Closed Captions the easy way with Zubtitles

One good imperative to come from online events, meetings, performances and conferences precipitated by the Covid pandemic is the recognition that accessibility online is not only respectful and supremely possible but opens doors to previously excluded audiences.

Audiences as entire communities. Communities have cohesive dialogue. Provision before attendance must be in balance.

Closed Captions are the most prevalent support for access. Attention for the provision need the allocation of resources and time. 

For real time transcription and subtitles I use Otter. For captioning I have discovered Zubtitles. Brilliant. Styled and baked onto videos or generate srt files slit timed to perfection to upload to video hosting. 

https://zubtitle.com/?via=caron

Referal code - ICH027

Yes it’s true captions enable videos to be watch on mute but for those needing the facility for access it’s an overture of equality. It’s an even playing field.

I have started including voicing readings of the newsletters I produce for Equity’s Online Branch. I will include them in my own.

I would like to learn British Sign Language too. I am looking to establish connection to include sign interpretation on projects in the future. It’s only with these provision supports in place can the communities participate with ease.

03 - SubShifter: ONLY what it says on the tin.

Back on my toolbar. Prepping videos for this years SparkArts for Children festival. I’m providing video hosting and embeds codes along with top and tail edits to insert bumper branding.

This app is essential. The caption files I’m provided with when uploaded to facilitate captioning being visible or hidden line up to the start of the film. With the branding bumper inserted the film doesn’t start until the bumper has played. Sublititle files .srt are time coded text files. To insert a time period each consequent time code has to be amended.

In a nutshell that is what this app does. Full stop!

App Store for Mobile and MAC desktop

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/subshifter-sync-subtitles/id1457012736

Restricted time length on the free version

Browser Based

https://subshifter.bitsnbites.eu/

002 - Headliner: podcast visuals, transcripts, captions and more.

Following a request for a recommendation on Twitter for speech to text transcription options I waded in perhaps a little too eagerly before reading the context of the post request for recommendation for responding.

Transcription from audio for a text record and extracting text for uploading as caption are similar by not the same.

I immediately recommend Headliner. I love services that evolve and extend their usefulness. I first used Headliner to generate overlay audio waveforms to present podcasts for viewing when uploaded to video services.

Last year I worked on a spoken word project requiring captions to accentuate particular words and phrases. It was also audio and needed audio visualisation. I went to Headliner to generate a selection of waveforms, Headliner calls these audiograms, to demonstrate the options and discovered the transcription for captions feature. For transparency I haven't as yet fully pushed Headliners captioning feature to the max but I wanted to tell this story.

NOTE: the waveforms are generated using Headliner the words were created using titles in iMovie as they needed to be closely match to the intonation of the narrators words and inflections. 

After an exchange on Twitter with Headliner we scheduled a video call for me to share my Headliner experience.

Using the scheduling power of Calendly I had a great chat with Mike Sands from development at Headliner.

The generation of transcripts I’ll deal with tomorrow but for closed captions which is where headliner can facilitate and excel as a player in the field for affordable rich featured captioning I wanted to share it with you. The purpose of this blog is really to highlight the  issue below that having a conversation directly with a platform's development team can facilitate.

Headliner also takes SRT file and can export SRT files. SRT are text format files that time code each line for a duration to appear on screen.

Here is an example of a few lines for an SRT file

00:00:47.769 --> 00:00:51.002
Potato? Potato?

00:00:52.584 --> 00:00:54.030
Potato?

00:00:54.409 --> 00:00:56.365
Potato?

00:00:58.498 --> 00:00:59.883
Oh, hello.

00:01:02.233 --> 00:01:04.216
You haven't seen a potato anywhere, have you?

00:01:06.389 --> 00:01:07.611
Potato?

00:01:08.381 --> 00:01:09.528
He ran off.

SRT buffering was my 'you could be the golden goose' opportunity. Completed videos are provided from artists for live screening or on demand viewing. But… the festival may wish to insert a pre show bumper to brand the experience. That add time to the start of the video file and thereby changes the time code for the start of the captions. You can see this from the time stamps in the example from Shona Reppe’s Potato Needs a Bath digital experience - https://www.shonareppe.co.uk/potato-digital.html

For the 2021 SparkArts Festival a bumper lasting just under 47 seconds was inserted at the start. To off set the start of the captions was a trial by fire. Every time code through the entire SRT file needs adjusting. The example shows less than a minute of the show in lasted 30 mins.

