Closed Caption Open House and SMPTE Meeting 21 Oct

Grass Valley, CA, 5 Oct 09 – Closed captions help to make media accessible to everyone. Do you ever wonder why the captions aren’t displaying properly on your TV? What is process of creating closed caption data for a live show and how is it carried throughout the entire signal chain – from creation to station to home viewer? Can broadcast signal paths be tested for compliance in handling 708 caption data? What are the differences between closed captions, subtitles and audio description? These are just some of the questions that will be addressed at an upcoming Closed Caption Open House and SMPTE meeting in Nevada City, California.

On Wednesday 21 October 09, Ensemble Designs is hosting an afternoon open
house and evening SMPTE meeting all about Closed Captions. A caption generation company, a Sacramento TV station and many equipment manufacturers will provide demonstrations and presentations about closed caption technology.

The public is welcome and invitations have gone out to video and audio equipment manufacturers, television broadcasters, the deaf and hard of hearing community, and local businesses. All are invited to come see technology demonstrations, ask questions and hear from fellow experts.

Jack Davis, Director of Engineering at KTXL Fox 40 in Sacramento will be on hand to talk about closed caption compliance for broadcasters and exactly how Fox 40 has implemented closed captioning technology in their facility.

Emily Bell of CaptionMax will be demonstrating the process of creating closed captions exactly as it’s done for shows like 30 Rock and Law and Order. Emily is an expert on caption creation and has spent time as a closed caption editor for both offline and real-time pro-gramming. CaptionMax specializes in making media accessible to all types of people through captioning. They provide caption services for hundreds of program providers including ESPN, ABC, and Discovery.

Tektronix, AJA and other manufacturers will be demonstrating how their video equipment generates, tests and passes closed caption data. Engineers from Ensemble Designs will be demonstrating technology used by broadcasters and manufacturers for testing closed captions in broadcast equipment. Specific test sequences will be discussed and demonstrated.

Video monitor manufacturers Plura, Marshall, and TV Logic will be at the event showing how their monitors decode and display open captions. An array of consumer televisions will set up to show how each of those units handles captions. Programming from Sacramento TV stations will be used as source material for the testing.

Schedule of Events
Wed 21 Oct 2009 at Ensemble Designs

1:00pm-5:00 Open House – All are Welcome
Equipment and technology demonstrations by Ensemble Designs, AJA, Tektronix,
Plura Broadcast, Marshall Monitors, TV Logic and CaptionMax. Open to the public.

5:00pm-7:00 SMPTE Social Time and Technology Demonstrations
Featuring food and drink beginning with the letter C.
Special technology demo on caption creation and editing by
Emily Bell of CaptionMax.

7:00pm-9:00 SMPTE Presentations and Meeting
Speakers:

David G. S. Wood, President and Chief Design Engineer at Ensemble Designs, will present technology for testing closed captions in broadcast equipment. Specific test sequences will be discussed and demonstrated.

Jack Davis, Director of Engineering at Fox 40 in Sacramento, will talk about closed caption compliance for broadcasters and exactly how Fox 40 has implemented closed captioning technology in their facility.

The event will be held at Ensemble Designs, 870 Gold Flat Road, Nevada City, CA 95959 (530) 478-1830, http://www.ensembledesigns.com/exhibits/cc_SMPTE

For information about SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers), contact Mona Smothers, (530) 745-5602, http://www.smpte.org/sections/section_sacramento/home

For more event details – technical, press or otherwise, contact:
Cindy Zuelsdorf
cindy@ensembledesigns.com
http://ensembledesigns.com
(530)478-8328

###