth information on it, do not hesitate to contact me, it would be an honor for me to help.

[@TechnologyConnections]

Uh oh! You're making assumptions about my assumptions! It's like assumptception! I know they're not related. It was a teaser and not much else. I'm working on research into Teletext (and with the help of some other kind people I'm trying to find out how to emulate teletext) and if you're looking to join the people who are helping out it's best to contact me on Twitter or through the "business email" which is listed somewhere I think. Be prepared for a horrible auto-reply if you go that route, though. (and I forgot to add:) If you are open to helping out, that would of course be very awesome. As I have zero experience with it, I'm actively seeking those who have and are familiar with its capabilities.

[@fabianswebworld]

@@TechnologyConnections Your're right, that was only an assumption-assumption... ;) so, I'm looking forward to it! And I'll drop you a message via one of the mentioned channels with some basic information, alongside with some links and a list of material I could offer (such as raw footage of teletext data, screenshots/videos of different Teletext modes etc.) (unfortunately, almost everything of it is in German, but maybe also that helps to illustrate). Anyway, thank you and keep up those great videos, it's... just awesome. Thank you!!!

[@jmvr]

Thank you for expanding on your point (no punctuation because "." and "!" sound too aggressive)

[@Nikoeab]

All caps are used because it's easier to read, especially in poor lighting, low contrast, or at distance. ALL CAPS ARE USED BECAUSE IT'S EASIER TO READ, ESPECIALLY IN POOR LIGHTING, LOW CONTRAST, OR AT DISTANCE.

[@kasperfabchbrandt537]

"That's right youtube, this old VCR and this box are more sophisticated than your captioning system. Maybe work on that." KZbin: *Disables community contributed subtitles*

[@MultiMarvelGeek]

Wow. Wooooooow. You're freaking right.

[@genericscottishchannel1603]

Also more sophisticated than netflix's

[@erlandyt]

Actually, youtube DOES allow the positioning of subtitles.

[@ZaHandle]

@@erlandyt it also allows tilting and colors

[@thearcanehunter2736]

@@erlandyt Don't think that was what he was talking about.

[@JohnMichaelson]

If KZbin's auto-generated captions are any indication of what we can expect from real time captioning, the hearing-impaired will probably conclude people are insane.

[@gymnasiast90]

And they wouldn't be wrong, really.

[@User-nu6km]

they would think they are insane

[@Sukigu]

KZbin's automatic closed captions have actually been great for a few years now. I remember there was a sudden jump in quality when they improved their algorithm significantly. It was around mid-2016.

[@Ice_Karma]

KZbin's auto-generated captions are generated by speech-to-text technology. Realtime captions are produced by a human, typing on a special device called a stenography machine.

[@pilotavery]

KZbin's captions are incredible! They're accurate enough that you can figure it out, and is used to add captions to videos without it, it DOESN'T replace good captions. And it's improving every day! Every time someone, like THIS uploader, uploads a video WITH captions, it's AI learns how to better understand whats going on. It's learning from itsself and it even says [Laughter] and [Music] sometimes! As a HOH person with a Deaf wife, KZbin's captions are a fucking godsend lifesaver, because otherwise 90% of videos are inaccessable to us!

[@brendancross2767]

19:10 or so: yeah that aged well, youtube basically said screw community captions. They're gone, which is why alec is such a hero for continuing to caption his own stuff

[@argon7624]

In the words of the great Tom Scott, "Buy some damn subtitles!"

[@catguy5425]

Wait... Dude's name is Alec? How have I binged most of his videos in the past couple days and not figured out his name?

[@Hoxeel]

@@catguy5425 He only mentions it in very old videos of his. He introduced himself as "Alec from Technology Connections" back then, I believe.

[@Mawyman2316]

How did I never know this?

[@NoNameAtAll2]

"maybe work on that, KZbin" meanwhile, youtube: "wE TuRn oFf cOmMuNitY cAptIoNs CauSe nOonE uSeS thEm"

[@familiarbreakfast1892]

also youtube: "we disabled auto translate captions because fuck accessibility"

[@pilotavery]

@@familiarbreakfast1892 they removed Community captions because they couldn't afford to keep moderating them when people put bullshit jokes in them. they also offered to pay for closed captioning service for some people, and captions are still available and the auto caption as well, just not community. They have to be approved by the uploader first.

[@forestofsecrets7273]

@@pilotavery the payment was onlt for one month of the service. not only that, but paying for captions can lead to some issuws that community captions wouldnt have (such as things related to channel inside jokes) also, its the uploader whose supposed to approve the captions, as far as i know. so its the uploaders fault if nonsense is accepted as captions.

[@_GhostMiner]

Did you mean: KZbin keeps shooting itself Because it still hasn't bled out

[@niko5008]

First of all, they added what technology connections begged for a long time, so shut up

[@RussellFlowers]

On the flip-side of closed captions... I once accidentally turned on the SAP (second audio program) feature on my old Sony TV. Apparently this was being used by the PBS program I was watching to describe the visual components of the show for the visually impaired. But I knew none of this, I just thought I was watching the most over-narrated program I had ever seen.

[@google_is_annoying_me_lots3440]

I did that once and I momentarily thought it was some weird arts program with extremely poetic narration. "A mountain rises over the horizon as she looks wistfully out of the window". That was one epic sounding news report.

[@sentry4944]

That is called Descriptive Video Service.

[@RadioactiveBlueberry]

I once tried that secondary audio for ice hockey game and it resulted to narration in second language of my country. I'm glad we're all digital today and not restricted anymore to only two audio streams.

[@Altoclarinets]

PBS used to run ads for this service using the Arthur characters and encouraging even people who weren't blind/visually impaired to try it out! Anyone remember those?

[@IAmNotAFunguy]

All I remember is when we bought a new family console TV in 1998 and SAP was among the features it had turned on when it was first delivered. Then when "Arthur" came on there was a woman's voice describing everything that was happening on screen that I didn't ever hear on our old TV. When a few of the more "grown up" shows came on during prime time and were in Spanish my father called the store we bought the TV from and they had to guide him in turning SAP off.

[@h3llbring0r]

In Europe, we use(d) Teletext for captions. You have to select a specific page and then a semitransparent text layer with captions is visible. And it supports multiple colors as well as two font sizes.

[@ai4px]

In the mid 1990s when visiting Germany, teletext was a blessing. I could catch the news and read articles.

[@K-o-R]

888 crew represent.

[@mcFreaki]

@@K-o-R fuck yes 888

[@daveuns]

Harry Neary it was like teletext on steroids! But on 14k modems teletext was faster :)

[@Bartiprog]

@@K-o-R 777 crew supporting!

[@SteveJones172pilot]

This was a great overview on captions.. A few clarifications.. I was one of 2 programmers who wrote the first PC based "real-time" captioning software used at NCI and WGBH and was working in this world in the late 80s/early 90s. We ran the captions in the Senate committee hearing where they debated the 1990 law you discussed, as a demo to the Senators. You mentioned that there was "timing information" in the captions. This is not really true. In reality, with "pop-up" captions like you see in movies and pre-scripted shows, the captions being sent are stored in a secondary frame buffer, and then at the moment they want the screen to change, a "flip pages" type command is sent to change which of 2 pages is the active one being displayed (and then new captions can be pre-loaded into the non-visible frame) so the only "timing" of this is really that the "flip screen" command has to be sent at the exact instant they want the new captions to appear. With roll-up captions, which are called "real-time" captions and are used for live events such as news or sports (with the stenographers as you mentioned), there is no secondary screen because the intent is to get the words on the screen as fast as possible, so characters go up as quickly as possible. Every frame of video has two bytes of data, so with 30 interlaced frames per second, the MOST you can send is 60 characters per second. One of the reasons "roll up" captions are delayed is not only because of the human delay of typing the words that were heard, but also because the stenographers are actually typing "phenomes" or basically syllables. It is the computer's job to decide what word(s) are being typed, and for that, you have to wait for multiple syllables to make sure you can caption a multi-syllabic word. For example, if someone was captioning the word "Ratatouille" on a cooking show, that would be many syllables. If the computer started sending out words on every syllable, it might come out as "Rat a two E" which obviously doesn't make sense. Occasionally you'll still see a mis-caption like this when a word isn't in the dictionary being used for translation, but generally our software stored a certain number of syllables and tried to make the longest match. We allowed the captioner to select generally 4-6 syllable buffer, so there was a natural 6 syllable delay before the words would come out after they were typed. Some competitive software would send out the shorter words, and then backspace over the word and correct it with a longer match if one was found, but with a limit of 60 characters per second, typing the words, then backspacing and re-typing would cause delay problems of it's own, and created even larger problems, especially if you needed to backspace to a previous line, which was much harder. Our PC software, as originally installed at NCI and WGBH ran on DOS 3.x on IBM AT 286, and eventually 386 PCs, and had replaced the same software running on a "Jaquard" brand mini computer ("mini" term being used loosely as it was back then comparing to a mainframe, as it was physically huge!) I still have the old software somewhere, but unfortunately I lost my last stenograph input device in a house fire so I have no way really to input to it as intended. Those were fun days and I am proud to have had a small part in helping this technology mature!

