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Thread: Transcription/captioning
Number of posts in this thread: 13 (In chronological order)
From: Palmer, Becca
Date: Tue, Apr 12 2011 8:27AM
Subject: Transcription/captioning
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I am seeking information as to what services are offered by various institutions of higher education in the way of transcription and captioning of audio and video . Our university offers these services, however, I would like to get an idea of how many colleges or universities offer such services and how they are funded; is the service institutionally funded or are there any fees associated with those services (do the colleges or departments pay or is it the responsibility of the instructor to cover the cost, etc.)?
I appreciate your taking the time to address this question and your efforts in creating an accessible learning environment.
Thank you.
Becca Palmer
Transcription Service & Projects Coordinator
Instructional Development Center
Eastern Kentucky University
112 Crabbe Library, EKU Campus
521 Lancaster Avenue
Richmond, KY 40475
Phone: 859-622-1656
Fax: 859-622-1116
From: Keith Parks
Date: Tue, Apr 12 2011 3:33PM
Subject: Re: Transcription/captioning
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On Apr 12, 2011, at 6:43 AM, Palmer, Becca wrote:
> I am seeking information as to what services are offered by various institutions of higher education in the way of transcription and captioning of audio and video . Our university offers these services, however, I would like to get an idea of how many colleges or universities offer such services and how they are funded; is the service institutionally funded or are there any fees associated with those services (do the colleges or departments pay or is it the responsibility of the instructor to cover the cost, etc.)?
A few years ago our statewide university system had a contract with Automatic Sync Technologies for captioning services. Each campus handled it a bit differently. Individual offices/departments could create their own account, and each department had to pay for the services they used.
Lately we've been encouraged to use Google/YouTube's free auto transcription/captioning function as a method to get transcripts/captions.
>
******************************
Keith Parks
Graphic Designer/Web Designer
Student Affairs Communications Services
San Diego State University
San Diego, CA 92182-7444
(619) 594-1046
mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
http://www.sa.sdsu.edu/communications
http://kparks.deviantart.com/gallery
----------------------------------------------------------
Proud member of D/d.U.T.R.T.W.O.C.H.S.
(Designers/developers United To Rid The Web Of "Click Here" Syndrome)
From: Poore-Pariseau, Cindy
Date: Wed, Apr 13 2011 9:39AM
Subject: Re: Transcription/captioning
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Can you share the costs (approx) for the captioning service? Also, have you found Google's service any more accurate than YouTube's? Has anyone else used Google's services?
Cindy Poore-Pariseau
Disability Specialist
Bristol Community College
777 Elsbree Street
Fall River, MA 02720
508.678.2811, ext. 2470
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
From: John E Brandt
Date: Wed, Apr 13 2011 10:27AM
Subject: Re: Transcription/captioning
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YouTube's (YT) "automatic captioning" is still an imperfect process. I
tested it last year and blogged the results:
http://jebswebs.net/blog/2010/05/captioning-youtube-videos/
I tested YouTube automatic captioning again a few weeks ago and compared the
results with a relatively new (to me) free online captioning API called
Universal Subtitles. This is basically an app that allows you to view/listen
to the video and type in the captions yourself:
http://jebswebs.net/blog/2011/03/captioning-video/
In both instances the YT results were pretty bad, but you can download the
file transcription file, edit it using a captioning product like the one I
mention in the blog, and repost it to YT.
As I also mention in one of the blogs, I attended an Accessibility
Unconference in Boston last year and the issue of automatic/machine
generated captioning Speech-to-Text (S-t-T) versus human transcription
captioning was discussed. There were representatives from two companies that
do professional captioning - one automatic/machine - the other human
transcription - and each defended their methodology. But the guy
representing the company that did human transcription captioning clearly was
more convincing and had data to support his position that this method was
superior and cost effective. This position is consistent with my experience.
