VPC Control Tower Represents the Latest Addition to the VITAC Power Connect™ Line of Products
VITAC Corp., the largest captioning company in the United States, providing over 30 years of accessibility services and solutions for more than 1,500 clients, has released the newest breakthrough technology in the VITAC Power Connect™ (VPC) family of products, enhancing its already unsurpassed captioning and accessibility services and providing greater reliability for caption clients and viewers.
VPC Control Tower™ is a first-of-its-kind cloud-based application that allows easy, always-on connections between captioners, events, and clients, and serves as a central hub that establishes multi-level monitoring and management of client programming.
VPC Control Tower serves as a traffic director for captions, ensuring that captioners working with new, specially developed VITAC software – VPC Client™ – are routed to the proper audio and video sources as well as the correct endpoints. VPC Control Tower enables 24/7 monitoring not only of captions and caption paths, but also of the entire captioning workflow process, including captioner readiness, caption transmission, and transcript delivery.
“VPC Control Tower creates a central control center that enables us to more securely connect with clients, control how captions are delivered, and monitor the quality of the captioning services we provide,” said VITAC Chief Marketing Officer John H. Capobianco. “VPC Control Tower’s combination of new, specialized equipment and high-reliability switching software will reduce errors, increase accuracy, and lessen turnaround time.”
First unveiled in 2017 at the National Association of Broadcasters’ show in Las Vegas, Nevada, VITAC Power Connect was part of a large-scale initiative to Connect, Control, Monitor, and Report on continuous network connections between realtime captioners and live broadcasting encoders, thereby minimizing a number of issues common in live captioning, including one of the most critical live captioning concerns — the threat of captioning loss due to ISP outages and modem disconnects.
The first delivery, the “Connect” phase, announced at NAB 2018, was the VPC Hardener™, which provided a multi-line path from the captioner to the encoder for use in troubled areas. Also at NAB 2018, VITAC introduced the concept of VPC Control Tower, which links together captioners, encoders, and audio and video lines, and enables staff to control and monitor captions and connections at a never-before-seen level of detail.
This year, at NAB 2019, VITAC delivers VPC Control Tower. Working in conjunction with VPC Client software, VPC Control Tower enables VITAC clients and control teams to better view and monitor the captioning process.
VITAC also will announce at NAB 2019 the fourth feature of VITAC Power Connect — a reporting function designed to provide dashboards and reporting for clients and VITAC control teams.
“VITAC’s commitment to our clients is that we will deliver the highest quality captions, with the highest degree of efficiency and services,” said Capobianco. “To that end, we pledge that we are constantly exploring new technologies and processes to improve that captioning workflow.”
Responsible for captioning more than 575,000 hours of programming each year − more than one hour’s worth of captions for every minute of every day – VITAC employs the largest team of qualified, trained captioners in the United States. Our clients include every major broadcasting company, most cable networks, program producers, corporations, educational institutions and government agencies.