European Broadcasters

1
European Broadcasters

• Presentation to Symposium EURO-CIU
• by Hendrik Fehr - 6-7 April 2001
• Development and harmonisation of new multimedia
  applications for television broadcasters and DVD
  producers

2
1/3 populationlanguages/communication
difficulties

• living in other countries (years)
• workers, managers, students
• travelling in other countries (weeks)
• workers, managers, tourists
• living in their countries, using other languages
• amusement and news TV, DVD, cinema
• educational video-tapes, distance learning,
  tele-working
• hearing impaired and elderly

3
Helping European citizens overcoming languages gap

• Dubbing (and subtitling) in other languages
• very expensive and long delay
• Subtitling in the original language
• useful, simple, quick, un-expensive
• best cost/effectiveness ratio ( language
  training)
• Subtitling is one of the most powerful learning
  and training tools of any language by
  reinforcing what is being learnt by hearing,
  enriching the vocabulary, in context

4
European dimension

• There are technical solutions and pre-standards
• work to be done to get the best results of them
• and to promote them at a European level
• The problem existed with television
• but the push comes now from DVD and Web
• large distribution, translation easier by common
  formats
• Risk of missing an important opportunity
• Support to this starting project by a letter
  confirming EURO-CIU interest

5
Work to be carried out

• reinforce collaboration with European
  Broadcasters
• establish new contacts with producers of CD-ROM
  and DVD
• organise meetings and workshops presenting
  activities, discussing rules and standards,
  information to newcomers
• collect information from USA and Canada
  encourage collaboration in Europe, underlining
  common points, more than differences
• results dissemination, to EC Services,
  broadcasters, producers and public, by workshops,
  Web Forum and television broadcasts
• audience statistics on teletext pages users
  advertising may pay back
• define user needs, through contacts with user
  groups and field tests
• prepare videotapes with extracts from different
  broadcasts, comparing approaches common points
  and main differences, best practice
• translate users needs into technical
  specifications

6
Work to be carried out

• Multimedia
• television, digital television, digital radio,
  film/cinema
• video-cassettes, CD-ROM, DVD
• Synchronisation
• on line news, live broadcasts, sport
• off line films, documentaries, games time-code
  in out
• Style
• open caption (visible for all users)
• closed caption (teletext page with subtitles)
• full text or resumed/simplified text
• number and position of lines fixed or scrolling
• colours schemas and characters font and size
• Users
• normally hearing users subtitles only of voice
• hearing impaired subtitles of voice and of
  sounds (colours)
• Tools voice recognition, stenotype, manual
  keyboard

7

• http//voice.jrc.it

Subtitled videoconference

• 100 workshops, 5000 participants
• Web Site and Associations Forum
• Net of Schools and Universities
• Broadcasts RAI, RTBF, TV5
• overview TV Europe and Canada.
• Portable PC with spectacles

Subtitled workshop
8
Project VOICE http//voice.jrc.it

• Subtitled workshop

A slide is projected on the left screen by the
speaker, who is speaking into a microphone
connected to a PC the text generated by the
speech recognition system is converted into
subtitling lines on the PC screen and projected
on the right wall-screen, under the speaker's
image taken by a video-camera.
9
Project VOICE http//voice.jrc.it

• Subtitled videoconference

A deaf user communicates with a colleague
speaking to a microphone connected to a PC the
text generated by the speech recognition system
is converted into subtitling lines and overlaid
onto the correspondents video image.
10
Project VOICE http//voice.jrc.it