NCI's Premier Real-Time Captioning

Caption with Confidence

Background

In 1982, the National Captioning Institute developed the real-time captioning service to give captioned TV viewers access to live programming. With the world's most sophisticated real-time captioning facilities and the most highly trained captioning professionals, NCI provides over 75,000 hours of live captioning every year for television programming and video feeds of live events such as meetings and seminars.

What is Premier Real-Time Captioning?

NCI's Premier Real-Time Captioning is designed for broadcast, cable and syndicated programming that requires the highest level of service. NCI is the only captioning company with two fully equipped real-time captioning facilities that have complete redundancy, alternative power supplies, and engineering support. These facilities in Virginia and Texas have the ability to see and hear all network feeds via permanent satellite receiver arrays along with cable television and Internet connections. A combination of in-house captioners and a large nationwide network of external real-time captioners with total equipment redundancy provides NCI with significant scheduling flexibility.

Premier Real-Time Captioning Features

• Highest quality real-time captioning available
• Captioning provided at NCI facilities and/or locations with full equipment redundancy
• Immediate availability of backup personnel and backup power (in-house facilities)
• Full availability of backup equipment
• Immediate access to technical support via a special “live line”
• Availability of support on a 24/7/365 basis
• Refeeds and fix-ups if necessary
• Ability to simultaneously feed captions to multiple encoders
• Monitoring of captions by NCI personnel
• English or Spanish captioning

What Type of Skills Are Needed for This Demanding Work?

NCI recruits skilled real-time captioners and court reporters who are retrained to be real-time captioners. It can take up to a year for a court reporter to develop the speed, accuracy and skills necessary to become an NCI real-time captioner.

NCI’s real-time captioners are capable of creating captions from the spoken word at speeds of over 225 words per minute while maintaining accuracy at a minimum of 98 percent, though the level usually exceeds 99 percent.


How do I arrange for real-time captioning?

NCI's requirements to begin captioning are very simple. Call an NCI marketing representative with the following information or complete the on-line form.

• Date, time and length of program, including run-over possibilities
• Technical contact names and phone numbers
• Technical information on transmission path:

  Satellite

• Downlink frequency
• Service time
• Encryption information, or

Other Access

If a video feed is not available, through broadcast, cable, satellite, or Internet connections, a dedicated audio feed must be established.