[@SpongeSebastian]

Let me be the first to like your comment! I'm a bit of a captioning nerd and I love hearing about the early days and the technology that was used. I work as a voice captioner and use the Eclipse CAT software that is used by a lot of stenos as well. I also used to practice steno and still have my machine somewhere, but I don't think I'm ready to part with it. Voice captioning presents unique challenges as well, but unlike steno where the long words are the problems, it's instead the really short and common words that are the bigger issue. For example, I have to say "an co" for "an" or else it will come out "and." It gets crazy.

[@SteveJones172pilot]

​@@SpongeSebastian Thats interesting.. Did you have to put "an co" -> "an" in your dictionary to distinguish it, so that it wont actually caption "an co"? I know in the steno side, people put all kinds of shortcuts or special cases in to do stuff like that. We used 3 dictionaries, called the Universal, Personal, and Job. The Universal was always used for everyone, then everyone had their own personal dictionaries with shortcuts or personal idiosyncracies like that (like if someone had a habit of hitting an accidental key with a pinky on a certain stroke, they may put special translations in to avoid having that cause them trouble in translation!) and then a job dictionary for subject specific stuff. For example, Monday night football was one show NCI did with our software, and so you might have all the football terms or players names in the "job dictionary" for the night, and then use a different job dictionary for "60 minutes." I REALLY wish I had known more about the steno side of things back in the day, but all I really ever learned to type were the numbers, and "this is a test".. :-)

[@SpongeSebastian]

@@SteveJones172pilot Most of the custom words I use as well as additional vocab entries is done through my Dragon profile, which is pretty much my "writer." The dictionaries I use within Eclipse are more for formatting purposes, but I also have empty slots where if there's a station name or tagline that I don't want to say over and over, I can say "tran one" or "tran two," etc., kind of like steno briefs. I can also use this to type out words on the fly that might not be in my vocab or if I'm not sure if it will come out right. Going from steno to voice, I will say both techniques are a challenge in their own right.

[@juango500]

You're a legend!

[@krab9479]

My parents are both deaf, and I’ve used captions my whole life because of that. I’ve always wondered how they worked, especially with live TV broadcasts. Thank you for the explanation!

[@johncavanaugh3960]

If they're both deaf, is there any particular reason not to play the sound anyway along with captions?

[@krab9479]

@@johncavanaugh3960 nope, we would always have sound playing since all of the children were hearing :) even if none of us kids were around, my parents would usually have sound on with the captions just in case

[@BrendarthGaming]

@@krab9479 you ever encounter one of those situations where the person doing the live captioning seems to have had a stroke and just started smacking the keyboard?

[@Robbie-mw5uu]

That sounds both horrifying and a blessing when raising babies

[@Goddybag4Lee]

My late deaf father told me how it was done while he was living. Me being born in the beginning of the 1980s and having a Teletext TV my whole childhood here in Sweden made me feel awkward when I was seeing a TV without. The local cinema didn't had CC for Swedish language movies so he had to pick a movie from the USA or something like that to be able to see a movie.

[@glitchwalker5422]

"Look at Sony being all backwards compatible... Wait" I laughed out loud.

[@MarkARoutt]

I almost spit my coffee out.

[@fornello123]

Glitch Walker I don’t get it

[@MarkARoutt]

The Sony PlayStation platforms weren't all backward compatible.

[@adrenaliner91]

@@MarkARoutt the best one at least was..oh wait, it was just the ps2... And early ps3... And probably no sony console ever again will be disc based fully backwards compatible.

[@locke103]

@@adrenaliner91 and yet strangely, the PS4 can play DVD movies. you'd think as such games would be possible, and yet... though now i'm curious to see if they can play audio CDs.

[@garfieldinheat664]

Alright, but when's the Teletext video coming my guy? I need that juicy European captioning standard info presented to me via this channel.

[@Sharpless2]

that sounds extremely interesting. Teletext... You know you used it when it took ages to find 304.

[@andydrew2003]

CEEFAX 💪💪 I used to get scared by that 😂😂

[@unvergebeneid]

The US didn't have teletext?

[@holyhelga]

i think finland never got closed captioning tech but teletext was bad compared to subtitles and it was the tv broadcaster that had to send out the text and for finland very few programs had teletext becouse of the broadcaster didnt want to send out the text

[@BryTee]

I think the presenter is going to have his mind blown when he sees how advanced teletext was compared with the USA. As you know it was like a read-only Internet ... but back in the 70s. But noticeably characters could be colors too (albeit only 8 I think, I was reminded of teletax when the first PCs got the ability to do colors) there were also attributes like blink, transparent, and "reveal" (which would only show these characters when the viewer pressed a button on the remote - good for quiz pages). Closed captioning was simply a mostly transparent page with non-transparent letters wherever they were placed. One really good use of color was that different people could be in different colors enabling the viewer to know when a character was talking, including when off camera! @@Sharpless2 I know some pages were less frequently transmitted, but later TV systems had caching of pages so those rarer pages were instantly shown, but yes, some pages were more frequently transmitted, like page 100 (the main index page) and page 888 - transmitted as a new closed caption page was needed. Earlier TVs with cached pages, would only cache pages as defined by the 4 color buttons (actually there were 5 as each page had a "white" button which typically was akin to a back button on a browser, or sometimes a menu page off the page you're viewing), comparing to a webpage, this gave every page to be able to have 4 "links" to go to other pages, this was used as links to go to popular pages (eg top news items, or sports, or weather), but also they were used that for quizzes and multiple choice answers, so it felt much more interactive. Teletext had other cool features like the character set, obviously with English and European lettering, but they also had characters that had 2x3 blocks patterns which would be used to do a low-res images, eg blocky, 8 color, images, but also good for low-res maps used for (say) weather pages. I'll own up to feeling like I'd gone back into ancient history in regards to TV when in 1994 I moved to the USA (from the UK) and lost teletext, and Internet at home still wasn't too popular, and going from PAL (625 lines) to NTSC (525 lines) was noticeable.

[@leandervr]

As someone who is hearing impaired, I deeply appreciate that you include close captions in your videos!

[@AdamZovits]

As some whose first language is not English, I deeply appreciate content creators who take the comparatively minor effort of turning their already-written script into subtitles.

[@DemonPlayDemonOut]

One big factor in the channels I choose on KZbin is how accessible they are. I'm not HoH (hard of hearing), but I have auditory processing disorder, which means my brain doesn't always process audio accurately or quickly. Without captions, I miss a lot, especially when someone isn't enunciating well, is whispering or speaking too fast, or there's too much ambient noise. That being said, I am so thankful to creators like you who not only make pristine captions, but enunciate really well. Also, for those who don't need captioning, but can tolerate them, I suggest you turn them on, especially on large streaming platforms. The more people who use them and speak up when they're badly written, the better they will get. Same for audio description (initially for the blind and visually impaired, but useful for adhd and multitasking while watching). Disabled people will always be a minority, which means progress is pretty slow.

[@KevinVinck]

Fun fact: At TV news stations our closed captioning used to come directly from the script in the prompter which meant that the captions were generally much more accurate and in time with the video. However at some point we were required to caption everything including the unscripted banter between the anchors so now everything is captioned live and they're much less accurate and delayed by quite a bit.

[@FinalBaton]

Really cool bit of info! Thanks!

[@TravisTev]

That was the problem with captioning from a prompter, from what I understand. Unscripted segments and deviations from the script wouldn't get properly captioned. Also, prompting material sometimes contained notation that was confusing to viewers.

[@davidwages9176]

Kevin Vinck My hometown news station still does this (takes captions from the promoter), but for some reason the captions will often get WAY ahead of the speaker, so it’s like getting a spoiler for the end of the story 😄.

[@BBC600]

David Wages I thought that’d be against FCC regulations?

[@Windfarmer]

The station I find myself watching also captions straight from the prompter, so not only does it get ahead of the speech (by a lot), it also replaces the unscripter stuff with something in brackets telling them to talk

[@fitnesswithsteve]

I love it when you see the CC stenographer backspace a word on live tv.

