Hi all, Thank you for responding to my inquiry regarding suggestions for ideas to caption videos for deaf students' coursess. Please excuse the double postings if you get both DSSHE and EASI postings. I promised that I would share the information that had been sent to me. THE SUGGESTIONS: We use several software products to do captioning on a quick turn around basis, but it ends up using a subtitle like process instead of actually providing closed captions which does require a specialized encoder. You also need decent quality video recorders for input and output of the video tape. The one piece of hardware you will need to purchase, in addition to a high quality computer with lots of RAM, is a good quality video capture device and this can be done by buying a Hauppauge WinTV card to insert in the computer. We use the WinPVR 350 and are very happy with it. http://www.hauppage.com/pages/products/data_350.html XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX This isn't an easy question to answer, and unfortunately I'll have to give you my students least favorite answer "It depends". It all depends on your demand and resources. I have provided you a list of the best links out there. Let me break it down the best I can. There really isn't a software that can caption without some hardware. For example a VCR has RCA jack in the back of the machine (these are the red, white, and yellow ports) these ports produce and analog signal. You need something(a dazzle is most popular) to convert that analog signal into a digital signal for a computer to understand. You will also need an output device to produce the final captioned tape, or DVD. Let me explain the process for captioning. First: you need to create a transcript of the tapes audio. For this we use work studies and Dragon Natural speak to speed up the process. This takes about 2 hours for an hour of tape (with a trained work-study) Second: you need to create a time coded copy of the tape, you don't have to do this but it helps to insure the caption in in the proper place on the tape. Example a 2:03:02 Bob says: hi john. If you don't use time codes you have to do a lot of guessing. Third: you need to create you captioning lines that you want to show on the screen, so you need to break up the dialog into discourse segments Forth: you have to plug the dialog into the times to be displayed Last: make a copy of the tape with the captions on line 21. It's a lot of work and time consuming. If you feel that you would like to create your own captioning as I explained the first link below is for the system we use. It's of professional quality and costs about 8-9K The second link has an inexpensive system that can create open caption only (can not turn off) It's easier to use but is of lesser quality. However they do captioning for you for $4 per minute for Ed institutions. It use to me 8 when we bought our system and we thought it would be more cost effective to do it in house. The 3rd is a captioning service that has tons of experience, we used them once or twice. The last link is an inexpensive system that is for MAC only and I have heard it's ok, but more of a patch and repair than a good quality product that will last a long time. I hope this all helped and feel free to ask me anything my number is 212 678 3853, Michael Canale http://www.cpcweb.com/ http://www.ccmaker.com/ http://www.captionmax.com/index.html http://www.compusense.net/caption_maker.htm If any of you others have suggestions since you will have returned from the AHEAD conference, it would be appreciated. Thanks all. Jack Clevenger, Manager Disability Resources and Services Mesa Community College Mesa, AZ