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Re: Caption Question

for

From: Sam Cartsos
Date: May 8, 2015 2:44PM

Thanks Jonathan. Yes, those are great points. Allowing users to
customize the size and styling of captions is the best way to go. The
same goes for user preference - let users turn them off if they'd like.
There's other reasons not to use burned-in captions - if you're looking
for an SEO benefit, want your media listed as captioned in YouTube, or
plan to use the data for search, you have to meet compliance
requirements, and so on. For all these reasons, open captions are not a
good overall strategy for captioning your media.

Having said that, the appeal of open captions is that the captions are a
feature of the media. Everybody experiences them as part of the media,
with no action required on the user end, and the creator has control
over the styling. If you consume a lot of captioning, as I do, you
probably have strong opinions and insights into what works well and what
doesn't, and the default experience in many players is quite poor, and
not customizable in many cases. In addition, most users don't have
captions on by default. Explaining how to turn them on in a variety of
players is painful for everyone involved. For Lisa's project - she
doesn't have control over the player, wants people to experience
captions and have it be a positive experience - I think open captions
are a good choice.

Thanks,
Sam

On 5/8/2015 12:06 PM, Jonathan Avila wrote:
>> I'm a big fan of open captions
> One challenge with open captions is that users cannot change the visual appearance of the captions -- this can be a challenge for people who have a visual impairment in addition to being deaf or hard of hearing. Also on smaller devices users may need to increase the size of the captions. There is another technique to encapsulate closed captions into the media file -- that way the captions are included in a single file -- although this technique may be more limited though in it's support for different platforms and players.
>
> Jonathan
>
> --
> Jonathan Avila
> Chief Accessibility Officer
> SSB BART Group
> <EMAIL REMOVED>
> Phone 703.637.8957
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>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Sam Cartsos
> Sent: Friday, May 08, 2015 11:37 AM
> To: L Snider; WebAIM Discussion List
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Caption Question
>
> I'm a big fan of open captions. I've never used Adobe's products for this, but anything that makes the process simpler is worth exploring. In the past, I've batched images of the text data out of Photoshop into a Final Cut timeline.
>
> Thanks,
> Sam
>
> On 5/7/2015 3:32 PM, L Snider wrote:
>> Hi Sam,
>>
>> Thanks so much, great information. I am now researching players and
>> captioning, interesting stuff there.
>>
>> I also found out (for those that have to do this as well) that one can
>> use the original files and create captions in Adobe Encore and
>> Premiere Pro. This is useful for 'burning in' the captioning.
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> Lisa
>>
>> On Wed, May 6, 2015 at 12:20 PM, Sam Cartsos < <EMAIL REMOVED>
>> <mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> >> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Lisa,
>> Assuming you're burning this CD as a data disk, you'll want to
>> place your media and caption files in the same directory, and
>> ensure that they have the same filename. You can include more than
>> one caption file to accommodate different players - SRT and SMI
>> files might be a good choice. When the user opens the media file
>> in their default or preferred player, and assuming they've enabled
>> caption/subtitle playback in their player, the captions will show.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Sam
>>
>>
>> On 5/6/2015 11:35 AM, L Snider wrote:
>>
>> Hi Everyone,
>>
>> I am captioning a video for a webpage. No problem there,
>> because the player
>> uses WebVTT and it reads the captions from that file.
>>
>> However, I now have to put this video on a CD. I haven't
>> worked with video
>> on CD before. I can't use my lovely player and WebVTT
>> file...However, I can
>> make the captioning file in another format (I have access to SRT,
>> SBV,DFXP,SMI, QT, RT, STL, SUB, SMPTE-TT and SCC). How is the
>> best way to
>> do this without having to do things manually? Is there an
>> automated way of
>> getting the captions into the video?
>>
>> I have access to Adobe software, and I think I can do this
>> through Media
>> Encoder but am working on that now...
>>
>> If anyone has any suggestions/advice/etc, please let me know!
>>
>> Thanks so much.
>>
>> Lisa
>>
>>
>>
> --
> *Sam Cartsos*
> Co-Founder and Senior Partner @
> Frameweld <https://frameweld.com> - Accelerating Innovation SyncWords <https://syncwords.com> - Caption Automation that Works
>
> Partner Lead for Technology @
> IDEA Data Center <https://ideadata.org> - Building Capacity for High-Quality IDEA Data
>
> mobile: 718.813.1195
> office: 718.956.0299
> email: <EMAIL REMOVED> <mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> skype: scartsos
> twitter: @scartsos <https://twitter.com/scartsos> ==============>
> *Check Out Our Products*
> SyncWords <https://syncwords.com> - Captions Automated Recapd <https://recapd.com> - Live Captions Delivered Encourse <https://encour.se> - A Smart Learning Platform Workshop <https://workshop.frameweld.com> - A Better Way to Present Video > > --
*Sam Cartsos*
Co-Founder and Senior Partner @
Frameweld <https://frameweld.com> - Accelerating Innovation
SyncWords <https://syncwords.com> - Caption Automation that Works

Partner Lead for Technology @
IDEA Data Center <https://ideadata.org> - Building Capacity for
High-Quality IDEA Data

mobile: 718.813.1195
office: 718.956.0299
email: <EMAIL REMOVED> <mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> >
skype: scartsos
twitter: @scartsos <https://twitter.com/scartsos>
==============
*Check Out Our Products*
SyncWords <https://syncwords.com> - Captions Automated
Recapd <https://recapd.com> - Live Captions Delivered
Encourse <https://encour.se> - A Smart Learning Platform
Workshop <https://workshop.frameweld.com> - A Better Way to Present Video