NCI Client FAQ
Q. How long has NCI been in business?
A. 40 Years!
Q. How are real-time captions produced?
A. Captioning by live captioners starts with a captioner using the stenographic or voice method of captioning. The captioners are located in our captioning offices and in satellite offices all across the country. For broadcast captioning, the caption data travels via modem or IP to the broadcast origination site’s encoder where it is merged with the video signal. ASR (AI captions) can originate from NCI or onsite at the station or at the client’s location. For online/web captioning, the method of delivery is usually IP.
Q. How are offline captions produced?
A. NCI produces various types of captioning and related products to match our clients’ media types and purposes. These include, but are not limited, to Closed Captioning, Open Captioning, Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (SDH), and encoding of captions and subtitles to various media.
Q. What is the difference between captioning and subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing (SDH)?
A. Captions and Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing share several similarities. Both include sound effects, non-speech sounds (like laughter), song lyrics, and speaker IDs when needed. However, captions can be displayed with placement to fall under the speaker and contain up to 4 lines, whereas SDH subtitles appear in the center of the screen with a limit of two lines. Captions generally display as all uppercase letters, but SDH subtitles always appear in mixed case.
Q. What is the accuracy of the various types of captioning?
A. The captions on prerecorded television programs are almost always 100% accurate when the captioning process is completed. This is because the captioner can review and correct the captions before completing the job. The industry standard accuracy for realtime (live) human captioning is 98%. NCI captioners’ accuracy rates are between 98% and 99.7%. The accuracy for ASR captioning’s (also known as AI captioning) is currently in the low to mid-90s percentile.
Q. How do I know which service line is best for my particular situation?
A. NCI provides many different lines of service to meet your needs – realtime and offline captions, subtitles, transcription, translation, and audio description. To help determine if your job requires real time or offline captioning please contact us or request a quote. For online meetings and classroom captioning, Zoom and other platforms can be easily utilized.
Q. Does NCI provide real-time captioning for emergency situations?
A. NCI has partnered with hundreds of media outlets across the United States to provide high-quality, reliable emergency captioning for inclement weather, breaking news, and any and all unexpected situations requiring immediate closed captioning. Request a quote today to find out more about how NCI’s emergency captioning services can ensure that your most important broadcasts, and online meetings are accessible to everyone who depends on them.
8. How do I order captioning?
A. Getting started is easy! Use our online form or contact us.
Q. What are the FCC requirements for television?
A. NCI is proud of its history of serving on various FCC committees. NCI was instrumental in Formulating the four Caption Quality Standards in the FCC’s March 2015 order. Click here for more information.
Q. What are the FCC requirements for the internet?
A. The Twenty-First Century Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) was signed in to law in 2010. It mandates that if captions aired on a television program and that program is simultaneously or later posted on the broadcaster’s web site, the program must retain the captions. Click here for more information.
Q. Does NCI offer translation services?
A. Yes, for realtime (live) captioning our Recapd service automatically translates your live captions to 40+ languages. For prerecorded (offline) captioning we offer Spanish to English and English to Spanish captions and subtitles as well as translations in several other languages.
12. Does NCI offer live captioning services for Zoom?
A. Yes, we deliver captions to Zoom and other web streaming services such as Webex, Adobe, and ON24. Our web captioning solution works with – and independently of – your current provider of Webcasting services, Web conferencing, online meetings, webinars or conference calls. For more information check our live streaming captioning services.