Blog

---

• Captioning

Why 3Play Is Better Than Other Transcription Jobs

3Play Media

•

May 19, 2024

Wondering if you should apply to work as a 3Play transcriptionist?

3Play’s benefits, pay, and growth opportunities are unparalleled to other transcription jobs – just ask our current transcriptionists!

If you are on the fence about applying, keep reading to uncover why this could be your perfect side hustle.

On average, we pay our contractors three to four times more than other transcription companies.

We believe strongly in treating our contractors ethically and paying them fairly – often three to four times more than other transcription services.

3Play Media transcriptionists are paid weekly for work completed during the previous week. Pay rates are based on the length, deadline, and difficulty of the file. Contractors set their own schedules and are able to claim the jobs they want to work on at any given time.

3Play Media Transcriptionists can unlock new job types as they become stronger transcriptionists.

Outside of the task of transcript editing, we have many other tasks and opportunities for contractors to earn more money with 3Play over time, including:

• Quality Assurance: responsible for reviewing files after the editor finishes them.
• Auditing: conducts random audits of files to ensure quality.
• Audio Description: translates the visual information in a video into description.
• Live Professional Captioning: captions live content in real-time.
• Translator: translates video and audio content into a target language.

As we continue to innovate and introduce new service offerings, contractors will have even more income streams to choose from.

If you’re multilingual, you can become a translator.

Play a vital part in helping organizations bridge the language gap with their global audiences. Freelance linguist take English-language audio and video content and translate into various target languages for global distribution. Online translation jobs offer a unique opportunity to translate exciting content from the comfort of your home.

We have the best editing interface, according to our experienced transcriptionists.

When it comes to transcription jobs, the editing platform matters. At 3Play, we’ve built a proprietary editing platform designed to maximize efficiency for our editors.

Editors receive a time-coded, automatically generated transcript for every video and audio file on the 3Play marketplace – so you never have to start from scratch! Our easy-to-use platform allows editors to personalize their settings and set shortcuts. Editors can also favorite projects to make it easy to find their preferred files.

Furthermore, we are constantly adding new features based on user feedback.

Our video and audio quality is also unmatched by other transcription jobs.

If you ask any of our transcriptionists they will tell you that our marketplace is full of high-quality files to transcribe. Veteran transcriptionists confess that poor-quality files can cause major headaches. Luckily, at 3Play, we work with some of the biggest content creators in the world, which means our marketplace is full of files in excellent condition.

Our Contractor Operations Team is directly available to assist all transcriptionists.

We have a team dedicated to supporting and improving the contractor experience. Our awesome team is directly available to assist all transcriptionists with any questions or issues that may arise.

The operations team works closely with contractors and actively listens to feedback from existing contractors. Additionally, the team hosts monthly webinars where transcriptionists can ask questions and hear about any updates.

About the author

3Play Media

The post Why 3Play Is Better Than Other Transcription Jobs appeared first on 3Play Media.

Blog

---

• Accessibility

Accessibility in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Initiatives

3Play Media

•

June 1, 2021

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives have become a top priority for today’s organizations. Studies continue to show that companies that value DEI are more profitable than those that don’t and their employees report higher levels of engagement, trust, and satisfaction.  These are all critical components for success! As DEI has taken the spotlight, strides have been made towards equality based on gender, race and sexual orientation. One aspect of DEI that is often overlooked, however, is disability and accessibility. 

Diversity Equity Inclusion and Accessibility

Disability awareness and accessibility in the workplace are important components of diversity, equity, and inclusion that cannot be overlooked. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports that approximately 1 in 4 people in the United States are living with a disability. Additionally, the Department of Labor (DOL) reported that in 2020, 12.6% of disabled individuals are unemployed – the highest number in 7 years. Companies need to focus on making their workplaces attractive and accessible to these individuals. Employers must be cognizant of the limitations of the physical working space and office design and make changes as needed. All employees should have access to assistive technologies and feel comfortable asking for the tools and resources they need to be successful. 