[@renakunisaki]

I often see them skip over names entirely. "IDK how the 🔣 that's spelled!"

[@mahna_mahna]

Nagu.. nagu... nagunna get typed by me.

[@ebnertra0004]

They have skills! Although they will occasionally misspell or mistype something. But still, them making mistakes is a _lot_ more rare than me making them

[@arturpaivads]

As a non-native English speaker I thank you for including captions. They help me a lot to understand your content when some variations on pronunciation can hinders my understanding of English content.

[@trigonman3]

As a native Merican-English speaker, I am also grateful for the captions. At 53yo, sometimes I can't catch the verbal nuances. I'd venture to guess our similarly-eldered sistren and brethren like it too. Aging vacuums spheres.

[@AlexanderRM1000]

As a mildly autistic person I'm also helpful when subtitles are offered, although this guy I can usually understand. The Curb Cut Effect is especially strong when it comes to captions.

[@keiyakins]

​​​@@AlexanderRM1000'm alsi autistic and use them sometimes for that, but just as often I'm turning them on because I'm in an intermittently noisy environment and it's just easier than digging out headphones. The curb cut effect is *ludicrously* strong and is frankly one of my favorite arguments in favor of accessibility. Making it possible for some people who couldn't to participate and a little easier for those who already can is just a victory all around.

[@alexs81-]

If the author has enabled auto-generation of subtitles, this is great; with an auto-translator, any english-language video becomes absolutely clear.

[@jamestatum748]

Shout out to the new name for closed captioning, subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing, abbreviated as SDH. I also want to call out a new audio track that’s gaining prominence on a lot of streaming services, audio description - a track that adds description of the visual elements on screen for the blind. It’s also a way to “watch” TV on road trips.

[@williamreid6255]

It’s also sometimes labelled as “English for the Deaf & Hard of Hearing,” but when I see “English for the Hearing Impaired,” I immediately get pissed off because the deaf & hard of hearing often dislike that term (coming from a hearing person).

[@porter2024]

@@williamreid6255 I have pretty bad hearing loss and know a lot of people who also do or are deaf I don't really think most people care much

[@rc8s]

No, SDH is for subtitles with non-speech information and speaker identification, _not regular closed captions._ It's still a translation of foreign-language video.

[@MartinKronstrom]

CC has so many benefits beyond helping those with hearing impairments. Those with autism who can't stand surprising sound effects and mute the TV but still wants to enjoy the dialogues. Also for those who wants to learn a new language, you pop a french movie with subtitles and voilà!

[@sarah1390]

That is how I can remember what french I can. Also I use it for watching anime from the source. Boy North American adaptations go too much with cleaning it up for a younger audience. Take Yu-Gi-Oh for example. The show in North American broadcast (which was done by a company originally called 4 Kids entertainment) has players being banished to a shadow realm. If you watch from the source they are actually Killed instead of being banished from the shadow realm.

[@kisaragi-hiu]

Or when you can't use speakers and don't want to use headphones, like on a crowded train. Accessibility helps everyone (in most contexts).

[@SumeaBizarro]

As Finnish person, I also find most movies to have kinda mumbly mixing, without surround receiver and adjustable volume for center speaker most movies have very overpowering music and sound effects, so if Finnish Subtitles are not available, I will usually use English captions/subtitles to help with following the dialogue I have hard time follow in movies. I still have no idea how americans watch their movies since I've been speaking and listening and reading English for 20 years yet I feel almost always more comfortable with movies if I have either subtitles or closed captions, though I am not hearing or visually impaired enough so I kinda dislike if normal subtitles are not an option and only closed captions are, I still take closed captions over no text at all. TL;DR: America, mix your movie audio better, I do not have problems with Japanese or European movies usually. Even Hot Fuzz is bit better than most movies like it from US.

[@Nikku4211]

CC is the anime fan's entire life.

[@rolaroli]

@@SumeaBizarro Exactly. Even for movies and shows on Netflix or similar I always turn on subtitles. Not because I couldn't understand anything, but just because it's easier. And it helps if everyone in the house is sleeping so I can lower the volume a bit and still enjoy my movie/show. Maybe that's just because I pretty much grew up reading subtitles - here all of the English TV shows and movies are subtitled (we are talking hardcoded subtitles here) - which in my opinion is a much better solution than using synchronization. And while these days I usually have no real trouble understanding even some weirder local english dialects I still make my life easier by turning subtitles on.

[@Porygonal64]

And he neeeeeeeeeeever talked about teletext again

[@xorbe2]

Luckily there are other videos on YT that do.

[@mdrzn]

Aawww I just found this video and I wanted to know his opinion about teletext (i'm from EU) :(

[@rogerszmodis6913]

@@xorbe2 that requires me to get used to another random person talking at me. That's a no go.

[@jekanyika]

That's a shame, I was just about to do a search for the video.

[@LjL-Videos]

@@amogus7 That depends on the country and on the broadcasting station... in Italy on RAI, Italian CC is on page 777, and English CC (rarely) on 778. Anyway, teletext is great, and luckily here in Italy, unlike elsewhere like Germany, it has *not* been phased out with digital broadcasting, although of course, it's now... more digital.

[@vientoassai]

My grandparents always kept closed captioning active on their TVs and one day they figured out that by leaving them on I was learning how to read way earlier than the average child is supposed to be able to. 🙃

[@QuantumScratcher]

It's teaching you how to associate audio with text earlier than many children do as well.

[@1lovesoni]

I've always believed that my fathers preference for captions significantly improved my spelling, reading and vocabulary as a child. They're a wonderful tool for anyone learning a new language.

[@PingTheAwesome]

I rely on captions to be able to understand content online. I am deaf and need them. Thank you for captioning your videos. Thank you for putting this video out. Also, thanks for being a bit more...upfront about the fact that they are not a choice for us and that they are explicitly needed.

[@Dagorion]

Ok, my name is James and I've always wanted to l've always wanted to know more about TeleText... I'm freaking out man!

[@Nickelodeon81]

Indeed he never followed it up. I grew up on Teletext/Ceefax in the UK

[@frast9201]

Teletext vid or riot

[@crisapx]

@@Nickelodeon81 I also grew up with it, using it to see the networks program schedule was awesome!

[@yeetusdeleti2948]

Why is this at the top of the comment section

[@RobinHagg]

Best way to view news and tv schedule when I did not have internet

[@CosmosisAjax]

Love the literal "took an act of congress" joke at the end. Also, instead of "Special Thanks to the Following Patreons:", would have loved if it had said "Closed Captions provided in part by:" :)

[@doq]

Or, the "Closed Captions provided in part by:" could be used for those community translators (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞

[@vwestlife]

The usual phrase is "Closed captioning and other considerations provided by..."

[@stevethepocket]

@Doq Except community subtitles would be submitted after the video goes up, on a per-video basis, so he wouldn't be able to guarantee accurate credits.

[@Mostlyharmless1985]

I want to thank you for putting in captions, my hearing isn’t awful by any means but I have a pretty fair grade hearing loss which makes understanding language sometimes difficult I certain situations.

[@GibusWearingMann]

"CEDs? You mean those things from RCA? That really failed format that was video on a vinyl disc? Is he gonna do a video about it sometime?" Oh, commenters, if only you knew...

[@incognitotorpedo42]

Isn't it crazy how back in the day, electronic devices had clearly labeled controls that you could see and feel? What were they thinking?

[@mbvideoselection]

Yes, I'm so glad the bushy bearded brigade came along to educate us about how we needed to get rid of all that useless clutter.

[@robertlabelle9343]

Sure, they're labelled - in black on black and with tiny letters! I just get down on my knees with a flashlight . . .

[@mikemadden2729]

LMFAO!!!

[@luketurner314]

Just figured out KZbin captions are draggable, but that's not the same as the content creator specifying where a particular caption should appear

[@isawadelapradera6490]

Wait... KZbin CAPTIONS ARE **WHAT?!**

[@MichaelSanAngelo]

gtfooh , mind blown. :o

[@lucystanley7470]

Only on desktop, it seems

[@BryTee]

FANTASTIC! I never knew this. However, the host is correct, the presenter should be able to place them wherever. I also think captions should be able to use colors (you know ... like Teletext could with its captioning).

[@pepre7594]

@@BryTee colours are really useful to differentiate between speakers

[@Tokkemon]

Every time I watch this video, at 3:04 I giggle like a dumb idiot. Well done.

