How to request Live Captioning

Live Captioning your events with CaptionSync is easy. You just need to choose the service, schedule the session and watch the captions live. In this article we show how to enable your CaptionSync account for the feature, and request Live Captioning for your event.

Enabling your account for Live Captioning:

Log into CaptionSync, go to Settings -> Account Features, select Enable my account for Live Captioning from the Account Feature to Add drop-down menu, and click Request Account Feature. You will receive an email updating you about the feature status. Note that if you can't see Live Captioning on the "Account Feature to Add" drop-down menu, then it's already enabled.

Once you receive confirmation that the feature is enabled, you will see a new Live tab in your account:

Which Service should I choose:

There are several different formats of Live Captioning you can choose, depending on the type of event you want to caption:

Remote CART - English and Spanish:

Remote CART (Communication Access Real-time Translation) services provide instantaneous translation of speech to text with less than a two-second delay. A CART writer can listen remotely and transcribe an instructor's lecture verbatim, allowing students to read the text in real time on a computer in the classroom.

Graduation and Sports Events:

A captioning professional can be provided for large events, like graduation and sporting events, to transcribe all audio. Captions are then displayed on a video screen so the audience can follow along live.

Remote Text Interpreting:

Remote Text Interpreting is an electronic note-taking system, specifically designed for educational settings, that provides meaning-for-meaning transcription of spoken English, French, German or Japanese. TypeWell and C-Print® services fall under this category.

Broadcast Captioning:

Is recommended for television stations and broadcasters.

For more information about the different types of services, call our Sales line, at 877-278-7962, or open a Support ticket.

Making a Live Captioning request:

Fill out the form fields in the New Live Captioning Request page, and click Schedule Live Captioning. You will then be contacted about the request, and all details will be arranged:

Important Notes:

• To order a transcript or caption output for your event, add that request to the Comments section.

• If you require multiple types of live stream outputs (e.g., iCap and StreamText), please add that request to the Comments section. E.g.:
  Please provide both iCap and StreamText live streams. Password for the Falcon encoder: passw.

• A minimum of 4-hours notice is required to schedule or re-schedule a Live session. Bookings or changes will not be accepted on less than 4-hours notice.

• Overages: when you book a live session, we reserve a captioner for the entire duration of your reservation. You will be billed for the entire reserved time, even if your event ends early. Please ensure you use your best estimate of the time required when booking your session. If your session goes past the scheduled duration, you will be billed for the extended time at our regular rates and our captioner will stay for as long as possible, but because the captioner may be booked for other events, they may have to leave before your event ends. To prevent having the end of your event uncovered, ensure you reserve the full amount of time needed.

• Graduate names in commencement ceremonies are traditionally not captioned, unless a list with the names, in the exact order they will be called, is made available to us. In this case, additional preparation time will be scheduled and billed, up to four hours. Please add such a request to the Comments section, and open a Support ticket to send us the file with the list of names.

• Although we provide the writer's direct contact information, before the event, any emails to writers should be cc'd to live@automaticsync.com. We would also recommend contacting them only about direct technical information.

• Depending on the browser you're using and the date/time settings in your system, the Event Date, Event Time and Expected Duration may appear different from the picture above. If your browser does not support the HTML5 date and time standard controls, it will fall back to the ISO date (YYYY-MM-DD) and 24-hour time (HH:MM). If you're using a browser that supports the HTML5 date and time standard controls, the format will match your locale preferences for the date/time settings in your system and browser (e.g., D/M/YYYY, hh:mm A). In another system/browser, the example request shown above looks like (note the differences in Event Date, Event Time and Expected Duration):

Cancellations and Changes to your Live Captioning request:

You can cancel a Live Captioning request from within the respective Details page, in your CaptionSync account. Note that there is a 24-hour cancellation policy to avoid charges for scheduled time. If you need to make additions, schedule changes, or updates to specific events, . For other questions related to Live Captioning requests (like history, billing or UI problems), please open a Support ticket. For more information on our policy on cancellations and changes, please visit our Cancellations and Changes to your Live Captioning request article.

Monitoring your Live Captioning request:

You can log into your WordShare account, and check the schedule for each event, view assigned writers, and get the URLs to the captioning pages.

Additionally, you can monitor the status of a Live Captioning request from within your CaptionSync account, by going to Live -> Status of Live Requests:

Click on the linked AST ID for more details of a request, such as the scheduled date: