Frequently Asked Questions

You must first determine the method of communication between the iCap software and the writer software.

This will depend upon whether your writer software is running on the same PC as iCap, in which case the two pieces of software are communicating using a software serial port, or your writer software is running on a different PC than iCap, in which case communication is using a hardware serial port. Details regarding initial configuration is available in the manual, I will not go into further detail on this here. At this point, the configuration of the iCap serial port and the profile saved in the writer software should be correct.

Here is the procedure for using the “Test Serial Port” window:
STEP 1: From a clean system start, meaning that neither the iCap software or the writer software is currently running, launch the iCap software.
STEP 2: In the iCap client software, from the “Window” menu, select “Always On Top”. This will keep the iCap software visible even after you open your captioning software.
STEP 3: In the iCap client software, from the “Tools” menu, select “Test Serial Port” which will open the “Test Serial Port Settings” window.
STEP 4: Launch your writer software. Select the correct profile for iCap.
STEP 5: Begin writing. If the serial ports are configured correctly you should see the raw caption data in the “Test Serial Port” window (some of which may look like black
rectangles since some caption data cannot be represented by printing characters). If you do not see any data in the “Test Serial Port” window, refer to page 10 of the Troubleshooting section of the attached manual. Also verify your settings using Section 3, page 11 – Configuring Your Captioning Software to Use iCap.

Here is the procedure for logging into the EEG test encoder:
STEP 1: From a clean system start, meaning that neither the iCap software or the captioning software is currently running, launch the iCap software.
STEP 2: In the iCap client software, from the “Window” menu, select “Always On Top”.
This will keep the iCap software visible even after you open your captioning software.
STEP 3: In the “Access Code” box in iCap, enter “eegtest” (without the quotes and lower case) and click the “Connect” button. If you hear program audio and see captions in the monitor window then you know that you are connected to the encoder. If you enter an invalid Access Code you will see “Access Not Found” in the “Server Status” window. Reenter the Access Code and click “Connect”. If you are connected to the encoder you should see the message “SERVER (TIME) User Name has joined captionsolutions eegtest” in the chat window. The “Server Status” window should display “Connected”.
STEP 4: Click on the “Start” button to begin captioning. You should see the message “SERVER (TIME) User Name is captioning”.
STEP 5: Launch your captioning software. Select the correct profile for iCap.
STEP 6: Begin writing. In order to differentiate between the upstream captions already existing on the show and your captions, you can change the case of your data to contrast
the existing data. For example, if the existing captions are all uppercase, you can change your case to lower. This way when you see the captions in the iCap window you will
know that you are the source of the data.
STEP 7: When you have completed testing, send the blank and pass command from your writer software as usual to turn upstream captions back on, then hit the “Stop” button.