NAB 2024: VITAC Introduces New AI Captioning Solution, Closed Captioning Sponsorship of NAB Show Creator Lab

VITAC is introducing a new AI-powered transcription and captioning solution at next week’s National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show in Las Vegas that can be tailored to specific users and specific needs.

Developed in-house, Captivate, combines industry leading technology with decades of experience to provide high-accuracy transcripts and captions, guaranteed uptimes, customizable solutions, and integrations with multiple platforms. It’s designed by captioning, speech, and machine-learning experts and trained using diverse language models, enabling it to understand accents, languages, and speech patterns better than generic ASR.

“What sets Captivate apart from other ASR engines is that we developed, built, and own the technology,” says Dr. Irit Opher, Vice President of Research at Verbit. “Owning the engine allows our team to monitor, teach and control outputs constantly. Through this, we’re able to provide versatile and cost-effective solutions for captioning and transcription while guaranteeing exceptional accuracy.”

Further separating Captivate from other generic engines, the solution features a Dynamic Domain Dictionary, which constantly searches domain-specific terms and trending topics to form an always up-to-date base library. The solution also features customer-specific domain boosting (based on advanced prep materials, pre- and post-session research, and live-session monitoring), multilanguage support, and additional customization options to deliver customer-relevant and accurate output.

Captivate is being used by customers in a variety of industries, including Washington Post Live, the Washington Post’s live journalism platform where global leaders, government officials, business CEOs and other newsmakers discuss timely, important issues. Verbit provides live captions for these discussions, capturing rich and varied viewpoints on a wide range of topics.

“Working with Captivate for captioning has been a game changer for us at Washington Post Live,” says Mohammed Sharabi, Washington Post Live Production Technician. “The volume and increasing change in schedules and times make Captivate an easy choice when it comes to cost, accuracy, and ease of use. We can quickly make changes and edits…and the quality of captions has not been compromised.”

Captivate is part of VITAC’s ongoing commitment to providing enhanced accessibility and unlocking the value of speech for all customers.

While AI speech recognition technology helps customers capture the spoken word, VITAC’s generative AI solution – Gen.V – enables them to receive additional insights and value from their transcripts via automatically produced summaries, headlines, or keywords. Those insights are then applied to established workflows to enhance the messages that matter most.

“Advances in generative AI are creating the next chapter in speech technology, and Verbit has the experts in place to help write it,” says Verbit CEO Yair Amsterdam. “As a global leader in speech technology, we’re exploring new technologies and seeking ways to enhance our offerings and solutions, helping customers ‘make words work’ and realize the value in accurately capturing every word.”

In addition to showcasing Captivate at this year’s NAB show, VITAC, the largest provider of captioning and transcription in the media and entertainment industry, will be on site to discuss advancements in AI-driven technologies, captioning innovations, and accessibility solutions.

VITAC will host a Broadcasters’ Breakfast on Monday, April 15, at AM in the Las Vegas Convention Center’s West Hall Capitalize Zone followed by a discussion on the changing face of live captioning. Hear from Jeff Burgess, Vice President of Broadcast Operations at Warner Bros Discovery Media; Christian Vogler, PhD, Director, Technology Access Program at Gallaudet University; and Doug Karlovits, General Manager at VITAC, about AI and automatic speech recognition captioning solutions, improvements in AI captioning technology, and how broadcasters can realize cost savings thanks to these new offerings.

VITAC also is the closed captioning sponsor for ‘Creator Lab,’ a new addition to NAB that features exhibits, panels, workshops, and networking events focused on content creators and influencers. VITAC will provide English and Spanish captions for the discussions and panels on the Creator Lab stage and will host two discussions:

• “Innovations in Captioning Technology” on Monday, April 15, at 3 PM will focus on the continued growth of captions and subtitles and how Gen AI technologies are improving ASR and boosting caption accuracy.
• “Expanding Your Audience with Subtitles, Dubbing, and Translation” on Tuesday, April 16, at 11:30 AM will discuss how easy it is to localize videos and how adding things like subtitles, dubbing, and translations can help boost SEO rankings, improve user experience, and increase brand awareness.