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Context
Since its inception in 2016, franceinfo: live has been partially subtitled by france-tvaccess. a subsidiary of France Télévisions. 6 hours and 15 minutes divided as follows:
- 3 hours in the morning, from 6:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. on air
- 5 minutes during the afternoon newscast, also available in French Sign Language (2 p.m. weekdays, 3 p.m. weekends)
- 3 hours in the evening, from 9pm to midnight
In 2021, an automatic subtitling project has been prototyped, with the aim of completing the offer.
This project has been presented to deaf and hard-of-hearing associations. An experimental version was put online on the francetv•lab website during the summer of 2022, with an associated questionnaire to gather the opinions of future users of these subtitles.
The feedback from this survey was particularly positive, and following consultation with ARCOM and the CNCPH*, Delphine Ernotte-Cunci asked the Technology and Information Systems Department to industrialize the solution. It will be ready one year later, in November 2023.
Refurbishment work on the channel's broadcasting infrastructure was required at France Télévisions' master control room. Launched after the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, it was necessary to wait for the work to be completed before launching the solution.
*CNCPH: Conseil National Consultatif des Personnes Handicapées (National Advisory Council for the Disabled)
How does it work ?
The franceinfo: signal is sent to the MCAI* platform. Three micro-services are then operated:
- Transcription: transformation of the audio into a text file
- Subtitle formation: from the text file, create two-line calibrated subtitles.
- Encoding: create a stream of subtitles compatible with the broadcast.
These three steps take 14 seconds to complete, to give the AI time to ensure the best possible spelling and then to create 2-line subtitles.
The franceinfo signal is delayed by the same amount, so that the subtitles are perfectly synchronized with the image.
The entire process is triggered by the subtitle broadcast control room at france•tvstudio (a franceTV subsidiary) and supervised by the broadcast cockpit at France Télévisions' final control room.
This technological feat is made possible by the use of a set of scalable Data & AI microservices based on the ALIX program's Kubernetes technology. Subtitling is monitored live by ALIX Eyes Promethus / Grafana to guarantee the high availability of the infrastructures supporting the process.
This service offering is part of the ALIX Data program supported by France Télévisions' Transverse IT department. I'm proud that DaIA's technology will serve as the basis for automatic subtitling, and thus contribute to our shared public service mission.
Pauline Maury, Head of Data & AI at France Télévisions
In order to improve the service, franceinfo: continually enriches the transcription tool with the phonetics of new words (mainly proper nouns).
When we started this project in 2021 at DaIA, we had to rethink our AI platform to handle live feeds. Then we focused on making the AI service robust and resilient by bringing together the know-how of several experts in the Information Technologies and Systems Department. These automatic subtitles are particularly eagerly awaited by 3 million hearing-impaired people.
Matthieu Parmentier, who headed the DaIA (Data & Artificial Intelligence) department at France Télévisions before becoming director of france-tvaccess in April 2023.
*Media Cloud Artificial Intelligence is an open source platform developed by France Télévisions' Data & Artificial Intelligence department. It enables media to be manipulated in a Cloud environment using AI or conventional tools.
https://media-cloud.ai/blast.html
*ALIX : modernization program for services and technologies led by France Télévisions' Transverse IT department
The service
This means that 12 hours of automatic subtitling have been added to the 6 hours 15 already produced by france-tvaccess. All of this is synchronized with the picture, which is a comfort for users that was regrettably lacking until now.
For the time being, this service is exclusive to the france-tv platform (on the web, the app, iOS, Android and connected TV applications, as well as the france.tv universes present on certain ISP boxes). The service is not available on vectors where franceinfo: competes with other news channels, such as DTT, satellite and ISP boxes.
To activate the service, go to the audio and subtitles menu in the bottom right-hand corner of the franceinfo: video player. Two options are available:
French (automatic): AI-generated subtitles
French with the deaf and hard-of-hearing logo: subtitles produced by france-tvaccess in compliance with the ARCOM charter.
Automatic subtitles are not intended for the deaf, as many quality criteria are still lacking, such as color coding and reliable identification of the various speakers. Nevertheless, this is a first step towards accessibility, based above all on the long-awaited synchronization between subtitles and audio.
