• SubPLY is Mining Value of Captions for Online Video

    SubPLY, a captioning technology provider, is finding that captioning, a long-mandated feature in television, is also quite valuable in online video. Whereas in TV captioning has largely been a regulatory-driven requirement, captioning in online video is strategic as well, as VP of Business Development Matt Knopf explained to me recently.

    For example, captions generate a written transcript of the video content, which is far more search-engine friendly and therefore helps drive discovery. In addition, as the Internet incents global distribution of content, the need for language localization is growing. But the cost of dubbing multiple languages and then managing all the files is expensive, so generating cost-effective captions is a great alternative. In addition, there's even a benefit to at-work viewership, allowing viewers to watch without risk of audio tipping off colleagues and supervisors.

    Importantly, there's also a new regulatory requirement for online video captioning, that mirrors what's been in place for TV - the "21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010" which phases in a requirement for online video captioning among other types of digital media. SubPLY works with a variety of companies, including the Wall Street Journal, Intel, Thomson Reuters, JibJab and many others on a range of different types of video.

    SubPLY, which provides both the transcription services and the technology to integrate and display them in online video players, is poised to benefit from the momentum behind captioning. The company provides a full suite of tools to manage, store and report on caption files. It has been translating into over 50 languages for on-demand caption-creation and now also offers live, on-the-fly captioning in 6 languages. There's also a new service for offering captions on iOS devices. In short, while captioning has been mainly a niche opportunity in traditional video, in online, there are multiple new ways to drive value.

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    Note: SubPLY is a VideoNuze Associate sponsor.