 COVID and Accessibility

Prior to the pandemic, many employers were hesitant to offer adaptive technologies or working from home to people with disabilities.  However, COVID has made working from home and remote meeting technologies the go forward plan for many employers.  Doors that open automatically and wider aisles have also become more commonplace to help reduce infection rates and promote social distancing.  

Businesses have adapted to meet COVID requirements and have inadvertently become more accessible to individuals with disabilities.  As organizations continue to focus on ensuring safety, they could become more open to undertaking accommodations in the future.  Doing so would broaden access to opportunities for the approximately 1 million U.S. workers with disabilities that have lost their jobs since the World Health Organization proclaimed the outbreak a pandemic in March of 2020.

Accessibility at 3Play 

At 3Play Media, we are in a unique position when it comes to incorporating accessibility into DEI efforts. 3Play was founded on a mission of inclusion and has deep roots in accessibility, so even before we implemented a formal DEI initiative, accessibility was at the forefront of our business and company culture. We believe in the social and business obligation to foster diversity, belonging, and inclusion, and we value the many ways in which they make us stronger.  

Our company is great because of our people, and cultivating diversity is a critical component of what continues to make us great as we grow. Finding ways to support accessibility and inclusivity is a big part of our culture and our employees are always eager to participate. 

All new hires go through a training program that includes an entire section on accessibility.  We believe it is important for everyone to understand what accessibility means both inside and outside of 3Play. We also have all new hires earn a Video Accessibility Certification, since that is at the core of who we are. 

We have a committee at 3Play solely focused on accessibility (a11y). The purpose of the group is to prioritize accessibility in everything we do, whether that be reworking our website, incorporating accessibility into our application process, or even keeping up with what’s going on in the accessibility world. We have a Slack channel dedicated to all things a11y and all employees are encouraged to post accessibility information and news.

Annually, as a company we celebrate Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). This year we brought in two speakers for a public webinar, actor Mickey Rowe and disability advocate Michael Agyin, as well as hosted an American Sign Language (ASL) training class for employees and donated to the Disability EmpowHer Network.

It Starts in Recruiting

Incorporating diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in your workplace has to start at the very beginning. That means it begins with your recruiting processes. You want to reach a diverse pool of candidates from all communities and be open to all potential employees. It is important to take the time to understand the barriers that candidates may encounter in navigating your website and applying for your jobs. You will also want to ensure that your job descriptions accurately reflect the true requirements of the position and do not include unnecessary qualifications. Screening and interview processes should be flexible and offer accommodations for those in need.  

All employees and managers should be trained on using inclusive language and putting the person first rather than their characteristics. Teaching others to have a growth mindset, use gender neutral language, and avoid derogatory terms is key to fostering a culture of belonging.  

You can get started today by taking small but meaningful steps in the right direction. Provide captions for your next all employee meeting or Zoom interview with a candidate. Encourage employees to be open in sharing their preferred pronouns. Offer flexible schedules and hybrid work arrangements. Doing so will benefit your employees and eliminate barriers for talented individuals interested in joining your organization.

About the author

3Play Media

The post Accessibility in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Initiatives appeared first on 3Play Media.

Blog

---

• Accessibility

Introducing Our New Brand Identity

Lily Bond

•

May 26, 2021

 
Over the past several weeks, you may have noticed some updates to our brand identity. As we continue rolling out these changes, I wanted to take a moment to share more about our rebrand and why it better reflects who 3Play Media is today.
 
3Play Media began in 2008 as a closed captioning company. Now, 13 years later, we do so much more – but our brand was still focused on what we did back then. While captioning is still a core part of our business, we have evolved into a dynamic, integrated platform providing all the services you need to make video accessible and engaging.

Finally, in line with our broader commitment to accessibility, black and white is the most accessible color combination, with a color contrast of 21:1. We have additionally tested our entire color palette for color contrast and color blindness, and have clear guidelines on accessible color combinations.
 
 

Our new logo is simple and modern with bold color contrast. We’ve updated the text of our logo to have a single font weight in all caps, designed in our primary font of Poppins. This better aligns our logo with the rest of our branding and website. Additionally, we’ve kept our brand icon, but have removed the gradient and made the icon & text monochromatic.

