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A history of closed captioning and a comparison of online caption editors. For my presentation at Refresh DC on June 16, 2011.
Citation preview
Video Captioning on
the Web
Russell Heimlich
★ Sole developer at the Pew Research Center
★ Creator of dummyimage.com
★ Frontend and Backend Developer
★ I care about accessibility
What Are Video Captions?
“Captions are text versions of the spoken word allowing the content of web audio and video to be accessible to those who
do not have access to audio.”– WebAim.org
What Are Video Captions?
★ You know them as the text on the bottom
Captions vs. Subtitles
★ Captions are a transcript of the audio and key
sound effects for deaf viewers.
★ Subtitles are translations of the audio in another
language for hearing viewers.
★ http://joeclark.org/appearances/AEA/2007/
Open Captions vs. Closed Captions
★ Open captions are burned in to the video and
always on the screen.
★ Closed captions can be turned on or off and are
independent of the video.
Open Captions vs. Closed Captions
★ Open captions are like a flattened image
★ Closed captions are like Photoshop layers
Who Benefits from Captions?
★ Deaf viewers
★ Hard of hearing
★ Second language learners
★ Anyone watching TV in a noisy environment
★ Machines (online)
The History of CaptionsHow we got to where we are today...
PBS’ French Chef (1972)
★ First television program that was accessible to
deaf and hard of hearing viewers.
★ Used “Open” Captions (burned onto the video)
★ Source: http://www.ncicap.org/caphist.asp
Closed Captioning
★ First demonstrated in 1971 at a Hearing
Impaired conference in Nashville.
★ 2nd Demo at Gallaudet College (now Gallaudet
University) on February 15, 1972.
★ PBS station WETA broadcasted the first closed
captioned programming in 1973.
The Early Years of Closed Captioning
★ Real-time closed captioning wasn’t available
until 1982.
★ A separate set-top box was needed to decode
Television Decoder Circuitry Act of 1990
★ Gave FCC power to enact rules on the
implementation of Closed Captioning.
★ Required screens 13” or greater to have built-in
chip to display closed captions.
★ Enforced on July 1st, 1993
1990 Americans with Disabilities Act
★ Ensures equal opportunity for persons with
disabilities
★ Public facilities (excluding movie theaters) had
to provide access to verbal information on
televisions, films or slide shows
Telecommunications Act of 1996
Requires people or companies that distribute television programs directly to home viewers to make sure those programs are captioned by January 1, 1998.
Source: National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders
21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010
★ Requires broadcasters to provide captioning for
television programs redistributed on the web.
★ Source: Bill H.R. 3101
How Do I Caption My
Online Videos?
By Online I Really Mean YouTube
★ YouTube receives 48 hours of video a minute
★ 3 Billion views a day!
★ According to ComScore, as of April 2011,
YouTube is the top online video property.
★ Source: YouTube Blog & ComScore
In other words...
Paid Captioning ServicesFor those with more money than time
Vitac.com
★ $7.50 / video minute
★ $75 minimum
VideoTranscription.net
★ $3 / video minute
★ Done by humans
SpeakerText.com
★ $2 / video minute
★ Machine / Human Analysis
Do It Yourself ToolsFor those with more time than money
Overstream.net
yt-subs.appspot.com
Subtitle-Horse.com
CaptionTube.appspot.com
WikiCaptions.org
UniversalSubtitles.org
What about YouTube itself?
Adding Captions Screen
Upload Your Own
★ Supports SubViewer (.sub) and SubRip (.srt)
★ YouTube has it’s own similar format called SBV
★ Any of these can be created in a text editor
★ YouTube will convert it to SBV for you!
SubViewer (.sub) Format
{Start frame}{End frame}Text ( | = line break )
{1471}{1538}..and the continuance|of their parents' rage,...{1540}{1634}..which, but their children's end,|nought could remove,...{1636}{1702}..is now the two hours' traffic|of our stage.
SubRip (.srt) Format
Subtitle NumberStart time --> End time (HH:MM:SS,milliseconds)Text (one or more lines)Blank line
100:00:20,000 --> 00:00:24,400Altocumulus clouds occur between six thousand
200:00:24,600 --> 00:00:27,800and twenty thousand feet above ground level.
YouTube’s SBV Format
Start time, End time (H:MM:SS.milliseconds)Text (one or more lines)
0:00:03.490,0:00:07.430>> FISHER: All right. So, let's begin.This session is: Going Social
0:00:07.430,0:00:11.600with the YouTube APIs. I am Jeff Fisher,
0:00:14.009,0:00:15.889[pause]
Upload A Transcript
★ No timecode? No problem.
★ Upload a transcription and YouTube will sync it
to the video automatically
★ English and Japanese Only
Automatic Transcriptions
★ Uses speech recognition to auto-caption video
★ Same quality as Google Voice Transcriptions
★ Manually Started (could take a few days)
★ Source: googlesystem.blogspot.com
YouTube Captions Fail
Auto-translate Captions From the Player
★ Machine translation available on the fly.
YouTube Caption Limitations
★ You can only add captions to your own videos!
★ Poor audio quality = poor caption quality
★ Caption data only available via API to
logged-in users
Other YouTube Caption Tricks
★ Add ,cc to any search to show only captioned
videos
★ In the player, press...
+ to increase font
- to decrese
B or b to toggle caption background
★ Captions are repositionable (YouTube.com only)
To sum things up...
★ Video captions are important
★ Plenty of services to do caption videos for you
★ Not a lot of good tools available
★ Tedious to create captions from scratch today
★ YouTube is easier/cheap way to caption videos
One More Thing...
Demo of VidCapper.com
The End. Questions?
★ Follow @kingkool68
★ Follow @VidCapper and VidCapper.com
★ Accessibility DC Meetup June 21, MLK Library
★ Accessibility Camp DC, October 22
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