This article is an updated version of How to Set Up Falcon on Zoom, originally published on November 21, 2019.
A true meeting of the minds: When online corporate meetings and conferences are set up for accessibility from the start, efficiency is assured for everyone.
With the COVID-19 coronavirus epidemic transforming the way many of us work, mobile- and web-based meetings have seen a huge increase in importance. Similarly, closed captioning for Zoom meetings and video conferencing has become a frequent request from employees and clients. Managers and IT departments need to be ready to accommodate these requests, either to be in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) or to provide the added convenience of captioned meetings.
Closed captions for Zoom meetings and other online meeting platforms used to be complicated. Not anymore. The fast workflow of EEG's iCap Falcon RTMP (Real-Time Messaging Protocol) live streaming caption encoder, combined with the increased sophistication of today's popular software-based conferencing tools, make captioning for virtual meetings extremely easy to set up.
Completely hardware-free, Falcon made waves when it launched as the first and only cloud-hosted encoder to offer broadcast-style caption embedding directly into live streaming video across all commercial video streaming platforms including YouTube, Facebook, and Wowza.
Here's how to caption meetings on Zoom, one of the most popular video conferencing platforms. Follow these easy steps to start closed captioning when you use Zoom for your next video conference, web conference, huddle room meeting, online training session, and more.
These steps closely mirror the captioning workflow for many similar video conferencing platforms as well.
1) Visit eegcloud.tv to set up an account.
Falcon is the affordable way to caption conferences, meetings, and streaming media, with a subscription billing model.
2) Connect audio to your transcription service.
If using a human captioner, invite the writer to your Zoom meeting. If using Lexi, uplink the audio using iCap Audio Webcast, a free EEG application that broadcasts audio from your computer to the EEG Cloud.
3) Configure EEG Falcon to point to your meeting and your captioner.
Zoom provides a unique secure link for each meeting where you send closed captioning data. Input that URL into Falcon's easy-to-use dashboard, and then share the Falcon channel with either Lexi ("EEGASR") or your captioner's company name.
4) Enter the Falcon Access Code into iCap or Lexi.
To begin sending real-time captions through Falcon, your captioner must enter the Falcon Access Code you created into their iCap software. If using Lexi, you can start up the job on eegcloud.tv with the same Falcon Access Code, and live captioning of the audio will begin within seconds.
5) Your conferences are now being captioned!
As with live broadcasts, about 3 seconds of latency are likely during the live meeting. This is the time it takes captioners to understand a complete spoken word or phrase and write it to the system.
If you plan to archive the meeting, EEG's Scribe closed caption editing software can be used to create a perfectly-timed and 100% accurate professional closed caption file.
Try EEG's Falcon to live caption your next online meeting; you'll be surprised how easy it is! If you have questions, EEG's support team is at the ready to make captioning work perfectly for your unique needs.
Interested in finding out what EEG Video can do for you? Browse our products or contact us.