New Auto-Caption Tags from Transcription Feature Test

Look under captions and there are two test transcript files that I have uploaded:
"transcript": this is a straight unbroken text file
"transcript-hardreturns": this file has my own preferred line breaks

It took about 20 minutes for the first text file to be detected, one minute for the second upload to be detected.

The first attempted upload didn't work, for one or both of two reasons;
- I didn't enter a transcript title when I uploaded the file
- When I saved the file in notepad, I saved with "wrap text" on, which might have caused the problem.

When I entered titles and took of text wrapping, everything came out great.

As some background, YouTube has new features for captions:
1) Auto-timecoding of transcript files and conversion into caption files (available to all users)
2) Auto speech to text captioning (available to only 13 channels for now)

This is a test of the first feature.

So far, I would say it works great. Also, you can download your timecoded captions file in SBV format and use software like Subtitle Workshop to fix tags, and of course then make your own translations using the same tags.

This is a fantastic new feature. I would like to see some other functionality added - like the ability to download and upload to other people's channels, but this is great for now. I can't wait for speech detection to become available

What do you think?

More info is available here:
http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2009/11/innovation-in-accessibility.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTvHIDKLFqc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4BRY56u2xw

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• Transcription
• Captions

[ericsurf6]

I'm curious too...Message me plz when they are up Hiko!

Thanks..

[hikotalk]

will do - it's 30 minutes so far and still processing,,,

[ElevenColors]

Hmmm. Give us all a tweet when the captions are up. Curious to see how it works out.

[hikotalk]

Will do. I'm looking forward to this myself. I also prepped a low light 1080p test file which I might put up in a bit.

It looks like the Image Effect = Neutral, Cinema setting indeed is great for cutting down on noise with blacks, but I'll have to see how it uploads.

[ElevenColors]

Cinema setting... Is that the 24 fps setting? Or are you talking about something else?

[hikotalk]

Yep, the progressive 24fps setting - although it is weird, my software detects it as a 29.97fps file. But it was definitely shot with that setting... Not sure what's up with that...

[plo435]

how can i turn this on?

[bartjuhh12]

wwell at this it works great but this is the first video where it does

[Hikosaemon]

Actually, I really do appreciate your comment here - I just went and signed up to the captions group and posted some suggestions. If they can get it working well, it will be a nice little Google Chrome solution for subtitling.

Thanks for the comment, I've learned a lot as a result.

[rewboss]

Well, CaptionTube was actually developed by somebody outside of Google, working independently, so I doubt that Google's going to go in and "fix" it, in that peculiar Google meaning of "make it look shiny and add a bug".

But being able to offer caption files and transcripts for download -- that might be worth suggesting to them.

[Hikosaemon]

Pardon me, I did some digging and there are keyboard shortcuts. I just wish it would let you download pre-existing native caption files...

[Hikosaemon]

I hope that Google cleans up captionstube a lot - I don't see why YouTube shouldn't have native functionality like DotSub does, allowing people to download captions files off the video. I might play with captionstube a bit more and see if it surprises me. Thanks for the tip!

[Hikosaemon]

I've seen captiontube and it looks promising but it is missing some key features I would need - control of playback rate, and keyboard shortcuts for all functions (perhaps they are there). Also, it is cool that you can make a captions file like that, but I was thinking more like downloading the existing captions file off a video to translate offline, and send to the author. Working from scratch is a pain. Problem is that Google thinks of captions for the deaf more than for languages.

[rewboss]

I've noticed the auto system can't currently cope with any characters outside the standard ASCII set, so languages like Japanese are currently not possible. But I expect YouTube will be waiting to see how well this system works before expanding it.

Re the possibility of collaborative captions: In TestTube there's a product called CaptionTube which you can use to write captions for any video on YouTube. Download the file, PM the video owner and ask if they'd like you to send it to them.

[YungShawtyCLT]

I wish it was available to everyone, myself. If they could quit shirking about, I would be able to upload more personalized videos.

[HardcoreTriplex]

I definitely appreciate the points you made here! Especially for the Japanese language students. I hope they take this video into consideration!