If you are an untrained person (not a professional
stenographer/scribe/transcriptionist) it takes almost as long to edit an
automatic machine-generated transcription as it does to type up one "from
scratch"- listening to the video and transcribing it yourself.
The company we have used for transcription/captioning is AST Sync out of
California http://www.automaticsync.com/captionsync/ They are very easy to
work with, provide great customer service, are fast and very reasonably
priced (about $185 per one hour of video; less if you already have a
transcript). If you do it yourself, count on it taking you a minimum of
3-to-1 in staff time to do a complete transcription with edits and time
marks. In other words, a one hour video will take three hours of your - or
someone's time to get a quality final product. You can do the math.
One last comment. I would recommend everyone *close caption* all of their
videos that are going to be posted on line. The accessibility issues are
obviously the primary reason, but there is an added value - closed caption
files are searchable. By adding the captioning to your videos, you make the
content accessible and usable to a very wide audience including Google bots.
This improves SEO and services to your constituents who will then be able to
search and find specific content contained within a video.
~j
John E. Brandt
www.jebswebs.com
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
207-622-7937
Augusta, Maine, USA
From: Keith Parks
Date: Wed, Apr 13 2011 10:36AM
Subject: Re: Transcription/captioning
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On Apr 13, 2011, at 7:37 AM, Poore-Pariseau, Cindy wrote:
> Can you share the costs (approx) for the captioning service? Also, have you found Google's service any more accurate than YouTube's? Has anyone else used Google's services?
John Brandt mentions the cost for AST in his post this morning.
As for the Google/YouTube captioning, I meant that as referring to YouTube's service. YouTube is owned by Google, isn't it?
******************************
Keith Parks
Graphic Designer/Web Designer
Student Affairs Communications Services
San Diego State University
San Diego, CA 92182-7444
(619) 594-1046
mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
http://www.sa.sdsu.edu/communications
http://kparks.deviantart.com/gallery
----------------------------------------------------------
Yes We Can!*
*should not be interpreted to mean that we necessarily will
From: Poore-Pariseau, Cindy
Date: Wed, Apr 13 2011 10:42AM
Subject: Re: Transcription/captioning
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May I ask why you left AST and went to the YT route?
Cindy Poore-Pariseau
Disability Specialist
Bristol Community College
777 Elsbree Street
Fall River, MA 02720
508.678.2811, ext. 2470
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
From: John E Brandt
Date: Wed, Apr 13 2011 11:48AM
Subject: Re: Transcription/captioning
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Yes, YouTube is owned by Google and "Google Voice" is the "engine" that runs
the automatic transcription process in YouTube. They also have an automatic
translation service that will convert the spoken words to a different
language.
~j
John E. Brandt
www.jebswebs.com
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
207-622-7937
Augusta, Maine, USA
From: John E Brandt
Date: Wed, Apr 13 2011 11:54AM
Subject: Re: Transcription/captioning
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We have not left AST. I was only testing the YT and other options as part of
my work.
John E. Brandt
www.jebswebs.com
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
207-622-7937
Augusta, Maine, USA
From: Morin, Gary (NIH/OD) [E]
Date: Wed, Apr 13 2011 1:06PM
Subject: Re: Transcription/captioning
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Hi, John/Jeb - in the following comment, are you suggesting closed captioning as opposed to open captioning or as opposed to not captioning? Are Open Captions not text searchable?
* One last comment. I would recommend everyone *close caption* all of their videos that are going to be posted on line. The accessibility issues are obviously the primary reason, but there is an added value - closed caption files are searchable. By adding the captioning to your videos, you make the content accessible and usable to a very wide audience including Google bots.
Gary M.
From: John E Brandt
Date: Wed, Apr 13 2011 1:24PM
Subject: Re: Transcription/captioning
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Yes, we want closed captions rather than open captions.
I always get open vs. closed captioning mixed up, so I have bookmarked this
page as a reminder:
What is the difference between open and closed captioning?
