With broadcasters putting more focus on captioning technology, Wohler is launching a new real-time, single-card-based standards converter that the vendor is billing as the first to offer on-the-fly conversion of WST/OP-47 to CEA-608/CEA-708 captioning standards.
The new WST-708 caption translator card features two 3G/HD/SD video channels and allows for direct bridging and transcoding of captions and encoded subtitles without the need for additional hardware or offline conversion processing.
"Converting captions while converting video frame-rate proves to be a difficult challenge, forcing many broadcasters to entirely re-caption converted video -- which brings delays and additional costs," said Renaud Desportes, director of Wohler's ancillary data product line, in a statement. "The increasing amount of captioning regulations, coupled with the need to distribute content quickly across multiple platforms and destinations, necessitates this type of solution. We are proud to once again be leading the way in providing broadcasters around the world with innovative solutions to meet their specific captioning requirements."
The card also provides transcoded data out of serial and or Ethernet ports for logging and closed-caption file regeneration. The ports also provide a direct connection to an ATSC encoder.
The WST-708 card comes in an openGear form factor and is available as a single- or dual-card, with redundant power supply.
