Difference between closed and open captioning

For many decades, video has played a vital part in education. However, today in computer-based multimedia format, video is utilized increasingly in web-based and distance learning educational applications. Nevertheless, the audio aspect of a video presentation is unreachable to people who don’t hear or are hard of hearing.

 Captions refer to the onscreen text displayed on a video product’s dialogue, description of relevant sounds not accessible to people. These captions are in accord with the image of the video in order to enable viewers to have access to the content.

 Caption are of two types: Open captioning and closed captioning. 

1. The only difference between them is that open caption is always in view and the viewers cannot turn them off whereas the viewer can turn off the closed captioning. 

2. Videos accessible on the Internet may be open or closed captions. 

3. The closed captions show only they are supported by the user agent. Recently, most media viewer software applications support the close video captioning.

The advantage of using open captioning services for videos

1. The provision of video products with closed captioning brings the responsibility to the user in understanding how to turn the captions on, either in their media viewer software or on their television sets. Therefore, the user is not confronted with the burden, some individual debate in favor of using open captioning services for video products. 

2. Open-captioning promoters also advocate that captioning has a global design and benefits people with hearing impairment or those whose English Language is not their primary language. Besides this, the use of caption is beneficial for people in health clubs, noisy areas or within sports bars. In addition, in the situation where the spoken word is on the open caption, it is not required for people with speech impairments.

3. In spite of the benefits of using open captions, there are also demerits. The open captioning rates differ and are calculated based on different factors such as length of the video, turnaround time, etc. some disadvantages result from the fact that the use of open caption is an integral part of the video stream while in the case of closed captions, it exists as a different text stream. 

4. Users can potentially index and archive video content if the captions are preserved as text. Additionally, open caption when compared to closed captions, are subject to loss of quality if the encoded video is compressed. With the mixture of disadvantages and advantages of closed and open captioning, it is significant for video creators to estimate the use of the video production with an informed result concerning which particular type of captioning to use. 

5. For instance, if a particular training video is made for people with disabilities, people in noisy area, or for large audiences, open caption may be your perfect option. Nevertheless, open captioning rates differ from one company to another and depends on the quality that you want from these particular service providers. for more info visit our captioning services