[@maritoguionyo]

Mood

[@andrew24601]

I have mild hearing loss, and while it's nowhere near as bad as most with noticable hearing loss, i still struggle to catch words and voices a lot of the time. You're not in my "bad frequencies", but I appreciate captions so much regardless.

[@wimschalley1666]

The adjustments for the black box and the white character levels are there because some TV's suffered from audio artifacts caused by the sudden jump from black to white. These kinds of jumps cause a peak at a certain frequency. When this frequency lies in the audio subcarrier of the TV signal, you hear pops and clicks every time a subtitle appears. Lowering the subtitle contrast lowers that frequency.

[@TravisTev]

I've heard noise like that on old game consoles and home computers (anyone remember the ones with composite video out?) when certain patterns were on screen. Also, I wonder if those adjustments could be used to reverse the colors so that the captions are black on white (in case anyone wanted to do that for some reason).

[@erkinalp]

@@TravisTev No. These knobs will not allow you to cross half-intensity grey. You need to swap wires internally.

[@TravisTev]

@Erkin Alp Güney Ah, interesting. I was just curious. Thanks.

[@subtropical-yearning]

It also seems like it would be useful for sets with aging picture tubes. We had to turn the contrast knob down as our sets got older because sharp white-to-black transitions would “spill over” to the right of the edge, which would make captions really hard to read.

[@supersat]

Wayyyyyy back in the day I wrote a DirectShow filter that would extract the closed captioning data from a DVD and dump it to IRC. I had a #MoviesOnIRC channel for this purpose. As you might imagine, it was less entertaining in practice. The captioning standard is EIA-608, but ATSC also supports the newer CEA-708, which apparently supports unicode and downloadable fonts! That's right, you could theoretically stuff emoji in your ATSC captions!

[@Robdeltonie]

Great! Now I can see my captions in Wingdings!!

[@MandrakeFernflower]

Meme science has gone too far

[@supersat]

@@ERGLupin The DirectShow filter worked on MPEG 2 streams so it also worked for ATSC broadcasts (if you had an ATSC tuner). I think I did the State of the Union a few times.

[@HeadsetGuy]

Funny story: I sometimes like watching videos with captions or subtitles, just because. I was disappointed to discover that a DVD I had of _Animaniacs_ did not have subtitles, but then very amused to discover that turning the captions on _actually produced captions._ I think it was a similar situation with a DVD of _3rd Rock From the Sun._

[@laserdiscphan]

One pretty innovative use of Closed Captioning was in the US Anime scene. Companies localizing Anime often released programming on either English dubbed tapes or English subtitled tapes in the original Japanese language. When some of them released Anime on the Laserdisc format in the US, they tried to include BOTH versions on one LD since Laserdiscs could contain multiple sountracks (2 stereo tracks--one each on the analog and digital tracks--or 4 mono tracks on each of the left and right channels of the digital and analog tracks.) So the original Japanese sountrack would be on either the digital or analog tracks, while the English dubbed soundtrack would be on the other. To implement subtitling so you could watch the Japanese track with a translation, they'd include a closed caption track on the LDs so that you could pull up subtitles decoded by your TV or VCR (I actually had a CC decoding VCR--a 4 head stereo VCR from RCA way back when.) Unfortunately, some anime companies were lazy and just included the English dubbed script on the closed caption (which were often not quite literal translations of the original Japanese), but in many cases a translation of the Japanese soundtrack would be on the closed caption track. I have some US released Anime LDs where the 1st title in the series had the English dubbed script on the closed captions, but on the 2nd title, the company wised up and put the Japanese translation on the CC! Always thought that that was putting this system to good use since, like it was mentioned in this video, that almost all TVs manufactured in the 90s supported CC. Thus allowing anime fans to take better advantage of the tech they owned if they had an LD player (which was actually supported pretty well in the US anime scene in the 90s.)

[@twothreebravo]

"maybe work on that..." Aaaaaand you're demonetized "look at Sony being all backwards compatible...wait..." Aaaaaand your PSN account is mysteriously locked.

[@MysteryMii]

*PS5 is officially announced with PS4 backwards compatibility* Aaaaand his PSN account is unlocked again.

[@renakunisaki]

PS3 is perfectly capable of playing Blu-ray through composite video, it just refuses to for DRM reasons.

[@melmelhodgepodge3800]

@@MysteryMii it's kinda funny that PS4 emulation on PC is a thing. xD

[@renakunisaki]

@KazTheMovieCollector I don't think it's per disc.

[@awilliams1701]

@@melmelhodgepodge3800 The only difference between a PS4 and a PC is the OS they respectively run. (more or less) but they have the same CPU (more or less) the same GPU (more or less) etc.... So on a decent computer like my desktop, PS4 can just be virtualized. On my laptop it would be more difficult.

[@urban_gabor]

In Hungary, you could watch weather broadcasts on Teletext, add captions to captionless movies, view lottery numbers, play an adventure game by dialing a number and controlling a character with your phone, read descriptions of upcoming programs, view sports tournament standings, etc. We used to look for upcoming programs, since magazines only provided provisional schedule. The coolest thing was.. you could make the background transparent, so while it was searching (scrolling through possible page numbers) for the page you input, you could still watch the shows behind the wall of text. Every channel also had colored shortcut buttons if you didn't like to enter the numbers.

[@theenzoferrari458]

Are you living in the future? In USA 2049 we dont have that.

[@nataliekate2176]

I’d love to see a video on that, I wonder if there’s any out there. How cool!!

[@jeder6915]

You should edit it to "In Europe", in Poland, teletext worked similarly, not sure if any station has weather broadcasts, but everything other than this is here

[@cherubin7th]

@@theenzoferrari458 Not the future, just that the USA is a second world country.

[@CoteaGeorgeC]

We , in Romania had a thing on Fox Kids similar to that , with games and stuff

[@maxis2k]

Most People: "I hate captions and subtitles. They're so distracting!" Me: "Let me tell you the tale of the thirty year struggle to get anime popular in the west..."

[@KairuHakubi]

then how it was rejected after such a short period of being 'in' :(

[@maxis2k]

@@KairuHakubi It was rejected? Seems like anime is more popular than ever. It's just that anime has become more of a thing people watch alone. Because they either stream or pirate it on their computers now. Rather than before when it was big on TV.

[@KairuHakubi]

pop culture turned on it pretty hard, and it became passe very shortly after it got popular. it certainly stopped being a profitable thing to air or localize.

[@AW-ex8fn]

and i still would never watch dub today intentionally

[@maxis2k]

@@KairuHakubi I donno. I grew up in the 80s and 90s and saw when anime truly was non existent in the west. Now if I go to a mall or watch a sitcom, it's referenced all the time. Even more than it was during the height of its TV popularity (1998-2006). Anime has become pretty mainstream. Now, the stigma of watching anime is still there. But that's always been around. And it mostly boils down to this dumb idea that animation is "for kids" and "pedo adult men." Which affects everything, including western cartoons. Anime is more popular in the west than ever, as in more people are watching than ever before. They just don't talk about it in public as much as they did back when it was "accepted" on TV. All this means is Cartoon Network and SyFy stopped pushing it. And good riddance I say, because they handled it very poorly. I'd rather have access to 10,000 different shows online than the same 40-50 series repeated on a couple TV stations.

[@CB-08]

This is like the 20th video of yours I've seen or something and I just wanted to say I really enjoy your sense of humor and your videos make it very easy to learn about stuff I've always been curious about. I'll be sad when I've finally watched all of your videos and have to wait for more uploads lol Great job dude great style and format please never go away

[@mazda9624]

What did we ever do to deserve a KZbin channel such as this? It's perfect for every type of nerd or just someone trying to learn something new. This video literally answered a question that I've had for over 15 years.

[@ai4px]

You should do a show on all the subchannels in FM radio. SCA at 67khz, RDS at 57khz.... heck for that matter, /all/ of the encoding in stereo FM.... phase locked pilot tone, sca, rds, muzak, WEFAX, and digital FM radio.... digital traffic info.... all of those individual services in 200khz of bandwidth.

[@EilonwyWanderer]

I'd definitely love a video on that! There's some pretty nifty -- and mostly unseen -- tech behind it all.

[@chrissyria2376]

I was pretty impressed when I learned how the HD Radio system (semi-common in the US) works, fitting sometimes multiple digital data streams into that 200khz, while still being more or less backward compatible. I'd love to learn more about these services that I've never really experienced with basic radios.

[@COBARHORSE1]

I think Franlab did a video on that recently.

[@danielthechskid]

@@chrissyria2376 I'm glad you said more or less, because the background hiss from the "HD Radio Self-Noise" is really annoying, especially when listening in matrix surround like Dolby Pro Logic or DTS Neo:6 via my AVR's built-in analog FM tuner. Yes, I'm aware that somewhere, somehow, an Audiophile cries whenever I mention listening to stereo content this way :).

