This version has been successfully used by it’s creator. Others are encouraged to play around with it, but it should be considered unstable and not for production use.
This post contains version notes, bug reports and versions for the noted version. Feel free to leave comments detailing bugs or features that you think would be nice. I will add them, then cross them out as they are taken care of.
Version Notes:
v1.2 (on dev)
- Started 2009-02-21
v1.1
- Started 2009-02-21
- Added some info to the “what” section on the start page.
- Squashed a few more bug that were ticking me off.\
- Added analytic code. Will help me see how people use the service before developing the save/revision system.
v1.0
- Started 2009-02-20
- Created, exported and uploaded YouTube .sub transcript successfully!
- Still many bugs that will trip people up
Bug Reports
- DFXP uses 10min as default end time (total hack). Other end times suck too.
- Video does not start in Safari? WTF? Maybe I just need to get some sleep.
Feature Requests
- Ability to add end time (though still hidden by default)
- Ability to add speaker name (also hidden by default)
- Edit style options (only really useful for DFXP export)
- Autosize text areas in table.
- Add play options (hidden by default): play on add (default on), Prestart seconds (default 1), Loop (default off - should work well with prestart).
- Make add/remove/split/sort into icons (will clean up interface some).
- Don’t allow improper timecodes.
- Don’t allow duplicate timecodes.
- Split on double return (like magpie).
- Add “how to” to start page.
- Upload/Save/Autosave
- Test in other browsers!
- Universal access keys (thanks Melany!)
- Time spinner like this (Thanks Ken!)
- Add option to grab end time, rather then start time (Thanks Ken!)
- export to .srt (thanks emarg0ed)
I was wondering if you could add a keyboard shortcut to pause the video, maybe using the F# function key. So you don’t have to use your mouse to pause the video.
Looking good otherwise!
-Melany-
@Melany,
When in the video focus, you can use the standard youtube access keys. For instance “spacebar” should pause/play.
However, it would also be nice to be able to pause play while editing the grid. I will add “universal access keys” to the list. Thanks!
@Melany,
When in the video focus, you can use the standard youtube access keys. For instance “spacebar” should pause/play.
However, it would also be nice to be able to pause play while editing the grid. I will add “universal access keys” to the list. Thanks!
Excellent tool which is enjoyable simple to start off with and taught me to do CC. Can’t wait for your improvements…
How’s new development coming?
Some more suggestions:
1. You should be grabbing end times rather than start times. If I hit enter to place the caption I am actually at the *end* of the phrase I’ve just heard. Maybe write the start time when the user hit the space-bar/play, to start playback again. Right now, you have to go back through and adjust all of the times.
2. Make the caption line two rows–a Ctrl + Enter goes to the second row, an Enter does as now, places the captions. And allow the editable boxes to accommodate two rows. YouTube should accommodate two lines. (The subviewer spec. allows for [br] to be on a line as a break and I believe if you go with SubRip you can just break the line.)
3. The “loop” suggestion is definitely needed for this app to be truly practical. My recommendation would be to have it loop back to the previous end time and play forward from there. Ctrl + Space seems like a good key combo: Space for resuming play, Ctrl + Space for loop, Ctrl + Enter to add second caption line for a chunk, Enter commits the chunk.
If you haven’t seen it already, the folks at accessify have this, which works much like Magpie: http://accessify.com/tools-and-wizards/accessibility-tools/easy-youtube-caption-creator/. Your service has the advantage of allowing the person to have a single place to get record the transcript and caption simultaneously. But the accessify thing is quite useful.
Best,
k
@Ken,
I have updates in the works that should be live later this week. Specifically, I have been working on the loop - since, as you say, it really is needed to be practical. The code will also be cleaned up and optimized.
And for the specifics:
1. I agree. This will be an option soon.
2. Two line captions? Why not just split it into 2 sequential captions? YouTube will automagically break long captions into multiple lines. Maybe I am missing the intention…
I did not know about ‘accessify’, but it looks like a good alternative to magpie. However, I think we can still do better
My goal is to make captioning so easy that people won’t have an excuse.
Hi Gabriel,
RE: two line captions: Often it’s the case where there are brief interchanges between speakers and you want something like:
Jim: Hi.
Bill: Howdy, Jim.
And you don’t want it broken over two pop-ons because readability is negatively affected.
Also, when you have relatively long spoken instances, it is a plus for usability/readability if you can control line breaks, so that each line is semantically complete within a single pop-on/chunk–your not splitting infinitives, ending lines with prepositions, etc.
I experimented and YouTube is not supporting either hard returns or [br] (or any variant) within the SubViewer file to produce a manual break.
However, if you use SubRip instead, hard line breaks are accepted. I urge you to consider going with SubRip over Subviewer–the syntax is very close and it shouldn’t be a big change in terms of your backend.
If you try this, in Subviewer:
00:00:02.23
Jim: Hi.
Bill: Howdy, Jim.
YouTube sticks it all on one line. But with SubRip:
3
00:00:02,23 –> 00:00:04,34
Jim: Hi.
Bill: Howdy, Jim.
YouTube will accept and properly render out the break. For the end user, the effect is preferable.
Cheers,
k