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April 22

Transcription of captions on live TV

I understand how they transcribe the captions (printed words across the screen) for pre-recorded TV shows. But, how do they do it for live TV shows, such as the news or sports shows or game shows or even talk shows? These types of live shows do not have any prepared script that the TV show producers can offer to the transcriptionist (ahead of time). So, when I am watching one of these live shows ... and there is closed-captioning on ... the captions appear instantaneously, as the people on the show are actually speaking. How is that possible? At the very least, it must take the transcriptionist a moment or so to hear/understand/type the spoken words. So, how does the transcribed caption appear instantaneously on a live TV show? Thanks. (64.252.65.146 (talk) 01:18, 22 April 2010 (UTC))[reply]

When I last saw closed captioning on a live news show in the US, the text lagged behind the sound and video by a couple of seconds (or even longer). Maybe the technology has improved now, or maybe the show isn't quite as live as you think. Many seemingly live shows, particularly with those with public participation, are broadcast with a slight delay to allow profanity to be beeped out. It is no big deal to imagine a similar delay to let the closed caption writer to write the text. Astronaut (talk) 01:33, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I am talking about, for example, the 6:00 evening news. It is in real-time. And the captions are instantaneous, as the news anchor speaks. I don't notice even a second or so of any time-lag. In fact – funny enough – sometimes, the text appears even before the TV personality speaks! (64.252.65.146 (talk) 01:38, 22 April 2010 (UTC))[reply]

Although it is far from giving a comprehensive answer, Closed captioning#Television and video suggests that live programming was formerly done by stenographers, but is now done through a variety of computer-based methods. In particular, the article says the BBC has an announcer speak what is being broadcast into a computer, although it does not provide a source. I assume, with the ubiquitous several-second-delay of live programming, that by the time the computer records what has been said and generates captions, the resulting captions will be close enough to the actual text to appear to be real time. The phenomenon you mention of the text appearing before it is spoken might happen because of the delay being less than what the computer expects it to be, or the announcer speaking too early, etc. Xenon54 / talk / 01:49, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

after edit conflict

In that case they may actually be pulling the text from the script being sent to the newsreaders' teleprompters.

But in the more general case where they have to input the captions live and have no advance warning as to what the speech will be, they have one (or more) people typing on a specialized Stenotype machine.

Apparently, sometimes the stenotype machine is done away with and the captioner simply repeats what was said to a voice-to-speech program in a careful, machine-friendly tone of voice. (The WP article on the subject says that the BBC uses this technique, but doesn't mention if anyone else does so.)