[@markfellhauer352]

Back in the day there was also a company that was embedding local GPS and LORAN differential corrections via RDS. A few Radio Stations here in Phoenix send a time sync signal via RDS, but it appears that the local engineers at those stations have not slaved their systems to any accurate time reference like one might think. The result is if I let any of my Sangean Radios do the RDS CT, the clocks end up several minutes off.

[@PiersKittel]

Thanks for this video and thanks for mentioning Teletext! Interestingly, closed captions in the UK was quite different - colour was always used, and they used certain colours to represent characters. I remember they used to show "John - BLUE" "Jane - GREEN" "James - RED" but in the early/mid 90s they stopped that, and they used random colours each time a different speaker started talking. Our closed captions were proper case too, not all upper case so watching US programmes were really jarring! UK closed captions could be expanded to twice the standard size though any captions that was at the top of the picture would not be visible. Luckily as teletext was in high demand, all TVs had teletext decoders built in as standard early on, so deaf people benefited from this. Due to the way VHS PAL recorders worked, it couldn't record the teletext stream (unless you had a SVHS recorder), and thus we didn't have closed captions on tapes. Due to the gap in the market, the US NCI came to the UK and sold their products here, so we finally got closed captions on tapes in the mid 90s, but it was following the US format - all black & white. We had to buy expensive special decoders to watch closed captioned tapes as our TVs weren't able to understand Line 21 captions. Another consequence of this was that only pre-recorded tapes had closed captions - recorded tapes didn't have closed captions. With the advent of DVDs, NCI quickly vanished. As a consequence of this, closed captions has been black & white ever since even though colour is supported by digital closed captions on DVDs, DVB, internet video, etc - I really miss colour closed captions!

[@Mocha2007]

By the way, youtube's caption display DOES support specifying location, but youtube editor's builtin caption editor doesn't support that - you have to use other editors. You can even change things like text color and italics.

[@morphman86]

Oh, teletext... Looking forward to seeing that video. Growing up in Europe in the 90's, TT was our version of the Internet... except it was sorta one-way. Needed any information at all, local traffic, news, TV guide, adverts (yes, they had pages for adverts, for some reason), you hit that TT button and got 999 pages of glorious real-time information. It was so versatile, that in Europe, to turn CC on, you went to a specific page (depending on the language you wanted) on TT rather than hitting a button or adding a second device to your set.

[@JustIsold]

We still do, captioning isnt really a thing in the Netherlands yet, and I can really only watch tv with captions so I hit 888 pretty frequently!

[@bestgameplay831]

My grandpa uses it for traffic

[@bestgameplay831]

@@JustIsold Wait that disabels it. Bedankt broeder

[@millomweb]

@@JustIsold Try page 088 and get back to me. Have a BBC micro with Teletext adaptor and 088 and 888 gave the same results.

[@millomweb]

"you hit that TT button and got 999 pages of glorious real-time information." LOL not really - there were FAR more than that available but never used. Max number of pages available would be: 10,000,000. Every 3 digit page had 4 digit 'sub pages'. The alarm clock page (160) allowed you to set an alarm time - say 12:34 - and this page (1601234) would appear at 12:34 - and that's how the 'alarm' worked.

[@decrobyron]

As the Korean who lived in USA for 7 years, the first year was horrible. My English skill was very limited in reading only. Speaking and listening was very hard. Thanks to the CC and limitless re-runs of the Simpsons and what various mediocre series of TV dramas, I was able to understand English speaking.

[@volvo09]

Did you then think we all lived like the Simpson's :) oh wait, we do.

[@decrobyron]

@@volvo09 Well, I lived with US family so... no. :) The concept of suburban life was so weird for me.

[@nebuleon]

That story is a bit like mine. I live in Québec, where the language spoken by most people is French. But I learned English in part through school, and in part by watching _Arthur_ and _The Magic School Bus_ with closed captions enabled. Everyone in the family soon became an expert at disabling closed captions after I watched something. ^_~

[@PainterVierax]

Nebuleon, same thing here in France… but unluckily it's was still the era of analog TV so only Belgium channels were kind enough to provide TV series and movies with original audio and fr subs. Now in the digital TV broadcast it's more easy like on a DVD but still a lot of channel just provides "french subtitles" which are CC of the French dubbing and those can be very different to the original dialogs.

[@nebuleon]

@Evocati Definite and indefinite articles are difficult for Korean people, given that the Korean language doesn't have them.

[@GogiRegion]

The movie theater I worked at this summer definitely did captions differently than stated in this video. They used little led dot matrix displays that could display up to three lines, and it had a bendy wire that you could attach to the cup holders and then position to be at the optimal angle. Was a bit more work for the managers and definitely more expensive, but I’m sure that it worked better than a mirror angled to the back of the theater.

[@local-teen]

Since discovering it yesterday, this KZbin channel has become my favorite ever. Thank you so much!

[@GogiRegion]

Normally I think a day is a bit short of a time to judge something like that, but with such quality content like this, I don’t blame you! Out of curiosity, is this still your favorite over a year later? That would be cool if so!

[@doq]

_I must have that insufferably smooth jazz._

[@schzean]

Best comment ever!

[@scythal]

*Here you go* kzbin.info/www/bejne/eXPaqZiJjtmEfpI

[@SuperSiggiboy]

Oh, do I miss teletext. Living in Europe, I've always marveled at it and wondered how it worked. Really looking forward to your explanation!

[@compuholic82]

TC surely will explain it in much greater detail, but it works very in a similar way. The data is packed into invisible lines. The TT pages have an ID number and are sent in a loop over and over again. This is also why on old TVs you had to wait until the specific page you were looking for would be transmitted again. Later TVs would cache the transmitted pages in the background so that the user can get them instantly. But yes, TT was awesome. I always used it to check the TV program. Nowadays that looks quaint, but at the time it was awesome.

[@nanopulga098]

Depending of your European country teletext is still a thing in most channels. Though in Spain is not available in the HD channels and have to use the SD channels, but still, it's on the main channels and it works, it's pretty handy.

[@LazoeJSCREI]

In Finland we still have teletext on 5 of the main free to air channels. It's still really cool, aside from having news and captioning, there's pages for teletext art, calendars, stock prices and even an AM world radio frequency chart for DXing

[@pancudowny]

We briefly had something like it in the U.S. A local UHF station would dedicate it's after-hours late-night broadcast to something called The Night Owl. It was really nothing more than a news service, with little-else relating to local activities. Here's a link of an example: kzbin.info/www/bejne/oofThoaXirKamLs

[@Vcen7]

@@pancudowny Visually it looks like teletext, but teletext was/is controlled by the user, and not sent in a stream by the station (well, it is, but you can browse around in it, with many pages(some channels had 100+). Still, really cool concept.

[@SpiritmanProductions]

Hi Alec, thanks for another great video. Did you make that Teletext / Ceefax video you mentioned? I can't seem to find one.

[@WreckedRectum]

I’m also looking for this. :(

[@sonicbro6446]

@@WreckedRectum me too man, me too

[@SeanFlesch]

Ditto

[@petrajaros8637]

Still holding out hope… :D

[@ilyam.1872]

Thanks for another great video! And I want to add, Yandex company recently rolled out video voiceover traslation. It works through their neural network and only in Yandex-browser, but for any stream video source - KZbin or anything. So yeah, it not only decode audio stream to text, it also translate it, choose right m/f voice and preserve intonation! And yet youtube own CC system is failing miserably.

[@amethystfae4075]

The ability to change text and background color may very well be another accessibility feature - white text on black is the easiest for many people to read, but given how many ways disabilities can manifest, the ability to choose a more visible color scheme would be really helpful for people who are both deaf/hard of hearing and have one of these disabilities. Also, as someone who has a hearing-related disability, thank you SO MUCH for actually taking the time to caption your videos! It makes it way easier to understand what you're saying, and I really wish this was something that more content creators bothered to do.

[@rodmunch69]

That closed captioning box was built roughly 29 years ago... the XBOX 360 was released about 14 1/2 years ago... so in reference to time, we are as far forward in time away from the 360 as the 360 was forward in time away from that closed caption box. Wow.

[@janusprime5693]

Yeah, no sorry that's just false. I got the XBOX 360 on release, that could not have been more than 2-3 years ago!