Our primary logo usage will be black on white or white on black, with variants that incorporate our secondary colors. The blocky, solid background of our new logo mimics caption frames. This abstract representation of our core product visually associates our brand with what we do; and while captioning is not all that we do, it’s what we’re known for.
 

 

Our customers are our favorite part about what we do: they are companies that value digital inclusion and push the boundaries of how accessibility can make video better every day. That’s not just awesome – that’s bold.
 
Our rebrand reflects our partnership in being bold with you; and in the interest of partnership, we wanted to transparently share our new brand identity with you. We hope you love it.

This blog post was written by Lily Bond, Vice President of Marketing at 3Play Media.

About the author

Lily Bond

The post Introducing Our New Brand Identity appeared first on 3Play Media.

Blog

---

• Industry Trends

Dog Training and Machine Learning: What They Have In Common

3Play Media

•

May 12, 2021

Although sometimes it seems we’re eerily close, machines haven’t replaced us yet. Yes, machines can make faster and more complex decisions, but it’s pretty easy to break one. Also, machines still can’t process logic that they haven’t been taught.

Try out some unexpected questions on your favorite voice assistant. A 2018 study found that Amazon’s Alexa was answering just over 50 percent of questions it was asked and 80 percent of those were correct. Amazon started crowdsourcing answers for Alexa from users in 2018, and in 2019, answer quantity went up, while measured quality took a more subjective turn. One user responded to the question “How do dolphins breed?” with “Dolphins are mammals and breathe with the lungs,” presumably assuming “breed” was meant to be “breathe.” 

Andrew Ng recently affirmed that machine learning models may shine on curated test sets yet struggle on applications beyond a controlled environment.  “So even though at a moment in time, on a specific data set, we can show this works, the clinical reality is that these models still need a lot of work to reach production… All of AI, not just healthcare, has a proof-of-concept-to-production gap,” Ng says. 

Training Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) can’t teach itself yet – and a recent article from the Harvard Business Review asserts that the secret to AI is people, seemingly underscoring Ng’s point with a similar theme. From personal experience, including a recent tour in adtech and now the video accessibility tech world, this rings true. Both solution spaces are highly dependent on AI – specifically machine learning  – to offer value at scale. Machine learning (ML) applications in adtech include optimization of media and consumer pairings, identity, fraud detection and audience propensity, to name a few. All require training or a “truth set”.

Machine learning applications in video accessibility are equally diverse, with the obvious use being automated speech recognition (ASR). 3Play incorporates machine learning in a myriad of processes, including determining expected transcription job difficulty, likely errors in a transcript, and automated training of customer-specific language modeling with continuously updated truth sets. 3Play has been been training this process for 13 years, which starts to explain our position as the premium service provider in the captioning and video accessibility space. 

Allow me to expand on the “secret to AI is people”, especially regarding transcription. Training in any capacity (whether it be training machine learning, training a new puppy, or training for a marathon) isn’t always easy. Just this morning, in fact, my dog, Fluffy, chewed up a new carpet in my dining room. No kidding. I needed to take the opportunity to teach Fluffy that chewing on the carpet is not appreciated, in hopes he might be discouraged. This, in theory, is not so different from training AI. If AI mangles an accented speaker’s dialogue, or struggles through obscure or specific terminology, a training set must be updated for that model to learn and handle similar challenges in the future. The fuller and better quality the training set, the more effectively the model learns.

3Play Media & Artificial Intelligence

As you may or may not know, 3Play transcription has refined the same fundamental process for caption production since 2008. Automated Speech Recognition (ASR), and especially 3Play’s application of ASR, has since significantly improved, in part because we’ve directly trained it and in part because we’ve augmented general ASR training with customer specific mappings of common corrections via bespoke and proprietary post-ASR process models.

Running automation on files to produce text is easy – that’s why AI generated captions are cheap, sometimes free, and worth every cent.

Training machine learning models correctly is hard and expensive – just like training a puppy. That’s why you should care that 3Play patented our editing training and contractor processes. Not just because we’ve been doing it longer (we have) and are objectively, consistently producing the highest accuracy output (we are), but because both the volume and quality of human edited training corrections matters. That dolphins don’t breed with their lungs feels like a detail we’ll want right in captions that reflect directly on our brand, school or program. While 3Play Media is detecting words (and not pneumonia) in captioning content that teaches people critical skills, including perhaps how to detect pneumonia; you probably don’t want to be on the receiving end of someone who had bad captions on that lesson. Accuracy matters. 