Both of these things explain why you sometimes see bizarre sound-alike word-choice errors in live close captions. APL (talk) 01:58, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I remember watching CNN in an airport a few months ago, with captioning of a conversation between a bunch of guests, so that couldn't have been from a teleprompter. It had a few seconds delay though...at one point they were talking about Lindsey Vonn and the caption was "the female athletes have a lot of sex"...long delay..."appeal." (And Tiger Wood's wife came out as "Eel-land", heh.) Adam Bishop (talk) 02:38, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Depending on the show/network, the captioning can be WAY off (I use it when watching music videos to learn the lyrics, although sometimes the lyrics can be wrong, or when I'm watching TV at late night in a house full of sleeping people, and headphones aren't a viable option). I've seen captioning for certain live broadcasts, and sometimes it is practically illegible. It makes me wonder if monkeys are responsible for the typing. 24.189.90.68 (talk) 03:40, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I had long thought that CNN Headline News used some sort of speach to text software but I recently read that they use court reporters.Chief41074 (talk) 12:37, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think APL has the right idea. I've seen in the closed captioning for local news here things that would make a lot more sense on a teleprompter than in closed captioning. Like putting words that need to be emphasized by the newscaster in "quotes" and only displaying the text for the first and last parts of a taped interview. Recury (talk) 14:05, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This company still uses stenographers for live captioning. Comet Tuttle (talk) 19:06, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Personally I doubt they use speech to text software, but they might - I could be wrong. For one thing, it makes too many errors. Secondly, it has to hear the whole sentence to help figure out words based on the context. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 19:16, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My guess is that CNN has a live person transcribing while local TV news simply synchronizes the closed captioning with the script on the anchors' TelePrompTer. One time I was watching CNN on mute and saw that a US soldier had been captured near "a rocky border." The anchor actually said "Iraqi border." -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:56, 23 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It is accually just typed up by a person if i am correct. I have seen mistakes made then backspaced words inorder to correct them. --Sivad4991 (talk) 12:26, 23 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Your local news may generate captions from the teleprompter text, hire a stenocaptioner, or both: How a Live Show Gets Captioned. Also, be aware that stenocaptioners use steno machines and type in a special way based on phonetics, shorthand, and abbreviations. That's why some of the typos are homophones or otherwise odd: Murphy Was a Captioner. These articles and much more information on closed captioning are in captioner Gary Robson's Closed Captioning FAQ, apparently offline, but still available in the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. --Bavi H (talk) 06:29, 25 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Live television is usually 5-10 seconds behind real time. This gives them a chance to cut the feed if something goes wrong (profanity, flashers/streakers on the news, stunts going wrong) as well as quickly type up the captions. My father worked at a TV station until just recently and tells me they had one of the assistants or spare technicians hammering out the captions in a special computer program, no text-to-speech or anything. This was at a fairly small station though, major networks may do things differently. 202.10.94.246 (talk) 13:05, 25 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Great! Thanks for the input ... it was very helpful. Much appreciated! Thank you. (64.252.65.146 (talk) 22:46, 26 April 2010 (UTC))[reply]

Glitch City

I know that in at least one pokemon game, it's possible to go to glitch city. What I'd like to know is: which game(s) it's possible to get to in, how you get to it, what to avoid doing in order to avoid leaving Glitch City accidentally, and what you can do in it.

If anyone can tell me which game and how to get to it in particular, I'd be really grateful... Thanks :) Jds500 (talk) 03:23, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My gaming knowledge more or less ended with Tetris, but Bulbapedia and Pokémon Wiki have some instructions. ---Sluzzelin talk 07:55, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Color on A Star Is Born (1937 film)

We were watching A Star Is Born (1937 film) the other day and it looked colorized. The article says that it is in Technicolor. Usually there is no mistaking a Technicolor movie, but this one looked different. I read about the different two-color and three-color versions of Technicolor. Was this done in one of the two-color methods? Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 05:04, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This article says "William Wellman who has directed more three component Technicolor pictures than any other individual, all of them successes, namely, A Star Is Born..." This article agrees: "Technicolor tested the new three-strip method firstly on Walt Disney cartoons (the first being Flowers and Trees (1932)), then a short, La Cucaracha (1934) and then a feature, Becky Sharp (Robert Mamoulian, 1935). It was this process that would lead Technicolor to such successes as A Star is Born (William Wellman, 1937) ..." Clarityfiend (talk) 05:22, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. It sure doesn't look like Technicolor as in the "Wizard of Oz" or "Gone with the Wind". We thought it was colorized. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 05:25, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Some of the early color films featured "over the top" colors. For example, in the Wizard of Oz they made many things more colorful than they were in the original book, to showcase the color film. This might have been true in "A Star is Born", too. StuRat (talk) 13:41, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The 1937 "A Star is Born" is quite the opposite. The colors were so muted and uniform that we thought it was colorized. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 14:42, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In the Technicolor article, scroll down to note the decline of the dye transfer process, the switch to Eastman Color and the "refined version" revival of Technicolor on the restoration of The Wizard of Oz and other films. Pepso2 (talk) 21:05, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see what in there is relevant to this film. Can you be more specific? Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 02:36, 23 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This article might or might not help:[1] I gather from it that an original print of that film has been hard to come by. But it was definitely done in Technicolor. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:49, 23 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

