Explanation
BACKGROUND:
This ordinance authorizes the Director of the Department of Technology to enter into contract with iVideo Technologies, LLC for the procurement and implementation of the Link ACE-2200 automated closed caption services for the City of Columbus, CTV media services operation in the amount of $72,105.00. First year expenditure includes one-time purchase of hardware and software with one year warranty and shipping cost- $65,350.00, associated equipment - $785.00, and installation services - $5,970.00. Subject to mutual agreement and approval of proper city authorities, hardware and software maintenance and support is available for another four (4) years under this contract at a cost of $7,000.00 per year. The term period will be one year from the date of a purchase order confirmed/certified by the Columbus City Auditor’s office. The total amount being requested under this ordinance is $72,105.00.
The move from manual closed captioning services currently (out-sourced) to an (in-house) automated system will allow CTV media services to meet federal captioning requirements for all original government programming, provide enhanced services to residents, including translation to Spanish, and provide the City a return on the investment during its third year of implementation.
The ACE automated captioning equipment will receive audio containing speech and send out captioning data to be encoded by a closed captioning encoder. The unit uses a cutting-edge computational linguistics program to convert speech to text and then sends that text out with captioning data. The captioning data and text can be sent out by either RS 232 (serial) or TCP/IP.
The Department of Technology procured this equipment and service in 2019 through formal Request for Proposal (RFP) RFQ012127 published on April 11 and opened on May 2, 2019. Three vendors responded to the RFP. One proposal from Quick Caption, was deemed by the review committee to be non-responsive. Th...
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