3Play invented the original hybrid machine-human transcription process in 2008, utilizing automatic speech recognition (ASR) and AI, with editing, and quality assurance (QA) review. We’ve filed multiple patents yearly describing this process and enhancements to it from 2011 to 2021, and we remain busy. The rise of the marketplace model enabled 3Play to articulate and file a patent application for our contractor job market in 2011. Our contractors, along with 3Play technology, have been training our technology driven process to improve each year for 13 years. That’s 5 years earlier than most newer market entrants began developing a product. 

Improving on 99.6% average transcript accuracy is challenging. 3Play devotes an entire third of our process to raise transcript accuracy from 98% to 99.6%, and we’re currently running multiple machine learning models and tooling experiments to push it higher. The last .4% can be subjective, trivial, or could just be a formatting preference as language and communication continue to evolve. A machine alone won’t get us all the way there, just as dogs won’t train themselves anytime soon, but we should expect the right tech-enabled processes to continue making real gains.

This blog post was written by John Slocum, Vice President of Product at 3Play Media.

—

About the author

3Play Media

The post Dog Training and Machine Learning: What They Have In Common appeared first on 3Play Media.

Blog

---

• Captioning

The Best Online Transcription Jobs

Elisa Lewis

•

March 24, 2021

Millions of Americans got to experience working from home during the pandemic. As many can now attest to, there are a number of benefits and a lot more flexibility when working remotely. When set up successfully, online work has many benefits, including less time commuting, increased productivity, money saved, greater job satisfaction, and more time for health fitness, and family, to name a few. We have good news – working from home doesn’t have to end when the pandemic ends!

There are many online jobs you can get started with right now, including work from home transcription jobs. Online transcription jobs offer all of the flexibility and benefits of remote work, plus they make a big difference in creating a more equal and accessible world and web. That’s right – you can help make video content accessible – with online transcription work right from the comfort of your home (or wherever you choose to work!)

What online transcription jobs entail

As a transcriptionist, you will work to edit transcripts from video and audio files. At 3Play Media, our innovative approach to captioning is what truly sets us apart from other video accessibility services. Leveraging technology in combination with human editing means that our transcript editors play a crucial role in making our company who we are. After running our files through state-of-the-art automatic speech recognition technology, our transcription editors work diligently to clean up the automatically generated transcript, to provide the most accurate and accessible captions possible. 

Online transcription jobs are perfect for those who are seeking complete control of their schedule, weekly paychecks, and the flexibility of a work from home job. If that sounds good to you, you can apply for a transcription job today!

Requirements for online transcription jobs

For transcription jobs, you will need a computer and a strong network connection. A good pair of headphones is also strongly recommended, particularly if there are others in your home working remotely.

Transcription jobs with 3Play Media

We may be biased, but we think that transcribing for 3Play Media is one of the best online transcription jobs you can find! Firstly, this is transcription work that makes a difference.

As a transcript editor at 3Play Media, you’re also valued, can learn something new, and will make fair money. We know that humans are a necessity for creating high quality captioning, so we believe strongly that we should treat those humans ethically and pay them fairly.

Fair pay can speak volumes when it comes to showing appreciation and respect for the work our editors put in. Our editors seem to agree, and think that we are doing a great job:  “The pay is phenomenal and the upper management seems to know what they are doing more so than other companies.” 

 Perks of Being a 3Play Media Transcriptionist:  

What our transcript editors say

Our transcript editors do a ton behind-the-scenes, but that shouldn’t stop them from getting the spotlight! Without our hard-working and diverse group of editors, we couldn’t do what we do. That’s why, every year we make sure to take time to hear from our editors directly and find out how they feel about working for 3Play Media. We’re proud to consistently receive positive feedback from our editors, and to know that our editors truly love working at 3Play Media.

