Hello - this short video gives an overview of AST's special system-wide captioning offer for the CSU system.  We'll give a brief overview of the offer and show you how to sign up to participate.  We will also highlight where you can find additional resources to get started using AST's captioning system.

First, a brief overview of AST.  AST was funded through the US Dept of Education to create a captioning system that is cheaper, faster, and easier to use than traditional captioning. 

Our system is entirely electronic - users submit content for captioning over the web and caption results are returned electronically.  We can return a variety of result types, including caption files for podcasts, web media, DVD authoring, videotape encoding, and broadcast captioning.  We also offer a number of other formats to support GoogleVideo, YouTube, and video search functions.  In total, we provide almost 40 different result formats, with new ones being added as new media types surface.  You can get multiple caption result formats at no additional cost - you can request as many formats as you like.

We also offer transcription-only services if you are just after a transcript.

For folks that are captioning physical media such as old VHS tapes, we also offer a mail-in option if you are not outfitted to author new media yourself.

AST makes extensive use of automation technologies to get the cost low, but our transcription is done by trained stenographers; we do not use speech-recognition technology to generate the transcripts due to the high error rate that such technology suffers from.  

The Chancellor's Office has negotiated a system-wide special rate with AST to allow the CSU campuses to use our CaptionSync system at a discounted cost.  Any CSU user may participate in this offer.  Once you have a login ID on AST's CaptionSync Server that is associated with this offer, you will not receive any invoices from AST for work submitted to your account; the Chancellor's Office will direct-bill your campus at the negotiated rates.

If you need more information about how this special offer will work, please contact AST directly by either phone or email.  By phone, you can reach us at 877-278-7962.  Or you can send email to info@automaticsync.com. 

Under this special system-wide purchase arrangement, you may use the CaptionSync system to:  generate a transcript only, provide your own transcript and use CaptionSync to generate the synchronized caption files, or provide just a media file and have AST generate both the transcript and the synchronized caption files.  This arrangement does not cover our Rush Transcription service (if you need 24 hour turnaround on your transcription needs), or our DVD Transfer service (which allows you to mail in VHS tapes or DVDs for captioning).  If you need these services, you will need to create a separate AST login ID that bills directly to your campus.

So, how do you participate in this CSU offer?  If you have an existing AST login ID and would like to convert it to be part of this offer, please contact AST directly and let us know.

If you do not yet have an AST login ID, please complete the form at www.automaticsync.com/caption/csu_sign_up.php.  You will need to provide the name of your campus, the name of the department you belong to, and your name and contact information.  Note that you must enroll with a CSU email address; applications with non CSU email addresses will be rejected.

You then need to check off which types of services you would like; check all that apply.  Web captioning allows you to generate caption files for electronic players such as Windows Media, Flash, QuickTime, and others.  Web captioning allows you a great deal of control over the formatting of the caption text, but it does not allow you to generate caption files for broadcast media such as DVDs or videotapes.  Broadcast captioning more tightly constrains the formatting of the caption text, but allows you to generate a wider variety of caption output formats, including caption files for web media, DVDs, and videotape.  Checking the "Transcription Only" box allows you to request just simple transcripts (without synchronized caption files).

Finally, you need to identify to us if you will need our transcription services.  Normally, you should check "yes", but if you always want to provide your own transcript, you can check "no" to make the submission process a bit simpler. 

Once you complete the form, click "Apply for Account".  Once your application has been received and approved, you will receive an automated email with the details on how to log into your account.  If you do not receive this email within a day, please check your spam filter to ensure emails from automaticsync.com are not being filtered.

Once you have your login ID, go to www.automaticsync.com/caption and click the login link in the upper right corner.  Fill in your login info.  Once logged in to your account, submitting content for captioning is easy.  After you log in, you will be asked to select the "application type" for your job - this menu will mirror the set of services that you selected on your application form.  If you only selected one service type, then the system will skip this step.  Once you select the application type, you will be brought to the submission screen.  Submitting media for captioning is as simple as filling out this form and hitting the submit button.

I want to bring your attention to the "Advanced Settings" button - clicking this button allows you to select the formatting options, and to select which output types you would like to get back.  

One final account feature to bring to your attention:  the redo feature.  If you get a result back that you would like to adjust for any reason - for example, fixing the spelling of a proper name, you can do so by using our redo feature.  Click the "Reports" link on the left side, then select the job you wish to redo.  Finally, click the "Redo" link on the job details page.  This will allow you to upload a revised transcript and rerun the captioning job, or to change your advanced settings - for example, to select additional output types.  Redos are no cost, and you can do as many redos as you wish.  The redo feature is available for six months after a job is initially submitted.

Here are some resources you can use to get additional information about using your CaptionSync account:  we have a number of tutorial videos that demonstrate how to caption various types of media at www.automaticsync.com/help.  You can also find user documentation by clicking the "Help" link once you log into your account.  In particular, note the Support Wiki on the help page which offers answers to many common questions.  If those resources fail to address your question, send email to support@automaticsync.com and we will do our best to help you.