[@anthony-ob6lw]

@@janusprime5693 kid there's something called Wikipedia look it up. You got the Xbox 360 E, the same computer with a different fan. The actual computer is 14 years old

[@janusprime5693]

@Xilog @Motis Motis I got the X360 in 2006. It was a joke, "time flies" and so on.

[@anirvana]

Major woosh over here

[@w19ely85]

Wow that's amazing Rod

[@harysuper]

11:15 That takes me back! I loved watching SpongeBob and the BTTF movies on my grandmothers TV. I liked the close captioning. I even watched home alone with CC on to see if it would show the swear words. I was easily amused.

[@johnheraty3554]

I know this is now 4 years old, did I miss the Teletext video? It would be interesting to get your take on it. Over here in the UK it finally went off air with the closure of analogue in 2012 Subtitles (as CC is over here) could always be seen on line 16 (I think) but was always referenced by the broadcasters announcers as "available on page 888".

[@fdagpigj]

in Finland, Teletext (TIL the English name, it's Teksti-TV in Finnish, literally "Text TV") is still supported by all major broadcasters, although I don't know if it's related to the closed captioning systems currently in use (which, if present, typically support at least two languages, finnish and swedish, sometimes with 'regular' and 'for the hearing impaired' variants of each, with the latter transcribing also sound effects as well as any speech in the captioned language). My mum regularly reads news from teletext, I don't have a TV but if I did I probably would as well, since it's the opposite of clickbait.

[@ihartmacz]

I can't wait for the CED video.

[@Vitosi4ek1]

Techmoan did a video on that, didn't he? Might be worth a look.

[@ihartmacz]

@@Vitosi4ek1 I've watched it, but I want a Technology Connections video on it.

[@Clay3613]

Bankrupted RCA.

[@bradjones1977]

I used one for the very first time today!

[@bruperina]

Michael Lavrentiev indeed. Tech connections, explores more the technologies itself while techmoan more superficially not much electronics it self.

[@AndersHenke]

Being from Germany, Teletext (known as "videotext" in germany) reminds me of a very special hack, designed in the late 1980s by WDR's "Computerclub" team: their "videodat" system used blanking lines 24 and 25 to transmit computer data (supplementary material and public domain software) while broadcasting their TV show (and later, "Channel Videodat" did this as a commercial offer 24x7 on a public TV channel). Back in those days of narrowband data transmissions and modem-based BBS, this "TV-based" transmission was much faster (14kbps) than (legally available) analogue modems and as a computer enthusiast, you didn't block your phone line for hours of downloads at a ridiculous phone bill and didn't need to get expensive ISDN access, so the "Videodat" system did have its benefits - even though you could only receive any data the TV station did chose to broadcast.

[@nthgth]

My question is, if Germany is going to use a different name for it, why did they still use English? Are "video" and "text" the same in German and English?

[@Divus101]

@@nthgth Yes, Video and Text are, together with Audio, the same, AFAIK because it has the same Origin, Latin.

[@nthgth]

@@Divus101 interesting, so "videotext" is a perfectly German compound word. Gotta love those cognates.

[@nthgth]

@k I gotcha. I've never even heard of it before myself, until I watched this video

[@ARianNA669]

Had to give this video a like and comment as I appreciate the captions provided. I have audio processing issues, so my hearing is fine..ish but my brain struggles to process the sounds into words. Auto generated captions can be a pain, and even if the captions submitted by the channel aren't always perfect, they're usually markedly better. Thank you for going that extra step for those of us who rely on captions.

[@Hasitier]

I really like your videos and at the moment I watch them all in chronological order. I really like how you explain the things that I was wondering on how they work for the last maybe 25 years or so.

[@memegusta42]

As soon as you said "WGBH Boston" My whole childhood flashed before my eyes, lol

[@homebody0089]

Same here, holy smokes!

[@Hopeofmen]

Holy crap!

[@williamreid6255]

Those are the people who did Audio Descriptions for Pixar Blu-rays!!

[@TheInkPitOx]

WQED Pittsburgh also.

[@NormanRDolan]

Tell me about it... I still have mental scars and can't watch NOVA without rushing to mute the credits or changing the channel at the sponsorship segment just to avoid the goddamn logo. I have a few ideas in mind for changing the logo, though... be more peaceful and much quieter. Down with The Neon WGBH!!!

[@TheDigitalAura]

The biggest problem with your videos is they come to an end.

[@robk5969]

we need a 24 hr live stream (with live closed captions of course)

[@erkinalp]

Some portions would be NSFW&NS-fYT

[@usvalve]

Yeah, DigitalAura, but think of it this way: there are many, many moments when I'm enjoying the content in the middle of the video and only one moment when it ends; and, if it didn't end, then I could never have the next one to enjoy, and the next, and the next! That's philosophy, that is.

[@terra0188]

Gave you a subscribe just because you actually use the CC. I have auditory processing issues, and slight hearing loss from my time in the Navy, and often watch youtube while taking care of my house, it is so hard to watch without them and often I miss out on good content just because I can't make out what people are saying.

[@Torology]

This is super fascinating! Thanks for the video. The stuff you put out is far more interesting than what's on regular TV.

[@gameskyjumper1721]

It blew my mind that DVD subtitles are images..

[@Carewolf]

Also really stupid. But hey, Unicode was still in its early stages when DVDs were created.

[@RobertSzasz]

Such a total pain when transcoding

[@garretmaki2564]

DVD subtitles, and the button highlights on the menus are essentially the same function. They are limited to only 4 colors and one of those 4 must be transparent (or the entire screen would be button or subtitle) so you are effectively limited to 3 colors you can actually make use of. In the case of subtitles (Which are correctly called "SDH" when they are serving the purpose of CC's and not "Closed Captioning." SDH stands for "Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing") so for subtitles (or button highlights) with only three colors you can only use one for the inner color of the text and one for the stroke color leaving only one color remaining for anti aliasing. Most DVD authors early on did not put a lot of effort into utilizing that third color but myself and few others spent a lot time figuring out how to get at least some smoothing of the edges to make the text look just a bit better. But even then the results were pretty mediocre, which is why DVD subtitles look pretty "crusty" as do button highlights.

[@wesleymays1931]

When you have 4.7GB at your disposal, might as well go a little crazy with how you do subtitles.

[@jefftonkinson7283]

I’ve noticed that your captions are exceptional. Now I understand that you generate them yourself. Really?? Wow. Thank you so much!

[@scotianbank]

I love that there are so many dedicated people working hard for the hearing disabled (in this case, there are also many working on other disabilities). Wishing all of you guys the best!!

[@Anton1699]

Hold on, this is the first time I've ever heard that Teletext never came to the US. Teletext is still up and running here in Germany, and my grandpa still uses it to check the score of Bundesliga matches.

[@ViviSectia]

Some broadcasters did try to bring teletext over in the 80's but it never really took off.

[@japzone]

Teletext was designed for PAL, so it took a while for it to be adapted for NTSC. Multiple different standards were developed because of this and thus none gained any critical mass to get manufacturers onboard and drop prices into the consumer domain. Soon after the Internet was gaining a foothold and people just gravitated to that instead.

[@jussapitka6041]

My dad still uses it to check ice hockey scores, even though he has a smartphone and can use it.

[@pancudowny]

@@ViviSectia Yes... Here's an example: kzbin.info/www/bejne/oofThoaXirKamLs

[@scottlarson1548]

Some American broadcasters were trying to find some way to make money off of data transmission but they all failed. At the time the television industry chose to be ignorant of digital technology.

[@GigTube]

you dont have to be deaf to use closed captions. Sometimes just crunching on chips or an apple calls for turning them on. lol

[@user-vz7mu4su9n]

Or having the front window open if you live on a busy street.

[@FrothingFanboy]

Or thick English accents.

[@electronash]

@@FrothingFanboy Are you calling us thick?! (joking, of course :p )

[@danielyahalom3961]

Or watching something in a language you don't speak (like French, or Scottish)

[@keiyakins]

Or just trying to understand horribly mixed audio

[@nouser129]

I learn something every time I watch this channel. Great informational value, especially in the electronics and electrical areas where I have to plead ignorance. As for the mechanical areas, you refresh my memory on what I learned and forgot.

[@JaclynFox]

Two things: 1. Thank you for including the captions you do. They are absolutely delightful. I really wish more creators would take the time to put captions on their content. The autogenerated captions are good enough to follow along with, but they leave a lot to be desired. 2. I love that the first TV show to get closed captions is one where the host would get smashed on air. Just another reason why I love Julia Child.

