Communications Concepts, Inc. Announces Addition of Closed-Captioning Services

Sept 26, 2006.
Orlando, Fla. -Communications Concepts, Inc. (CCI) recently announced that the company will offer closed-captioning services for all television and video programming as part of its duplication and conversion division. Closed-captioning service is now available for pre-recorded programming through a partnership with VITAC, a Merrill Communications company, and is available on all CCI productions and as a stand-alone service.

Since the Telecommunications Act of 1996, closed-captioning for the hearing impaired has been required by the federal government for all distribution technologies--cable, broadcast, and satellite. Ten years later, only a handful of companies offer third party closed-captioning services, and CCI saw a niche.

"Out of necessity, the technology is improving every day," said Dana Stites, general manager of CCI HD Orlando, a satellite CCI office dedicated to high definition (HD), located on the lot at Universal Studios Orlando. "It's now a vital service for the entire industry. CCI has always been a conscientious place to work, and while we still intend to sell this service, we also feel it is a socially responsible service," Stites continued.

For prerecorded, offline captioning, two style options are available: pop-on and roll-up style. Pop-on style, similar to movie subtitles, appear on the screen all at once and can appear anywhere, but usually appear near the person who is speaking. Pop-on captions appear one line at a time, are time-coded to match shot changes, appear in synch with the audio, and do not interfere with the action. Roll-up style is often used in news captioning, soap operas and entertainment programming. As with pop-on style, captions are time-coded, but they scroll up one line at a time from the bottom or top of the screen.

CCI offers closed-captioning on all major broadcast formats, including Beta SP, Digibeta, DVC Pro, MiniDV, S-VHS, 1-inch, D2, and D5. Standard turn around time for captioning and delivery is seven days, however rush delivery is available. CCI's duplication and conversion division also offers NTSC to PAL and PAL to NTSC conversions.

In addition to television industry clients, Stites concluded, "More and more, we're seeing corporate clients utilizing closed-captioning services for training and educational videos as well as sales and marketing videos. These clients are being proactive by providing for current or future hearing impaired employees."

For more information on this and other services CCI's duplications department provides, click on the services tab above.