Australian Caption Centre Goes Live With WinCAPS

The Australian Caption Centre (ACC), now owned by Red Bee Media, has recently extended its relationship with SysMedia with the purchase of WinCAPS for live captioning at its brand new Melbourne facility.
The technology supply was overseen by SysMedia’s regional partner Magna Systems.
The new centre primarily provides captioning services to the country’s Seven Network, though the facility is also being used to provide services for a range of other clients. It is connected to the Seven Broadcast Centre in Melbourne via dark fibre, allowing the captioners to work as if they were on site. Sohonet links the Melbourne facility with ACC’s head office in Sydney and also Red Bee Media’s facilities at the Broadcast Centre in London.
Seven Network subtitles a wide variety of programming across its schedule, including live news and current affairs where the WinCAPS systems are key. The technology is integrated with Avid iNews so that scripted content is made readily available to the captioners. The interface provides a high level of intelligence so that script or running order changes are automatically picked up, the system either then updating the subtitle preparation file or alerting staff.
Live input is currently mainly using stenography though the technology supplied by SysMedia is also voice-input compatible.
ACC CEO commented: "The two most important things that sold us on the WinCAPS system were its sophisticated newsroom computer interface and its effective integration of speech recognition applications for speech captioning. Both of these attributes combine to realise significant efficiencies in our workflow."
Andrew Lambourne, SysMedia CEO, added: "It is always pleasing to see a customer return as this shows clears satisfaction with our technology. SysMedia worked alongside ACC in its new facility to train staff and integrate the technology efficiently and quickly and we look forward to a long future with them."
(DS/SP)