Certain users of Cornell’s Video on Demand (VoD) service can purchase captioning services from 3Play Media. Human captioning is created by a human transcriptionist rather than a computer program.

How 3Play Media Human Captioning Works 

This service is intended for groups or departments with large or ongoing human captioning needs rather than single users. Once IT staff sets up the captioning account for a department or group, they will work directly with 3Play Media to manage their account and make captioning requests.  

An individual from the department or group will be designated as the 3Play Media account owner with the human captioning vendor. The account owner is responsible for billing and payment and for approving captioning requests before processing. Additional administrators can be added to a department or unit’s account if needed to assist with billing, payment, and approval tasks. 

Once the departmental or group account has been set up with the vendor, staff in that department or group can use tags provided by the vendor to identify media for human captioning. This tagging will automatically generate email notifications to the account owner and any added administrators that content is awaiting approval for captioning. The account owner or other added administrators then review tagged media and approve requests. 

While the usual process for requesting human captioning is to identify media within the VoD service with assigned tags, departments or groups can also be set up with separate accounts to upload non-VOD media for human captioning as well. The VOD and non-VOD options are not compatible at this time, however, so if a unit needs both options for human captioning, IT staff will need to create two accounts to accommodate them. (Having only a non-VOD account with 3Play Media is acceptable.) 

Human Captioning for Individual Users 

Individual users who require one-off human captioning service can place requests through the online Video Accessibility form. Typically, individual requests are not set up with their own 3Play Media vendor accounts, but will be re-billed by CIT for the cost of human captioning.