In what it’s calling an industry first, Wohler has introduced a real-time, single-card-based standards converter that enables on-the-fly conversion of WST/OP-47 to CEA-608/CEA-708 captioning standards.
Wohler’s WST-708 converter card contains two 3G/HD/SD video channels and allows for direct bridging and transcoding of captions/encoded subtitles without the need for additional hardware or offline conversion processing. The card also provides transcoded data out of serial and/or Ethernet ports for logging, closed-caption file regeneration and 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, redundant power supply, 1RU standalone unit.
“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. “The increasing amount of captioning regulations, coupled with the need to distribute content quickly across multiple platforms and destinations, necessitates this type of solution.”
Wohler’s HDCC card-based captioning products provide data insertion/extraction tools, including encoding, decoding, monitoring, bridging and transcoding. The new Wohler WST-708 translator card is available now by special order.
Wohler has long developed in-rack audio, video and data monitoring gear and has recently expanded into signal management and monitoring solutions for video, audio, captioning and loudness applications. Wohler’s recent acquisition of RadiantGrid Technologies extends this product line to include the Wohler RadiantGrid New Media Automation Platform for efficient file-based content creation and distribution, quality control and faster-than-real-time transcoding and standards conversion.
