Comments on: Crowdsourcing YouTube Video Captioning

By: Melian

Melian — Fri, 21 May 2010 15:17:56 +0000

Hi!!! Anyone know how to display text plus icons using DFXP??

Wendy

By: Martin Kliehm

Martin Kliehm — Fri, 08 May 2009 14:55:37 +0000

@CC, YouTube says:

Although you can upload your captions/subtitles in any format, only supported formats will be displayed properly on the playback page.

I haven’t tried it recently, but the text implies it might or might not work…

By: CC

CC — Fri, 08 May 2009 14:42:36 +0000

Has anyone recently tried uploading a DFXP file to YouTube? It seems to accept it.

By: Karen Putz

Karen Putz — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 13:46:51 +0000

Just wanted to pop in here and say "thanks" for all your efforts in making the web accessible. Nothing is more frustrating to me than to come across a video, audio or podcast that I want to access and having the door slam shut. I look forward to the day when everything, everywhere on the 'net is accessible.

By: jj

jj — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:12:17 +0000

the .srt files for subtitles used in movies you can get from “the dark side of the net” are dead simple. Online video players would just need to parse the text according to the timestamp — as desktop video players already do (VLC, QuickTime player, etc)

By: Javier

Javier — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 22:05:26 +0000

The editor at TubeCaption is completely in Javascript. TubeCaption allows users to add captions to any YouTube video. It uses a timeline with tracks were you can add your captions as if you were using software like adobe premier. The editor is all in javascript only the player is in flash.

Check it out and let us know what you think.

By: Bill

Bill — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:58:15 +0000

Excellent.

I Voted!

By: Bill Shackleton

Bill Shackleton — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 18:19:23 +0000

Thank you for this post, Martin.

I am with you 100% on the idea of crowdsourcing this functionality. Think wikipedia collaboration for accessifying that part of the web that requires the human touch. IBM’s Social Accessibility Project seems to be heading in this direction for providing needed ALT-text for images (http://services.alphaworks.ibm.com/socialaccessibility/).

I think that although much could be accomplished by getting the key organizations onboard (YouTube, Google), they shouldn’t, and don’t need to be, barriers to this effort. Don, you seem to be suggesting a way that would enable the independent development of the video and captioning (design-time) in a way that could integrate during run-time. I think that’s the key.

Have there been any developments since you made this post Martin? I’d like to explore hosting a way for volunteers to provide captions, and users to be able to request and enjoy captioned videos.

Cheers

Bill

By: Don Rideaux-Crenshaw

Don Rideaux-Crenshaw — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 13:58:25 +0000

I'm working in my spare time on creating a dfxp parser and tying it into the Google API to create a player that can read the dfxp file, get the timecode from the api and display the text in an "open caption" box.

In concept it's pretty simple. Use javascript to read the captioning text and begin/end times into an array. Grab the playhead position, search the array and use innerHTML on a span to display the caption text associated with the current time. Style information could also be incorporated. I've built similar things in the past in actionscript as part of custom flash video players. In that case, I wrote my own XML data island so I could focus on solving the problem at hand, not on a more general approach.

If the project comes to fruition, I'll make the javascript widely available. Then yes, anyone could embed a YouTube video on their site, point the script at their dfxp file, and be rocking and rolling. Alternative dfxp files could give "subtitles" in alternative languages, etc.

As time permits, I'm taking the first step learning how to parse the dfxp and building the parser. Anyone with a javascript dxfp parser they'd like to donate to the cause, email me at dgcrenshaw at comcast dot net. Once I get a little traction on this project, I'll put a page up on my site to support it.

By: Martin Kliehm

Martin Kliehm — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 13:10:29 +0000

OK, I get what’s the advantage of the Google API concerning third party players. Nevertheless Google or Yahoo could pimp their players, and millions of users would benefit from it. That’s my whole suggestion.