QuickPlay Media (News - Alert) recently introduced closed captioning support for its Live and On Demand multiscreen video solutions. QuickPlay will use its cloud-based OpenVideo platform to quickly ingest, extract and then encode closed captioning data collected from different video formats, which will make it easy for mobile TV service providers to include closed captioning within their premium mobile video services.

In a statement, Kavi Maharajh, QuickPlay’s VP of Product and Research Development, said that, “Closed captions not only greatly enhance the mobile video viewing experience for people with hearing impairments, but they drive up overall viewership numbers. QuickPlay is dedicated to ensuring that our customers meet regulatory requirements. More importantly, we help them do it in a cost effective way that enables them to continue to offer a high-quality of service to their subscribers.”

Most mobile TV service providers struggle with the challenge of integrating closed captioning into a multiscreen service because of different kinds of standards for closed captioning formats. A lot of times, it so happens that content providers just forgo delivery of captioning data, or they provide variations not supported over the popular mobile TV devices currently available.

This adds to the complexity in the process of ingestion, management and delivery of content when it comes to quality-based closed captioning.

QuickPlay’s OpenVideo platform has been designed to break the complexities involved in the ingestion process as it simply takes the closed captioning data, irrespective of whether or not it is embedded or in a sidecar, and then delivers it in combination with player support which is compatible with iOS, Android (News - Alert) and Windows devices.

Once this is done, the OpenVideo platform uses standard encoding and media transformation processes to include DRM, device profiles, and packaging information.

QuickPlay also provides a user-friendly toggle on the client application, which makes it easy for users to either turn closed captioning on or off during the downloading or streaming process.

At present, AT&T (News - Alert) U-verse is mobile TV service provider that offers its subscribers QuickPlay’s closed captioning service in a cost-effective model and in accordance to FCC (News - Alert) regulations. 

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