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Re: Transcription/captioning

for

From: John E Brandt
Date: Apr 28, 2011 11:45AM


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 REMOVED>
207-622-7937
Augusta, Maine, USA


-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of John E Brandt
Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2011 9:39 PM
To: 'WebAIM Discussion List'
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Transcription/captioning

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 REMOVED>
207-622-7937
Augusta, Maine, USA


-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Jared Smith
Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2011 3:57 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Transcription/captioning

On Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 1:19 PM, John E Brandt < <EMAIL 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