Have you ever watched TV and, during the commercial break, heard an actor from the show say, “Closed captioning provided by ____?” If you remember TV before the days of streaming services, you probably heard this at some point.
Closed captions provide several benefits for people. Some viewers may be hard of hearing, so captions allow them to follow along. Other people may have distorted sound that makes it difficult to discern what people on the show say.
In the era of COVID Zoom calls, workplace meetings now suffer the same problems. That’s where live captioning services come in.
The best live captioning services remove communication barriers between colleagues during online calls. This benefit is just one of several provided by live captioning. The question is, how do you choose the best live captioning services for your business?
If you’re wondering about this, then find your answers here! In this guide, we explore five tips for how to choose live captioning services.
1. Look for Companies That Provide Transcriptions and Captions
When considering what live captioning services to choose, ask whether the company provides transcriptions as well as captions. Why would this matter, you ask?
Transcriptions help keep details of all interactions traceable. In doing so, it helps you in several ways. For one thing, it allows you to remember any important information that someone may have said that’s not written down.
For example, let’s say your accounting team delivered a report and somebody asked a question at the end. When the accounting team answered the question, it was the first time anybody said anything about it.
If anybody needs to see what that answer was again, the transcription preserves the exchange. Transcriptions can also help companies maintain accountability. When everybody knows a transcription of their comments will exist, it keeps them from saying anything they’ll regret.
2. What Communication Will Live Caption Services Cover?
When will your live caption service be able to provide the captions you need? What level of communication can they manage?
The best live captioning services will allow you to caption any workplace communication. These include things like:
- conference calls
- meetings
- training sessions
- group discussions
- video conferences
- webcasts
A reliable service will provide captions for all attendees in any of these communication methods. This way, they ensure that everybody can fully participate in the discussion. They also help your business remain compliant with the ADA.
Likewise, make sure that the service will caption the services your company uses. If you only use Google Meet for meetings, it won’t help to hire services that only caption Zoom calls.
If you’re looking for services that provide each of these benefits, check out live captioning by media TV. They can give you a reasonable idea of what to expect from a captioning service.
3. Avoiding Background Noise
When companies need live captioning services, they often forget that software isn’t human. It can’t always discern what sounds are simply background noise and what it should pick up.
As a result, you may end up with some confusing captions. If you’ve ever used default closed captions on TV, you’ve probably laughed at the number of strange inaccuracies the system produces.
The last thing you want is for your captions to be as inaccurate. After all, these aren’t always mere conveniences for your workers. Captions could be the only way some employees get to engage with your information.
As such, spend time looking for a company with top-quality services. Ideally, they can help sort out the noise from the content and help create accurate captions.
However, don’t rely solely on the caption service to do all the work. Try a few things to help minimize the amount of noise your microphone picks up.
One way to do this is by purchasing a higher-quality microphone. Many top-notch microphones pick up specifically on the speaker’s voice. They help to mitigate distracting noises that could distort the captions’ accuracy.
It can also help to record from a place with little outside noise. Doing so may be difficult if you work in environments you can’t control. However, if you can record from a room or area that’s quieter than others, it may produce better audio and caption results.
4. Look for Wordlists in Your Live Caption Services
Live captions often seek to minimize deletion errors. Essentially, this means that the transcript will omit some words because the speaker talks too fast for the system to keep up.
When systems do this, they often try to substitute the missing words with words it believes the speaker said. As you can imagine, this doesn’t always produce accurate results.
Sometimes this produces more inaccuracies than it would otherwise. To avoid this problem, find a service that offers wordlists to fill in the blanks. These lists can help reduce the number of inaccurate captions in your call or stream.
The fewer inaccuracies your captions have, the more professional you look. So, look for this feature when searching for the best service for you!
5. International Live Captioning Services
Finding an international live captioning service can be a tremendous benefit if you stream content on platforms like YouTube. With international services, you can ensure your words become translated into the appropriate language in real-time.
Doing this helps you broaden your audience beyond anything you may achieve in your local area or region. So, if you can find a service that can perform this service, consider it heavily!
Get the Caption Services You Need
With these five tips, you have a much better chance of finding the live captioning services you need. So, don’t hesitate! Start looking for caption companies today.
We hope you enjoyed this article! If so, check out our other content today.