KerryJ's Neotenous Tech

Archive for the ‘video’ Category

YouTube’s Close Captioning results in word salad – but it’s easy to fix. Here is a pictorial on it – it’s not pretty, but hope it’s useful. Needed to do this in a hurry:

Step 1: Run Captions, let YouTube do its thing. When finished, play again and see result. Click Edit Captions and Subtitles.


Step 2:  Click The pencil to view the machine transcription



Step 3: I don’t bother editing here – I like to edit in my own software. Click the download button.


Step 3b. Download and save the SVB file.

Step 4. Edit the file in a plain text editing program like Notepad or  I use Notepad ++. Save it.


Step 5: Upload your file 

and name it

Step 6: Disable the YouTube word salad track

Done!

Step 7: Tweak colours and backgrounds

I love the new video tweaking/editing functions on YouTube.

Today I produced a tutorial on how to configure a headset with microphone on Windows 7 because I couldn’t find any out there and our students need support in this.

I created the video with no sound, uploaded it and then once YouTube finished processing it, I could ‘Swap audio’ and pick a soundtrack. The ones offered were within 10 seconds of the length of my video. I couldn’t choose when to start and stop the audio, but for a quick fix it was okay and I found something I liked.

I then realised I forgot to trim the ending of my video. Rather than having to delete, edit, upload – YouTube now has a handy, dandy trim feature. Lovely!

Download an MP3 file (2.4 MB) to listen to this blog post: HTML5 goodness Or, browser willing, play it back here:

A few posts ago I was po’ed at IE 9 because I couldn’t see video captions or HTML 5 content. Neither could my husband. Before you recommend other browsers, yes – I use other browsers. The students whose lives I am trying to make easier use Internet Explorer (or Internet Exploder as some like to call it). So I look at what I create for them through their eyes. Today, my hubby figured out why our bright shiny new IE 9 browsers were not able to see HTML 5 goodies. Internet Explorer 9 has web developer tools you can display by either clicking the F12 key on your keyboard or by going up to your settings menu (cog in far top right corner) and selecting F12 developer tools. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been researching YouTube’s captioning abilities as part of research I’m doing into Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)  compliance for the organisation for which I work. Under the WCAG 2.0 standards set out by the W3C (an international consortium looking to set out standards for accessibility for web sites and content), there are four principles of accessibility. Anyone who wants to use the web must have content that is:

1. Perceivable. It cannot be invisible to all their senses.
2. Operable. It cannot require interaction that a user cannot perform.
3. Understandable. Information and operation must be understandable.
4. Robust. Content must be able to be interpreted by a wide range of technologies and user agents.

Under each of these principles are guidelines that help to address issues for people with cognitive and physical disabilities. Under the guidelines are success criteria that describe in detail what must be done to meet the guidelines that support the principle. Under the category of perception is the success criteria pertaining to pre-recorded audio and video. 1.2.2 Captions (Prerecorded): Captions are provided for all prerecorded audio content in synchronized media, except when the media is a media alternative for text and is clearly labelled as such. This is base level compliance with WCAG 2.0 guidelines. To understand how YouTube’s captioning might help us, I did an experiment. I chose an old video of mine and asked YouTube to attempt a machine capture. It did. Then I watched the video with captions. They were waaaay off. But I was able to download the caption file, edit it and upload it again. It was in .sbv format, but I was able to open, edit it and save it using Notepad ++. Here is a sample of the YouTube generated captioning: 0:00:02.780,0:00:06.380 they call a woman who has spent gifted programmer 0:00:06.380,0:00:08.569 and creative design 0:00:08.569,0:00:14.489 and it’s someone who is overly generous with her time in their knowledge 0:00:14.489,0:00:17.920 scholar landlady or george okay 0:00:17.920,0:00:22.160 on the joan k or join an italian realign 0:00:22.160,0:00:26.470 horrendously islands of g_a_t_t_ a in second life and uh… has been an 0:00:26.470,0:00:29.409 educational designer and programmer 0:00:29.409,0:00:36.340 and all over again corral uh… for andone half mile and stan 0:00:36.340,0:00:39.150 an 0:00:39.150,0:00:43.050 when i interviewed her for a podcastaround and 0:00:43.050,0:00:44.030 sheet 0:00:44.030,0:00:48.390 consented to be in view about september but she said i had to come in and i had 0:00:48.390,0:00:50.460 to experience it for myself 0:00:50.460,0:00:55.400 so i couldn’t karen on cocktail is asecond life And here is the video with the corrected captioning. To view the captions, click play and then, click on CC on the video control bar. Notice that the title of the caption file appears at the start of the video. Note to self: Sony Vegas 10 can do captioning via a text file transcript broken into caption sized chunks and using markers. Watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD5jcdLEp3I Adobe Captivate advises users to create captions manually: (Excerpt from Adobe Captivate Help) ??For users with hearing impairment, add text equivalents for audio elements. For example, when delivering narrative audio, it is important to provide captions at the same time. One option is to place a transparent caption in a fixed location on slides, then synchronize the text with the audio using the Timeline…

Recording events is quite different from creating machinima to my mind.  Although both can occur in a game or virtual world, the aims are quite different. I love the surrealism of virtual worlds and try to bring that “Alice in Wonderland” sense out when I create a machinima.  So I keep the videos brief, use dance music that adds an unusual air and go for sweeping shots and dramatic takes. But in recording conversations and events, realism has to dominate in order not to distract from the information. So today I experimented by recording a conversation that took place after Jo Kay and a group of us went exploring some educational resource sims in Second Life. As I only had the one camera, getting cut away shots was difficult, so I’ll apologise in advance for the camera work.  Also, I found after the shoot that Fraps by default records on-screen cursors.  Oh well. What I did try to do is to highlight the text conversation that inevitably takes place.  Sometimes this happens because people don’t want to interrupt the main speaker — sometimes because they know there is background noise where they are. I highlighted the text conversation by duplicating the video track, zooming in on the text portion and then doing a picture in picture/cutaway effect in Sony Vegas video.  I also set the overlay track of the highlighted text at 80% opacity. If you’re interested in what’s happening on jokaydia, by all means watch all of this.  If you’re interested just in the technique I attempted to highlight the text, just watch the first few minutes.  And please, let me know what you might have done differently — keeping in mind that my goal was the shortest possible turn-around time. If you’re on RSS — the link to the video is: http://blip.tv/file/1905389 If you’re on my blog, here it is embedded: