Volicon and Nexidia collaborate for closed-captioning compliance

The collaboration sees the integration of Volicon’s Observer monitoring and logging technology, with Nexidia Comply, which uses patented audio analysis technology.

The joint solution enables comprehensive automated monitoring of closed-caption quality and descriptive video in compliance with the latest FCC regulations, put into force in the USA on March 16, 2015.

The FCC rules define new quality standards for captioning that include accuracy, synchronicity, completeness, and placement. These rules apply not only to broadcast content, but also to video clips shown online, covering every rendition of every stream in every format.

Round-the-clock manual closed-captioning monitoring in accordance with these requirements is cost-prohibitive for most broadcasters, and spot-checking is simply not comprehensive enough.

According to Volicon and Nexidia, their joint solution facilitates scalable and cost-effective automated monitoring of the final broadcast output

This system automatically captures content, extracts closed captions, determines if the caption file matches the media and is properly aligned, identifies any missing or incorrect caption segments anywhere in the file, and verifies the presence of descriptive video services (DVS).

“Up to this point, broadcasters have worked closely with caption vendors to develop best practices and create an environment in which captions are the best they can be, but the reality is that errors are made,” said Volicon vice president of product management Andrew Sachs. “Given new regulatory pressure to maintain a high standard of caption quality, it is no longer sufficient to rely on customer feedback or manual monitoring strategies.”

“Every broadcast feed, along with a broad array of internet-delivered streams, now must meet new caption-quality standards, and effective compliance simply isn’t possible without some form of automated electronic monitoring solution,” he added. “That’s exactly what Volicon and Nexidia have engineered.”

The joint solution from Volicon and Nexidia is available now as a fully integrated turnkey system. The solution can also be enabled as an upgrade to deployed Observer systems.