CES Goes Hybrid in 7 Languages with Rev’s Captions and Subtitles
Results with Rev
Handle Closed Captioning For Thousands Of Videos
Grew Streaming Content To 2.5 Million Minutes Per Day
Low-Cost, Fast, and Accurate Solution
I use Rev daily for my work in helping produce docuseries for television. I love it…. love rev and the product. it's crucial for my work.
I use Rev daily for my work in helping produce docuseries for television. I love it…. love rev and the product. it's crucial for my work.
Going Global on a Tight Schedule
When producing a conference with the global visibility of CES, every piece of content will be under extra scrutiny. Though CTA had focused on audience accessibility even before virtual conference options became necessary, there were some gaps in their 2022 event plan. All of the sessions were now live-streamed along with an event style that had pivoted last minute; time and budgets were tight. CTA and Mighty Media approached the challenge from three angles: accommodation, accuracy, and timeliness.
According to Sean Perkins, CTA’s VP of Marketing, accessibility is a cornerstone of their operations. “We knew that we needed to approach CES from an accessibility standpoint,” Perkins said. “At the very least, we needed to have closed captions for all of our content, in addition to subtitles in different languages. With a hybrid event, this was extremely important to us.”
Over at Mighty Media, Producer Kristen Barry agreed that accessibility has become a given in the virtual events space. “Captions provide that extra level of inclusion, and it’s becoming more standard to connect everyone,” Barry said.
Beyond English captions, CES needed subtitles in six languages: French, Spanish, German, Korean, Japanese, and simplified Mandarin Chinese. To make matters even more complex, the virtual and in-person conferences were conducted simultaneously–everything was live. “For our press conferences, we had 1,300 members of the media logged into the digital venue and upwards of 34% were international,” Perkins said. “We had to get things just right when they’re breaking a certain news story or a product.”
Because everything was live, timeliness was a major factor. On the ground in Las Vegas, 300 CES conference programming were spread across multiple casinos and ballrooms over five days. Sessions would occur simultaneously, and the recorded video would come to Mighty Media for captioning. “We had anywhere from 20-50 videos per day, each in the 45-minute range and we were hoping for a one-day turnaround,” Barry said. “We wanted the captioned videos to follow as soon as possible.”
Saving Valuable Time with Expert Support
Handling a complex and high volume of video content in a short amount of time was made easy with Rev’s QA process. The tech industry is well known for abundant acronyms and unusual product names, but Rev handled them all with flying colors. “The accuracy level with Rev’s freelancers was really, really good,” Barry said. “Once I realized how accurate the captions were, it was just a quick scrub through of the intros for correct speaker and company names.” In the end, Barry’s team only needed to spend five minutes reviewing each 45-minute session video.
The CTA team realized similar time-savings. Perkins formerly had his contractors and interns spend their time captioning videos, a lengthy and tedious process that ate up valuable time. “I eventually asked myself, why are we doing this? They could be working on other things leveraging the other talents of the team.” Now, they are refocused on their core efforts while Rev’s freelancers lend their expertise.
Communication is Always Key
While CES may be spread out across stages and screens, Rev’s services could easily be managed in one place. Because of Rev’s stellar communication, Mighty Media was easily able to coordinate captions and subtitles. “When you’re working on fast-turn, high-volume projects it’s important to not be sitting around with a question or troubleshooting while the clock is ticking,” Barry said. “Honestly, the reason I moved forward with Rev was that the communication process was amazing from day one.”
For CTA, they enjoyed having a partner that could roll with the punches. Conferences have had to evolve quickly, and attendees access their sessions in so many different formats than ever before. Perkins’ team was already using transcription and captioning old videos for SEO and accessibility purposes, but an entire hybrid conference was a different beast. “Luckily we were able to pull off both digital and physical. It was a big success, and Rev was a part of that,” Perkins said.
