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Media captioning, transcription, and audio description vendor rate comparison
Captions, transcripts, and audio descriptions help to make media content more accessible to students, employees, and members of the public and help to ensure that your content is compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Review the creating accessible video and audio content guidance to learn more about when they should be used, review vendor information below, and set up an account.
Negotiated Pricing Contract Update:
- CaptionSync (AutomaticSync Technologies) and 3Play Media negotiated contract service offerings include captioning, transcription, and audio descriptions.
- Cielo24 negotiated contract service offerings include non-English captioning and transcription.
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Get Started & Help Information
- For general assistance or to set up an account with one of the vendors, follow the links provided in this list.
In this document
- Captioning & transcription pricing
- Non-English captioning and transcript pricing
- Audio description pricing
- Services & features
- Contract details, training, and languages
Captioning and transcription pricing
To produce captions, the vendors typically create a transcript (including speaker info, sounds, and tone information) and align the transcript based on the media you provide, before generating a variety of caption and text file options (.SRT, .VTT, etc.) that you can download and use with various media players.
If you already have an accurate transcript with speaker, sound, and tone info, you can alternatively upload the transcript along with the media, and then order alignment services to generate the captions.
For alignment only: 3PlayMedia costs $0.90/min and CaptionSync (AST) costs $0.95/min. You can also use a script to create captions for media in Kaltura MediaSpace (free).
Standard captioning and transcription (English)
|
Turnaround Time
|
3PlayMedia Negotiated Price (English)
(Adds $1.00/min audio difficulty charge.) |
CaptionSync AST Negotiated Price (English)
(Adds $0.75/min audio difficulty charge.) |
|---|---|---|
| 4 hours or less | $6.95/min $6.70/min (audio transcription only) |
Service not available |
| 8 hours or less | $3.95/min $3.70/min (audio transcription only) |
$3.39/min $2.55/min (audio transcription only) |
| 1 day | $2.55/min $2.30/min (audio transcription only) |
$2.79/min $1.95/min (audio transcription only) |
| 2 days | $2.15 $1.90/min (audio transcription only) |
$2.09/min $1.50/min (audio transcription only) |
| 4 days or less |
$1.75/min |
$1.99/min |
| 4 days or more |
$1.60/min |
N/A |
| 5 to 10 days |
N/A |
$1.59/min |
Additional services and charges:
- 3PlayMedia:
- Can offer caption placement:
- Automated caption placement service is $0.25/min.
- Manual caption placement service is $1.00/min.
- Caption Imports: Import existing files not done by 3PlayMedia is $5.00/file.
- Can offer caption placement:
Non-English captioning and transcription
Languages:
| 3PlayMedia Non-English Captioning Languages | Cielo24 Non-English Captioning Languages |
CaptionSync (AST) Non-English Captioning Languages |
|
|
|
Non-English Pricing:
|
Turnaround Time
|
3PlayMedia Negotiated Price (Non-English)
(Adds $1.00/min audio difficulty charge.) |
Cielo24 Negotiated Price (Non-English)
|
CaptionSync (AST) Negotiated Price (Non-English) (Adds $0.75/min audio difficulty charge.) |
|---|---|---|---|
|
8 hours
|
$5.45/min (Spanish) |
N/A |
N/A |
| 1 day | $4.05/min (Spanish) | N/A |
$2.79/min (Spanish, French, German) |
| 4 days or less | $3.25/min (Spanish) |
$5.00/min (All languages listed above) |
$2.09/min - 2 days - (Spanish, French, German) |
| 4 days | $3.10/min (Spanish) | N/A | $1.00/min (Spanish, French, German) |
| 1 week |
$6.65/min (French, German, Portuguese) $8.85.min (Czech, Italian, Russian, Dutch) $10.45/min (Arabic, Bosnian, Croatian, Latvian, Polish, Romanian, Slovenian, Swedish, Turkish) $11.40/min (Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Hindi, Hebrew) |
N/A | N/A |
Dual-Language Pricing
|
Turnaround Time
|
3PlayMedia Negotiated Price (Dual Language)
|
CaptionSync (AST) Negotiated Price (Dual Language) |
| 1 day | N/A | $2.79/min (Spanish and English only) |
| 2 days | N/A | $2.09/min - 2 days (Spanish and English only) |
| 4 days or less | $3.75/min | $1.99/min (Spanish and English only) |
| More than 4 days | $3.60/min | N/A |
Additional offerings and charges:
- Alternative languages:
- Cielo24: $12.50/min per language
- Speaker identification:
- Cielo24: $0.60/min
Audio description pricing
Standard Audio Descriptions: A voice-over track that describes what is visibly happening in the video.
Extended Audio Descriptions: Used when more detail is needed than can fit in the timing of the video. Extended audio descriptions pause the video intermittently to add additional voice-over detail.
| Turnaround Time | 3PlayMedia Negotiated Price (Audio Descriptions) | CaptionSync (AST) Negotiated Price (Audio Descriptions) |
| 1 day | $11.25/min (Standard) $12.25/min (Spanish Standard) Upgrade to $3.00/min (Extended) |
N/A |
| 2 days | $9.25/min (Standard) $10.25/min (Spanish Standard) Upgrade to $3.00/min (Extended) |
N/A |
| 4 days | $7.25/min (Standard) $8.25/min (Spanish Standard) Upgrade to $3.00/min (Extended) |
$8.50/min (Extended) |
*Pricing prorations & other services:
- Computer-generated captions for audio descriptions: $0.10/min.
- Caption Imports: Import existing files not done by 3PlayMedia: $2.00/file.
- Prorations:
- 3PlayMedia’s pricing is prorated to the nearest second.
- CaptionSync (AST) pricing is prorated to the nearest minute.
Services and features
All services
Results review service
-
3PlayMedia - $1.00/min
-
CaptionSync (AST) - $0.60/min
Caption encoding
-
3PlayMedia - $10.00 for the file
-
CaptionSync (AST) - $1.00/min
Caption import
-
3PlayMedia - $5.00 for the file
-
CaptionSync (AST) - $1.00/min
Edit captions from Livestream
- 3PlayMedia - $0.40 (captioning and transcription)
Video platforms available
Contract details, training and languages
UW-Madison contract
For full details, see the UW-Madison contract.
Training
Free vendor-provided training is part of UW-Madison's contract is available by contacting the vendor directly.
-
Contact 3PlayMedia at (617) 764-5189 or email info@3playmedia.com
-
Contact CaptionSync (AST) at (877) 278-7962 or email info@automaticsync.com.
Languages available
3PlayMedia and CaptionSync (AST) offer language translation negotiated pricing.
- CaptionSync (AST)
- Automatic translater: $0.65
- AST translator: $4.75