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/articles?50
To quote:
"Despite the advantages of open captions, there also are disadvantages. Some
disadvantages stem from the fact that open captions are an actual part of
the video stream, whereas closed captions exist as a separate text stream.
If captions are preserved as text, users potentially can archive and index
video content and allow users to search for specific video content within
these archives; this ability is lost with open captions. Also, open
captions, unlike closed captions, are subject to loss of quality when the
encoded video is compressed."
Open Captions are part of the video and cannot be indexed. Example: old
movies with subtitles.
Closed Captions are in a separate file and can be indexed.
~j
John E. Brandt
<http://www.jebswebs.com>; www.jebswebs.com
<mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
207-622-7937
Augusta, Maine, USA
From: Morin, Gary (NIH/OD) [E] [mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ]
Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2011 3:07 PM
To: 'WebAIM Discussion List'
Cc: ' = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = '
Subject: RE: [WebAIM] Transcription/captioning
Hi, John/Jeb - in the following comment, are you suggesting closed
captioning as opposed to open captioning or as opposed to not captioning?
Are Open Captions not text searchable?
* One last comment. I would recommend everyone *close caption* all of
their videos that are going to be posted on line. The accessibility issues
are obviously the primary reason, but there is an added value - closed
caption files are searchable. By adding the captioning to your videos, you
make the content accessible and usable to a very wide audience including
Google bots.
Gary M.
From: Jared Smith
Date: Wed, Apr 13 2011 2:03PM
Subject: Re: Transcription/captioning
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On Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 1:19 PM, John E Brandt < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> Yes, we want closed captions rather than open captions.
This is a bit unclear. In general, "closed" captions can be turned
on/off, whereas "open" captions cannot. I think what John is
recommending is that you avoid captions that are part of the video
stream itself (i.e., there is no external caption data).
Even with closed captioning (or open captioning for which there is
external caption data), it isn't really accurate to say that they are
searchable. They could be made searchable if you built a custom system
to do so. No major search engine indexes and provides search
capabilities for caption data, with the exception of YouTube, which
does so for captioned videos that are within YouTube.
Perhaps with HTML5 <video>, if they ever decide an a standard <track>
captioning format, we might someday see search engines provide search
capabilities for captions.
Jared Smith
WebAIM.org
From: John E Brandt
Date: Wed, Apr 13 2011 7:42PM
Subject: Re: Transcription/captioning
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Jared, I'm glad you amended my comment about the searchability of caption
files, as that was what I suspected. But I have been told by more than one
person about the capacity to search caption files, so I assumed those folks
knew what they were talking about. This was one of my sources:
"Searching and indexing: Fully captioned web media can easily be made
searchable via
simple text queries. All students benefit by the ability to quickly review
key areas of
interest. Moreover, searchable web media greatly extend the shelf-life of
the lecture
content, allowing students quick and ready access to lecture material
throughout the term."
Maybe I over-interpreted this and bought into a sales-pitch too much.
John E. Brandt
www.jebswebs.com
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
207-622-7937
Augusta, Maine, USA
From: John E Brandt
Date: Thu, Apr 28 2011 11:45AM
Subject: Re: Transcription/captioning
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This conversation took place a few weeks ago when Jared noted that:
"Even with closed captioning (or open captioning for which there is external
caption data), it isn't really accurate to say that they are searchable.
They could be made searchable if you built a custom system to do so. No
major search engine indexes and provides search capabilities for caption
data, with the exception of YouTube, which does so for captioned videos that
are within YouTube."
Today I learned of a relatively new service called 22frames which appears to
be building a database of captioned videos and has developed a method for
indexing the captions using "APIs and specialized web crawlers." I've been
checking it out today. I thought anyone else interested in this topic might
want to check it out also so we can compare notes.
http://22frames.com/
~j
John E. Brandt
www.jebswebs.com
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
207-622-7937
Augusta, Maine, USA