Captions are becoming the norm for almost all video content including broadcast programming, DVDs, Videotapes, Webcasts, Podcasts and all streaming media. In addition to regulatory compliance pressures, media producers want to reach a broader audience and provide easy access to the content.

Captions makes multimedia content easy available and provides a better viewing experience to a varied audience including viewers with learning disabilities and/or ESL (English as a Second Language), mobile users, viewers in public places (malls, airports, gym). With captions, multimedia content is also enhanced with search capabilities.

Current captioning methods can be time prohibitive requiring more human resources and time than is often available. Delays in captioning often hold up content releases which is undesirable in the competitive business environment. Content Producers require services which can transparently caption their content and make it ready for viewer release.

SyncNow's EZ Captions service provides captions for traditional Broadcast media including DVDs and Videotapes as well as streaming media, Webcasts and Podcasts. EZ Captions is a full-service offering that handles the captioning process from start to finish. Customers have the choice of submitting actual physical media or digital media along with the text transcript using the SyncNow web interface. Upon receipt of the media, SyncNow will perform necessary format conversions, synchronization, captions generation and embedding into the output media. By using EZ Captions Service, customers get fully captioned media ready for release to viewers or other uses in their business without requiring any additional steps.

In the absence of existing text transcripts, SyncNow can also provide text transcripts as an additional service.

Input Formats:

.WMV, .WMA, .MOV, .RM, .RA, .WAV, .MP3, .M4A, .M4B, .M4V, .FLV, or .MP4. MPEG2, AVI


Output Formats:

Web Captioning
QuickTime (.QT.TXT and .SMIL), Real (.RT and .SMIL), Windows Media (.SAMI and .ASX), and Flash (DFXP output for Flash CS3 or CCforFlash caption component, .XML for Captionate .FLV integration, .XML for RIT's caption component)


Video/DVD
.SCC, .STL, .SRT, and/or .TXT result files to be used in authoring packages like Apple's DVD Studio Pro, Sonic's DVDit Pro, Adobe's Encore, or MediaChance's DVD Lab Pro, .CAP, .XMS, and/or .ASC formats that work with CPC CaptionMaker, MacCaption, Cheetah, RapidText, or most line-21 encoder devices.


Podcast Captioning
iTunes .M4A or .M4B (.XML), QuickTime .M4V, .MP3, or .MOV (.QT.TXT and .SMIL), Real .MP3 or .RA (.RT and .SMIL), Windows Media .MP3 or .WMA (.SAMI and .ASX), and Flash (DFXP output for Flash CS3 or CCforFlash caption component, .XML for Captionate .FLV integration, .XML for RIT's caption component).