CourseCast Integrates Closed-Captioning Service
Software developer Panopto is reporting that it has partnered with Automatic Sync Technologies to integrate closed captioning into its CourseCast lecture capture system. The solution was developed jointly on behalf of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, which is using the system to capture, caption, and publish classroom presentations.
CourseCast is a lecture capture and digital media editing and streaming system that's provided free to educational institutions through Panopto's Socrates Project. (A hosted version, which is not free, has also been recently launched.) The system provides indexing, archiving, searching, and annotation capabilities, and materials recorded via CourseCast can be embedded in popular course management systems, including Blackboard.
Through the new partnership with Automatic Sync, captioning is now integrated into the system. Captioning data can also be used for enhanced navigation and search, allowing users to click on caption text to start a video of a lecture playing at that point.
"At Cal Poly we recognize the potential benefits of lecture capture technology for our students," said Dan Mull, coordinator for media distribution and services at Cal Poly San Louis Obispo, in a statement released Tuesday. "To deliver these benefits, it is critical that the solution be simple, fast, scalable and accessible to all of our students. Panopto and Automatic Sync are addressing these challenges. By leveraging caption data to provide lecture navigation and search features, the CourseCast platform allows us to create content that is both accessible and helpful to our users."
"The partnership between Automatic Sync and Panopto serves to address market demand for video delivered over the Web that is both compliant with accessibility standards and is accessible to viewers in the deaf and hard of hearing community," said Kevin Erler, president of Automatic Sync, in a prepared statement. "[W]e are looking forward to working with CourseCast users to meet these needs and help deliver a higher quality experience to the end viewers."