TitleDriver Online offers two methods for broadcast of captions to your audience's wireless devices, and to devices running the application TitleDriver Access for use by the visually impaired, to comply with ADA requirements.
The Local (Local Area Network, aka your venue's WiFi system) server will be a paid monthly subscription at $60 per month, and will work best using a company-owned wireless access point, which will direct patrons' devices to connect your TitleDriver computer and which requires no internet access.
To broadcast to mobile devices via the internet, TitleDriver Online via Pusher.com is available to allow users to configure up to four channels of captions which are received by a lightweight (i.e. fast loading) HTML/Javascript page that you host on your company's website, and audience members are directed to the receiver page for the channel of their choice.
This method provides a fast and practically unlimited capacity to deliver titles in real time during performances. We provide the Online receiver (HTML/Javascript) page that you host on your company's website, and to which you direct your audience members at the URL of your choosing (e.g. "captions.yoursite.com"). Your audience members simply click on the link you provide, which opens in their web browser.
You configure a channel for use by entering a channel name in TitleDriver settings > Online > Pusher.com: Channel names. You will need to customize a version of the receiver page to 1) Connect to your designated channel name, 2) Display your desired connection message, and 3) The desired data center your channel will use. (This is known as an app cluster within pusher.com); and finally 4) The desired title for the user's browser window. Often (as on iOS devices) the browser window's title is generally hidden however.
Configuring TitleDriver Online via the internet:
using the services of a third party to deliver live captions data to your audience's phones via the internet using the cellular network, and/or also a company-provided WiFi network that gives internet access to the public.
In TitleDriver settings > Online > Pusher.com tab, you will enter a base URL and an authorization code, which you will receive when you pay for your company's first monthly fee. Determine a channel name for each channel you will be implementing, which correspond to the four columns of TitleDriver streams A, B, C and D.
Please contact Tod for assistance setting up this service, which is available for $100 per month.
Web connection pricing: The entry level plan at $100 per month has limits of 500 concurrent connections and a total of 1 million messages per day. And so, if you did have 500 connected audience members for a performance, then each title sent would require 500 messages. That gives us a limit of 2,000 titles per day (at that hypothetical maximum audience).
In the event that a limit is exceeded, new connections would be refused until your account is upgraded. The next tier limits are 2,000 connections and 4 million messages per day, which would cost $200 monthly.
About the connection greeting message:
The connection greeting message that audience members will see as soon as their browser window opens (and is user customizable) is a confirmation that your client has connected to the service sucessfully. If a client only sees a black screen and no connection message, then they are probably not connected to the internet. But also note, seeing an indication of being connected to pusher.com is not an indcation that any TitleDriver computer acting as transmitter is connected.
About lag or delay using TitleDriver Online for the web:
The relay service that pusher.com provides has an inherent delay of the first title you send. It takes about ten seconds for a channel to push the first message you transmit from TitleDriver to connected clients. Also there appears to be a timeout or idle-time spin-down which automatically idles connections if you do not send a message for a period of about five minutes. After such a timeout users will experience the same roughly ten second lag in the first title sent in the next sequence. In other words, make sure you don't have any pauses longer than five minutes in the course of your performance, and your service will not 'spin down.'
–If your company relies on the cellular network to provide your audience's connections to the internet, your venue's location may or may not be in an area that can service an audience of more than a few connected clients without clients randomly experiencing delays due to the limited capacity of your nearby phone cellular transciever.
TitleDriver's Online monitor window:
In TitleDriver, go to Window menu>LiveTitles monitor to view or hide the Online monitor window. There you can see the status of TitleDriver's outgoing connections, and view a small representation of each title window. Text does not fade up and down in the monitor window. To view the output monitors for columns B, C and D, click on the small triangle button on the left of the window. The green "TCP •" field shows the number of Online receiver clients who have connected via TCP.
Using Online receiver apps on a local network:
You may have a large number of simultaneously connected audience members using their wireless devices. While the limit is arbitrarily set at 255, the number of simultaneously connected clients will be practically limited by your wireless network infrastructure. Your company needs to provide wireless access points and a WiFi network specifically for delivering supertitles to your audience, to which they will connect.
Configure your TitleDriver computer to connect to the special network (preferably via a wired connection) in the Online tab of TitleDriver's Settings window. Direct your audience members to the network you have configured. The special network does not need to be password protected because it is (typically) not connected to the internet, and will only be used by audience members to receive captions data.
The TitleDriver computer should be configured with a static IP address (i.e. not dynamically changeable via DHCP). The WiFi access point should be capable of automatic forwarding new connections, or the captive portal function, which automatically directs each device that connects to the network to your designated TitleDriver computer (using its IP address, port 8080). Configuration of your special network's WiFi access points and DNS/DHCP server may require consultation with a network engineer to configure properly.
TitleDriver Access
The receiver application TitleDriver Access is intended for installation on company- or venue-owned devices, giving your patrons access to a vision impared view (control text size, contrast, and reading speed), text-to-speech function, and the standard titles view including automatic translation into any of the 55 Google Translate languages. TitleDriver Access is available for MacOS (and eventually for Windows).
In the upper right corner of every Access window is a small status dot that should turn green upon successful connection. When troubleshooting connection problems, use TitleDriver Access File menu>Monitor connection command to keep that red/green connection monitor dot visible.