Some of the things our editors love about online transcription work with 3Play are:

• The flexibility
• The 3Play staff
• The content they transcribe

One editor shared,  “It’s genuinely fun to transcribe much of the content, and I’ve learned a little about so many different topics.” 

“I am a single mother to a beautiful 16 month old boy. 3Play allows me to earn extra income above and beyond my salary so I can afford the best things for my son and can afford to send him to the best childcare center.”⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
-Niki B., Minnesota
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Whether you’re looking to earn an extra income, make the world a bit more accessible, create your own schedule, or work from home, online transcription jobs could be right for you! Apply to transcribe with 3Play today.

About the author

Elisa Lewis

Elisa Lewis is a Senior Marketing Manager at 3Play Media, where she leads content and brand strategy. She is passionate about accessibility, storytelling, and building connections through communication.

The post The Best Online Transcription Jobs appeared first on 3Play Media.

Blog

---

• Captioning

Perks of Being a 3Play Transcriptionist

3Play Media

•

October 8, 2020

3Play transcriptionists are the best transcribers in the world (just ask our customers!).

Working as a 3Play transcriptionist has many perks. Many of our editors tell us they love working with 3Play because they love working from home, learning from the videos they edit, and having the freedom of setting their own hours.

There are many perks to working as a 3Play transcriptionist. Read on to uncover the benefits.

Apply to be a 3Play Transcriptionist

Work from Home as a Transcriptionist

One of the best perks of working as a 3Play transcriptionist is you get to work right from the comfort of your home. Whether you choose to work from your couch, bed, or cozy home office, all you really need is a strong WiFi connection and a computer.

Many of our transcriptionists are stay-at-home parents, caretakers, or entrepreneurs and working at 3Play gives them the flexibility to earn extra cash while focusing on what matters most to them.

Working as a transcriptionist also accommodates a nomadic lifestyle. As one of our contractors Jeremy notes, “I am very thankful that no matter where I go, I always have work as long as there is internet access.”

If you are looking for a work from home side hustle, then 3Play may be the perfect gig for you.

Set Your Own Schedule

Unlike a regular 9-5 job, the 3Play marketplace is open 24/7, which gives you the liberty to decide when you want to work (and for how long).

3Play transcriptionists have full control of their schedule. There are no minimums to meet – instead, you set your own flexible schedule. As Daniel a 3Play transcriber notes, “3Play is perfect because I am able to work when I can, and cut back when I can’t.”

Many of our transcriptionists have irregular schedules, so being able to work weekends or nights fits well with their lifestyles.

Get a Weekly Paycheck

As a 3Play transcriptionist, you receive a paycheck on a weekly basis. Every paycheck will reflect your work for the week, which means you can keep track of your earning goals.

A weekly paycheck also gives you more flexibility in your budgeting. If you work other jobs that pay on a biweekly or monthly basis, you can always count on your transcription paycheck to help meet urgent financial needs.

Or, if you need extra income for impromptu purchases, your weekly paycheck can help contribute. Bridget, a 3Play transcriptionist, notes, “I am really excited that I will have more money for Christmas presents this year.”

Furthermore, we are committed to providing our transcribers with fair wages. Humans are a necessity for creating high quality captioning, so we believe strongly that we should treat those humans ethically and pay them fairly.

Always Be Learning

The 3Play marketplace is full of videos and audio content from a wide range of topics. We serve over 10,000 customers across multiple industries, which means you’ll find videos from prominent universities to big media networks to large enterprises.

Many of our transcriptionists note that one of their favorite parts of the job is the wide variety of topics they get to transcribe. The marketplace is constantly changing, which means you can learn something new every day. Magan notes, “If I had the ability to do anything in the world, it would just be to go to school for the rest of my life and learn new things and never work. This is as close as I can get to that.”

As a 3Play transcriptionist, you get to choose which files you want to work on. You can decide to stay within your area of expertise or branch out to new and unfamiliar territories.

At 3Play, you choose your next adventure.

Help Make the World a Little More Accessible

3Play’s mission is to make web video widely accessible. We believe that accessibility matters and that the impact of accessibility is universal. As a transcriptionist, you are directly contributing to the accessibility of millions of videos for the deaf and hard of hearing communities across the world.