80s Song I forgot the title and artist too

So, I saw this cool video today, it's an 80s song, and there is a repeating line in the chorus that goes "We are, we are, we are" or something like that. The lead singer plays a Gretsch guitar (That I think might be black), and the intro of the song is all drums, lots of drums. I don't really now any other way to explain it, I think they're might be a line in there somewhere that mentions the world "Children" possibly. So does anyone know what the song is? Thanks. Moptopstyle1 ("I Feel Fine.") (talk) 06:44, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Birds Fly (Whisper to a Scream)"? ---Sluzzelin talk 07:17, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Youth of the Nation was actually released in 2002, but it certainly has the emphasis on drums in the beginning and plentiful "we are, we are.." in the chorus. 10draftsdeep (talk) 13:21, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm, perhaps the song "Saints of Los Angeles". Was produced in 2008, but by Motley Crue, who were big from the 80s on. Googlemeister (talk) 13:53, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Definitely sounds like "Birds Fly" by The Icicle Works.--Michig (talk) 05:48, 23 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that is it' "The Icicle Works", thank you very much! awww, I do love Wikipedia. Moptopstyle1 ("I Feel Fine.") (talk) 06:08, 23 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Fact check for local TV station article

Can anyone fact check the last three seconds of WDRL-TV#History? I can't personally find anything to cite, so I think it should be taken out. The article subject themselves has tried to remove the unverified content, but their edits have always been reverted. Those reverting the removal of content never try to verify the facts. -- Zanimum (talk) 16:39, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Usually the Wikipedia Help Desk is a better place for Wikipedia help — the Reference Desk is here to answer factual questions about anything, not so much about Wikipedia — but in this case, what I would do if I were disputing the claims would be to add a "fact" tag to the end of each sentence that I was disputing that did not have an inline citation. To do this, add {{fact|date=April 2010}} to the end of the sentence. Editors are not supposed to remove a "fact" tag unless they are doing so because they have added an inline citation. If the claims remain for a few weeks without having citations added, you can feel extra-free to remove them. (And in the meantime, the dispute over the claims is obvious to all readers.) If other editors still revert the removal after several weeks of a fact tag, without providing references, I would call that disruptive and start waving my arms for help with the bad editor. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:55, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"For factual and other kinds of questions, use the search box or the Reference desk." While I'm doing the fact checking in relation to a Wikipedia article, this is the more relevant location to do so. -- Zanimum (talk) 14:15, 24 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Football Logo

Which Football team has a blue cougar like logo? It is on the helmet (not sure if away or home), but maybe be elsewhere. It maybe be nfl.174.3.123.220 (talk) 20:23, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Assuming the team is in fact NFL, the perennial sad-sack Detroit Lions is the most likely candidate. Another team I can think of with a similar logo is the not-so-lowly Buffalo Bills. None of the teams listed at Cougar (disambiguation) have blue as a color. If this answer didn't do it for you could you please provide a picture? Xenon54 / talk / 20:48, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Being from Detroit, I consider the Detroit Lions to be one of the most successful sports teams, in that they successfully prevent traffic jams during all of their home games. :-) StuRat (talk) 16:17, 23 April 2010 (UTC) [reply]

Could it be the Jacksonville Jaguars, whose jaguar logo has a blue tongue and who wear blue jerseys half the time? Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:05, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Carolina Panthers. Woogee (talk) 21:20, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If it's a college team, it might be the Penn State Nittany Lions football, but they don't wear their logo on their helmets. Woogee (talk) 21:22, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Brigham Young Cougars are blue, but their logo is a "Y". Woogee (talk) 21:23, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'd second the Carolina Panthers. The Lions is distinctly lionish with a mane and all; the Bills have a bison on their helmet, and you'd have to squint really hard to make a bison look like a cat of any kind. The Jags uniforms are teal, which I would describe as closer to green than blue. The Panthers are the best shot for an NFL team. However, since this is a reference desk, the OP could look himself at The Helmet Project, which has examples of every football helmet worn by nearly every football team from the past 50 years or so. There are probably well over 1000 different helmets there. --Jayron32 00:48, 23 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]