[@manpetepetrop8034]

Excellent video!! as a European and not a native English speaker i have to say that i always use subtitles (in English) when they are provided, simply because sometimes it is so difficult to understand what is being said. Different accents, rhythm of speaking, pronunciation of words or simply someone speaking too fast and in low volume make it so hard to fully understand . I do appreciate that in my country (Greece) we used and still do subtitles in foreign movies or tv series instead of dubbing with voice actors (practically because it's cheaper...). That helped me a lot in learning English, and better understanding some jokes or puns which cannot be properly translated. Also i find it very odd that in many countries this is not the case, and most people watched movies and series with dubbing - never hearing the Real voices of their favorite actors. I remember the first time i visited Italy, i went to watch a film only to find out it was dubbed in Italian ! same thing in Turkey watching TV (they were playing the old Knight Rider series). Hearing David Hasselhoff speaking Turkish was hilarious and a good laugh though!...

[@jthecoder]

16:56 Wow you just referenced me! Technology's so advanced nowadays in that KZbin videos can get the names of their viewers for personalisation

[@jthecoder]

@tinylilmatt Shame I'm not one of them, I'm a Brit lol

[@horseenthusiast1250]

I think KZbin's name box is broken, he called me James and I'm an Evelyn

[@amogus7]

wait a second im luigi

[@iamjamieq]

No lie, I opened the video in an incognito window to see if it said a different name. I didn't think that kind of technology existed, but it was really weird and jarring when he looked right at me and said "That's right, James."

[@MNDBC]

Thanks so much for creating this video! There are also a difference between subtitles for SDH and closed captioning. In this instance, “Chicago” with Richard Gere, the captioning was FANTASTIC!!! Placed closed captioning in the RIGHT places and creatively to show where voice came from musically! The subtitles for SHD removed that perspective. In some Blu-ray players there are also an option to turn closed captioning ON that reads those codes. Check that out! (Make sure that you buy Chicago with ‘CC’ encoded. Again, THANKS so much for bringing those things up, hopefully, those who do subtitles will analyze how closed captioned so those things to perfectly copy those things that we USED TO ENJOY!

[@August_Bos]

I really appreciate how damn CLEAN your retro-tech is; as in literally no dust and looks basically polished (I mean, do I even need to mention your backdrop setup? DAMN!)

[@skullkil]

i got so exited when he said teletext. it was so handy as a news and tv guide

[@himbeerme]

Why "was"? Most channels still have it.

[@skullkil]

@@himbeerme I no longer have a TV, and these days you would just read news online and the TV guides are now build into the digital cable boxes.

[@fuzzy1dk]

@HimbeersaftLP more and more channels a dropping it

[@maicod]

yeah here (Netherlands) too but still on the national broadcaster's channels

[@pancudowny]

Ever see this?: kzbin.info/www/bejne/oofThoaXirKamLs

[@SzalonyKucharz]

It may be off-topic but.... back in the day Polish TV used to employ 'a little man' to help deaf people with watching a few select programs, usually a prime time evening movie and news. It was a live sign language interpreter superimposed on the right bottom corner of the screen 'reading' with hand gestures. We called him (or her) 'little' as their silhouettes (or their waists-up only parts to be precise) were usually smaller than those of other people on-screen. As teletext gained popularity, the little men fell out of use. Characteristically, up to this day Polish TV does not use captioning for translations of foreign films and programs. Dubbing is also a very rare occurrence. What we have instead is a 'lektor', a voice of one person, usually male, reading the dialogs without a lot of intonation, more or less a flat voice.

[@fgsaramago]

Wow, you literally have aperaon narrating the movie? Doesn't that ruin the experience? Here in Portugal we have the 'little man' (usually a woman) in most shows and it's actually becoming more prevalent

[@SzalonyKucharz]

@@fgsaramago Yes, you can say it ruins the experience quite substantially, as the original soundtrack's volume is lowered, not muted completely and the lektor's voice talks over the original dialog. It's like a simultaneous live translation using only one interpreter, or a dad in a cinema reading subtitles to a child who doesn't know how to read efficiently yet. You can strain your ear and still be able to catch bits of foreign sounds, you can certainly hear the actors' own voices and be able to distinguish their individual characteristics, but the meaning is conveyed via the lektor's mouth. And this tradition is upheld in TV only, with some lektors having garnered quite a public recognition over the years of their work. The vast majority of foreign movies played in cinemas are subtitled, with only children's animated movies properly dubbed by a cast of voice actors. DVD/Blue Ray releases have two options: subtitles or 'lektored' soundtrack. And like with TV, old VHS releases had 'lektored' soundtrack, with no analog closed captioning implemented.

[@SzalonyKucharz]

@@pixiepandaplush Having lived outside Poland for over a decade now, I too do not get 'lektored' movies and programs anymore. At least not in 2018, when adding digital closed captioning should be a walk in the park. But bear in mind that this solution originated back in the early seventies, when hiring one person (usually a state-sponsored radio presenter or a TV presenter, who probably didn't get any extra money for this service) to read translated dialogs was way cheaper than making an entirely new dubbed soundtrack using a group of voice actors and sound engineers) and probably also cheaper and less complicated than any subtitle method known back then. It's just a holdover now.

[@pancudowny]

Oh, man! Having that lektor must be awful when musicals are presented.😉 Just kidding... I know I should have more respect for my cousins, but when you're victim of overhearing as many Polish jokes as I have, they just automatically come to mind whenever you hear about how things are done there. For example, the little person on-screen for the hearing impaired you mentioned... The joke would say the little person would cup their hands around their mouth like a horn, and starts shouting the dialogue.😒 kzbin.info/www/bejne/fai2mWOadsakf6M

[@rybaluc]

That's quite useless for people which don't know sign language but they loss hearing. Lot of elder people loses hearing and they use it or people after some accident. Forced sign language interpreter is the worst method. Not mentioned that every sign language is mother tongue specific. Sign language in Polish is different from English sign language. Even slavic language variations are quite different.

[@naszfluckah7314]

Hey, I just wanted to say that I really appreciate that you have proper captions for your videos. I didn't even notice until this video, because I usually don't need them, but I know that it's extra work for you. Work that is very useful for me, and entirely necessary for others. Here, have some engagement! You're quickly becoming a new favorite channel of mine :)

[@kilowhiskyforge4337]

This be my first video of yours and I gotta say I learned a good bit here. Im a huge fan of captions and subtitles naturally. Also your book for watching the next 'episode' was flawless and very well done, I'm subscribed from here-in for sure

[@WarriorsPhoto]

Your videos and the history of the item being presented are phenomenal. Thank you for advancing your editing game as well BTW. That's definitely needed sometimes in KZbin content.

[@WOSArchives]

10:55 Actually, I think you CAN get features like that. It just depends on which CC format you use. KZbin supports multiple closed captioning formats such as the common place SubRip (.srt) format for subtitles. However, YT's support for SubRip subtitles is very limited (even basic markup is not available). The bright side is that KZbin does support some more advanced formats, with them noting in a support document about this that they prefer the Scenarist Closed Caption (.scc) format, which **does** support the CEA-608 standard used in the analog closed captioning system you've discussed in this video. In fact, according to the document, when you uploaded a file using a format that uses either the CEA-608 (such as the SCC format) or the EBU-STL (the European captioning standard) standards, KZbin will try to display them with, and I quote, "the same styling, color, and positioning" as they would when a TV show with the captions using those standards are broadcast. But, the big issue is that software support for these formats are uncommon (Final Cut Pro does support it, but I'm not too sure about Vegas and I'm pretty sure KZbin's captioning authoring doesn't use it, at least by default). But, if you do have the right software, you can use those features for KZbin subtitles.

[@HokoraYinphine]

isnt ytt file type more powerful in this situation

[@CartoonCo-Op]

My great uncle was part of the team in the 90’s which created the chip eventually required in all US televisions. A brilliant engineer he was.

[@TheTomatoWatcher]

Every time I rewatch these videos I notice one more little gag, background detail, or easter egg, and I love it.

[@ratchanan_sr]

KZbin *does* support CC positioning. Check out "The Super Slow Show", its CC has positioning. I believed that if positioning is in the video file itself, it can be displayed, even though it can't be set via KZbin's UI.

[@japzone]

Actually, it depends on what format you upload the captions in. WebVTT and Broadcast CC standards support positional data on KZbin. KZbin itself says they prefer SCC files containing CEA-608 data. support.google.com/youtube/answer/2734698

[@christopheranderssarianv2275]

The funny thing is youtube doesn't fully support its own auto-generated WebVTT. +Pixie Panda Plush what do you mean by "full width"?

[@yukimoe]

Yeah, pretty sure I saw Adult Swim doing it. Obviously you'd need to edit them in external software, but of course, it's nowhere near the possibilities you have with the format used by anime fansubs. I'd love seeing KZbin supporting that.