How to Apply to be a 3Play Transcriptionist

If you love the sound of getting to work from home, having a flexible schedule, and contributing to making the internet a more accessible place, then we encourage you to apply to transcribe for 3Play!

You don’t need to have experience transcribing, but you do need to be willing to learn.

Strong candidates will be able to work independently, invest time in learning captioning standards, and refresh their knowledge of English grammar and punctuation.

If you are ready to apply, you can get started with the first step of the application right away. If you have any questions about the job, please contact us.

About the author

3Play Media

The post Perks of Being a 3Play Transcriptionist appeared first on 3Play Media.

Blog

---

• Captioning

How 3Play Media Utilizes AI Technology for Captioning

3Play Media

•

July 30, 2020

Artificial intelligence (AI technology) makes it possible for machines to learn from experience, adjust to new inputs, and perform human-like tasks.

At 3Play, AI technology plays an integral part in improving the efficiency and accuracy of the captioning process. Our 3-step process combines artificial intelligence and human editing to maximize efficiency and optimize our process.

Regardless of audio difficulty or file size, we guarantee a 99% accuracy rate on all files.

Download the State of Automatic Speech Recognition Report

3Play Media & AI Technology

Since the beginning, 3Play has been utilizing AI technology through the use of Automated Speech Recognition (ASR). ASR is the first step in our patent-pending 3-step captioning process. ASR converts the spoken words in a video or audio into computerized text.

As you upload more content into our account system for captioning, the ASR improves through machine learning. Machine learning is a system that allows machines to learn from outputs from previous experience.

Through AI technology we are able to speed up the editing process to offer faster turnaround options, decrease costs for high-quality captioning, and precisely synchronize timestamps to spoken audio.

3Play Media’s Highly Accurate ASR Solution

In a comprehensive analysis between ASR technologies in the industry, 3Play Media’s engine performed significantly higher than ASR engines like IBM Watson, Rev’s Temi, Google, and Trint.

Despite audio that was filled with low volume, accents, and complicated terminology, 3Play’s engine averaged an accuracy rate of 90.91% for ASR only. In contrast, engines like Watson, Google, and Temi averaged between 80% – 89% accuracy in ASR only.

Utilizing ASR and Humans for Higher Accuracy

When it comes to ASR in captioning, there are limitations to the quality of the output of spoken text due to the long-form nature of the content. Therefore, humans are an essential part of a highly-accurate, efficient, and cost-effective captioning process.

Artificial intelligence can generate a transcript with an accuracy rate between 80%-90%. An accuracy rate of 99% is imperative to the comprehension of the closed captions. ASR often misses speaker ids, punctuation and grammar, non-speech elements, [INAUDIBLE] tags, and many more critical components of accurate captions.

At 3Play Media, we guarantee at least a 99% accuracy rate on all your files. Our process directly impacts the accuracy of your files. After ASR, every file is put through two rounds of human editing and review.

  Read the blog: Artificial Intelligence Is Good, but Is It Good Enough for Captions? 

How is 3Play Different from the Competition?

At 3Play, we are constantly innovating our features and services. Technology has allowed us to remain the best video accessibility service on the market.

1. Best in-class AI technology: Our ASR engine outperforms other engines on the market, even in cases of low quality audio.
2. Customer-specific learning: Our ASR engine learns from the files you upload and continuously improves.
3. Our three step process: Our three-step process was created to ensure maximum efficiency and quality. We use a mix of automatic speech recognition (ASR) and human editing to speed up the process and ensure our editors focus on the quality of the transcript.
4. Word-for-Word Synchronization: To ensure maximum accuracy and completeness, we timecode you files based on each spoken word. No other vendor offers this.
5. Ability to upload wordlists: For our live automatic captioning solution, you can upload wordlist to rapidly improve the quality of the ASR.
6. Consistent Accuracy with Every File: Regardless of how long your file is, or even how many files you upload, we always guarantee a 99% accuracy. With other captioning vendors, accuracy rates tend to crumble the longer the file.

About the author

3Play Media

The post How 3Play Media Utilizes AI Technology for Captioning appeared first on 3Play Media.