Broadcasting Your Captions to Others
This page discusses streaming captions to others, if you want to access a stream, follow the instructions on this page.
Zip Captions allows you to share your captions with users on other devices. This is very useful in a number of situations, these can include:
In a classroom, to send captions to students devices instead of displaying them on a central screen
At a conference, where captions could be too small to read, broadcasting allows captions to be seen on participants screens
In a setting where there is no screen available
In addition to allowing better access to captions, broadcasting allows more accurate captioning, by allowing users to access captions which were processed on a device near the speaker. External microphones which connect via Bluetooth or other wireless technologies can also enhance the accuracy.
We offer two types of broadcasts:
Anonymous Broadcast - this produces a random session each time that you want to share your captions with others. You will need to share the session information each time.
Static Broadcast - this gives you a personal session which remains the same every time you visit Zip Captions. This means that you can print out session information and it will remain the same for your users each time they use your stream
You are able to choose which type of broadcast you use each time you visit Zip Captions and start broadcasting.
Anonymous Broadcasting
Click on the broadcast button at the top of the screen (this looks like an antenna with circles coming from it)
Agree to the privacy warning to confirm that you understand that you are going to share your data with others when you start broadcasting. Click on the Share tab.
You can choose to use a Join Code for your session to ensure that only those that you invite are able to join the stream.
Please note that Join Codes are not static, and will be randomly generated each time you create a session.
As you are wanting to start an Anonymous Broadcast, make sure that this is chosen in the list. Decide if you wish to use a Join Code (see the box above) and then click on Start Broadcast.
The broadcast will now be started, you should share the Session ID and the Join code with the people who want to follow along as shown at the top of the screen.
To end your broadcast, click on the disconnect button in the top right hand corner of the screen, then confirm that you are ending your broadcast, this will disconnect all connected users.
It's possible to share your information with others via a URL. You can find instructions on how to do that here.
Static Broadcasting
Static broadcasts need to be configured before you begin. To get started go to the settings page, and click on the Sharing tab.
Click on the Create a Session button
You can now choose a Broadcast ID from the drop down list. This will be the Session ID that remains static and you can give to users each time. You can also choose here to Require a Join Code, or to make your session available to anonymous users. Please note that the Join Codes are not static, and will change each time you start a broadcast with your session ID.
Click on Save and Close. If you chose to use a Join code a locked padlock will appear, no join code, the padlock will appear unlocked. The is shown in the settings tile.
Once you're ready to start, click on Start Broadcast
Next time you want to start a Static Broadcast, you can go to the sharing page following the instructions in the Anonymous Broadcast section, and choose your static Session ID from the list.
You can come back and edit your Static Session at any point, by clicking on the Edit button on the Sharing tab of the Settings page. Here you can change the authentication of your session, as well as deleting your Session ID in case you need to regenerate a new session.
If you delete your session ID you cannot retrieve it, and you will be given the choice to choose a new one from the drop down list, the same as when you first setup sharing.
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