[@KuraIthys]

You can also fudge it, even though that's rather ugly. (adding blank lines to the bottom of any given caption shifts the whole thing upwards, albeit at the expense of having a column of blank characters extending downwards from your captions.)

[@vwestlife]

Closed captions also support displaying text in different colors, although this is rarely used. And line 21 of the VBI was later also used for Extended Data Services (XDS), providing a time code to automatically set the clock on some newer VCRs, on-screen program information, station identification, and V-Chip ratings. DTV converter boxes take the digital equivalent of this information and encode XDS into their output signal, and some satellite receivers and cable boxes do as well.

[@ebennett3655]

Wow thats cool.

[@jeffreydeanfong8480]

Australian closed captions are routinely in different colours for different speakers.

[@deenhead3]

Closed captioning allowed my family to learn English and understand what people were saying on TV. Thank you!!

[@asdf52708]

I had no idea you did your own captioning! that's awesome! I love your channel more and more each day.

[@AlRoderick]

The whole use of all caps for captions and lowercase for descriptions thing I think might come from the conventions in use on TTD systems. I think I'm remembering this correctly, in a TTD phone conversation your text is in lowercase and the person on the other end appears in uppercase, so this will be following a convention that the deaf and hard-of-hearing community would already be used to.

[@Shit_I_Missed.]

The original TTDs only used capital letters. Now, if there is a computer screen it can use lower-case text, but I don't think it sends or receives letter case information. I think all caps was used for main-character or on-screen dialog, and lowercase is used for off-screen dialog or sounds, although as noted some producers had switched to sentence case.

[@MartinKronstrom]

I like my boots to be interlaced.

[@OtakuUnitedStudio]

But doesn't that make it hard to walk?

[@themadkitkat9302]

I've been finding that as i rarely pay full attention to a video (and i don't think my hearing is the greatest), that the captions have been super useful. and you can easily tell when someone has put the effort in to make sure they're actual sentences. (i also had great fun changing the colours so they're easier to read and less intrusive)

[@residentmusician]

This show is so great. It reminds me of old PBS content. Keep up the great work!

[@Sembazuru]

I used to work for a company (which doesn't exist anymore) that made digital EEG machines. One of the ways of storing data was actually on video tapes. The EEG data was encoded into the video stream, not only packing data into the spare space of the video signal (some of the vertical blanking information, and I think even in some other nooks and crannies that were originally there to allow for poor analog circuitry tolerances) but also as a checkerboard pattern on the side of the video. When playing the video back, the equipment would overlay the EEG traces over the checkerboard. This was so the reviewing doctor could not only watch the EEG traces, but also view the patient for any physical movements to relate the EEG data to what was happening with the patient. The video and data never got out of sync because it was all stored together. (The intended use case was epilepsy monitoring. Apparently ecliptic seizures act sort of like earthquakes with an epicenter and the resulting EEG disruption traveling through the brain out from the epicenter.)

[@FrothingFanboy]

Neat! :)

[@05Forenza]

6:08 the timing from "Theres no place like 4K" to your appearance made my OCD so incredibly happy. lol , Perfect interval

[@jaredswan2585]

The movie theater I work at has a different method of closed captioning. In the back of each auditorium is an infrared transmitter that blasts out the information for captions. We provide small screens on adjustable necks that can fit in the cup holder and each of these contain a receiver for the before mentioned info. The same transmitters also broadcast data for descriptive audio for blind guests which is received by special headphones. A problem that arises is that while all of the digital movies we receive come with the captioning information (and the descriptive audio) some movies have older methods of translating that into the infrared which means we get a number of deaf or hard of hearing people that aren't able to enjoy the movie because of it. Seems like some things still need standardization

[@kennethjorgensen6703]

I've watched a lot of your earlier videos since subscribing to you, but apparently I missed this one. This was fantastically done, and after seeing the newest video, I knew I had to see you dive into this. Hopefully we get that TeleText video soon ;D

[@theMoporter]

HoH and Deaf friends have told me the subtitles in theaters are often faulty, very incorrect, unreadable or just unusable because the plexiglass system thing just sucks.

[@japzone]

Some theaters are switching to this new fangled glasses system that receives the information via wireless and then projects the captions onto the lenses. The glasses even have speakers to provide amplified sound during quiet scenes for the HoH, or secondary descriptive audio tracks for the visually impaired. Plus they are 3D movie compatible, not that that's much of a selling point these days....

[@Meepswonder]

While in Finland we enjoy two tracks of caption both Finnish and Swedish if the movie is foreign o.o

[@AGoddamnRed]

@@japzone And they require to wear this bulky, uncomfortable contraption on your head for the entire movie. I understand tech like this is impressive to people and it would certainly still have its place, but what deaf people really want (because they routinely ask if you'll listen) is open caption screenings.

[@Col_Crunch]

Newer theaters should have digital systems which are much more accurate and reliable. I am not sure the old system complies with the ADA requirements that went into effect earlier this year.

[@japzone]

@@AGoddamnRed It's bulky now, but they'll be slim glasses in the near future. Lots of advancements are being made in projection equipped glasses. Open caption screenings are nice, but are going to be a hard sell to theaters, especially when they are already struggling to keep people going to theaters. Like it or not, there is a significant audience that do not want captions in their viewing experience. And it's not like you can up-sell people for open caption screenings either, as that will invite accusations of discrimination.

[@12many4you]

wait. you poor sods missed out on teletext? my heart goes out to all of you.

[@itskdog]

Still waiting for the video on that... :(

[@LGaragem]

When I went to live in Europe, I was blown away by teletext. It was like a primitive Internet for me.

[@TheCandoRailfan]

Missed out on having the whole screen covered up?

[@itskdog]

@@TheCandoRailfan some TVs let you turn the background transparent or put it side-by-side with the programming.

[@jcfb1470]

Oh yes. good old teletext, gladly it is still active here through the digital terrestrial television. One of the broadcasters here in my country even has a dating room :D

[@blufudgecrispyrice8528]

Thank you for being one of those who captions their vids.

[@petrolhead0387]

Your efforts on CC are greatly appreciated by the hearing impaired. I have endured the auto captions on KZbin, although they can sometimes be rudely entertaining, they are extremely difficult for us deaf folk.

[@James.Stark.Ben.Edition]

"That's right, James. " Jesus, you scared me with that look. I was seriously shocked and thought you were talking to me lol

[@jamesm5123]

I'm quite a bit late to the party here but the same thing happened to me just now. It really startled me.

[@jamescollier9196]

@@jamesm5123 not as late as me.

[@RodrigoBadin]

Also the PS3 can display closed captions from DVD through HDMI by emulating the closed captions by itself.

[@kdan_69]

Wow I didn't know that! What else can this console surprise me with? PS3 is such an underrated console. I think it's technically the best console ever made. Only problem on PS3 was the Cell CPU. It was harder to code it and the lazy third party programmers rather chose different CPU architecture.

[@RodrigoBadin]

@@kdan_69 I remember the closed captions feature came into PS3 with a firmware update circa mid-2015. I tried to see closed captions from a DVD on PS3 and it wasn't possible, but a few months later it got a update to be able to emulate closed captions by itself.

[@bandombeviews6035]

KDan The GPU was average, but the Cell processor is technically more powerful than the ps4 processor, making emulation impossible for the ps4.

[@drfsupercenter]

That was the most useful feature, as many older DVDs did not actually use subtitle tracks, they relied on the legacy line 21 captions assuming if you cared about them you would have your TV set to decode them. Which is fine, I did that when I had a CRT, but then on an HDTV you can't select captions because line 21 is strictly a NTSC thing and doesn't exist in high definition. There were literally no other Blu-ray players on the market that could play DVDs and emulate the closed captions (at least in 2008), so I bought a PS3 just for that purpose, not for gaming. It makes me wonder what deaf people do in terms of HDTV, if they have older recordings on, say, VHS - or just any DVDs that were lazily made and had CCs but no vobsubs (the image-based subtitles he mentioned), what do they do? Use a PS3?

[@gaycatgorl]

as someone with auditory processing disorder, i greatly appreciate you putting in the effort for making correct captions 💕

[@NIRDIAN1]

The irony of explaining how robust and versatile these old captions are and comparing them to youtube's basic nonsense WHILE KZbin'S BASIC NONSENSE OBSCURES THE EXAMPLES is something, alright! :D Thanks a million for writing your CCs though, helps tremendously since my brain took a turn for the worse last year and had more and more trouble processing audio...