This conversation revealing this step in a process is an opportunity. I had to download and install sub shifter could Headliner keep me in the platform.
Lets hope this small hurdle but useful addition gets actioned.

If you want to try out headliner here is a link for a free trial. After you can use the free features or pay for a month or for a year.

https://make.headliner.app/referral/pcmcreative_PGxcwB

001 - CleanPNG: Transparent PNG Art at Your Fingertips.

There are JPG files and PNG files. Both are formats of pictures or for digitally practiced images!

The nice thing about PNGs is that the background can be transparent. That means it looks like I has a plain white background but when added on top of a different background only the content of the PNG image displays.

Here is a website I go to when needing graphic elements for posters and promotional flyers.

This is a new series of posts for me to share Apps, Platforms, Tools and Services I think PCM Adventurers will find useful. Let’s start at 001. I’m think big assuming I’ll need 3 figures!

Clean PNG

https://www.cleanpng.com/

cleanpng.com has more than 3,000,000 transparent PNG images.

Unlimited Use & Free to Download

All the transparent images in cleanpng is free to download, and unlimited. You do not need register your email, do not need login with your social account. On their about page they say only this

>> Share us with your friends and like our facebook page to get the news of cleanpng. (Sadly I was unable to locate the Facebook page)

It’s great for finding social media icons too.

I used these flourishes in an invitation to a fundraiser held by theatrical charitable trust for who I’m a trustee.

https://www.cleanpng.com/png-wedding-invitation-imperial-design-hall-logo-idbh-6802691/

There are ideas and stories to share. At Christmas time I compile the 12 apps for Christmas which are taken from my iPhone and iPad. I also have web services and browser extensions I use regularly as well as downloaded software and desktop apps.

I hope you like this PNG repository.

https://www.cleanpng.com/about.html

 

Mulling IT Over 2 - starting in Oban a 3wk unboxing

Over next few weeks I’m unpicking and sharing my mobile media capture, making, production and publishing process.

I use what I have to hand in the budget I can afford. Low cost is key for first timers too. Its the output practice. The workflow.

The journey to get here is the beginning. This annual holiday is about the unraveling and release of my internal dialogue. I get to examine my media making kit, I review my assistive tech. I try and make media I don’t get the chance to when doing projects for others. I try and write the eBooks that complete projects but never were required to sign off on the deliverable that got me paid. I let my mind roan the ponder.

I’ve got a body cam I’m experimenting with. This blog via email process. I have a box of tech which I thought essential to this vacation.

Let’s see.

Headliner evolution - closed captioning got more awesome

I love it when platforms and service I use evolve. It can be frustrating when you are mid project but returning to a innovative trusted service to discover its way better that you left it is great.

This is what happened with Headliner.

Headliner is an audio to wave form visuals generator for podcasts and it now has closed captioning.
And more. And it has an app!

https://www.headliner.app/

Making media often combines several platforms, tools and services. 
Working with storyteller Tim Ralphs combining Headliner will be a tool providing some of the foundation narration visuals.

There is a free forever tier, $9.99 & $25.99 p/mth (less if you sign up for the year) I tend to use services on a project by project basis until my consecutive use makes it worth the annual investment.
Time limit inside a single account is the confines of Headliner when using the transcription feature. 5 videos only 10 mins p/mth transcription.

Features 
Waveforms

Quickly grab people’s attention and let them know podcast audio playing with one of our awesome audio visualizers

Unlimited Videos

Promote your podcast with as many videos as you want, optimized for every social media channel

Full Episode

Publish your entire podcast episode (2-hour max) to YouTube and engage new audiences

Audio Transcription

Automatically transcribe audio to add captions to your videos to increase engagement and accessibility

Video Transcription

Headliner can transcribe from video too! If you’ve got content, we can help you add captions

Audio Clipper

Select clips of your podcast audio that are perfectly optimized for each social channel

Multiple Sizes

Export your videos in the optimal size for each social network and beyond

1080p Export

Look great on screens large and small with full high-definition video

Text Animation

Choose from tons of text animations or create your own to add extra visual interest to your videos
‌

Video Help Desk for your Digital Events

I have been on HelpDesk duty today.

With multiple-sessioned events like festivals, across multiple platforms for attendees, guests, speakers, performers and crew the thing that is painfully absent with digital and its zeros and ones is the corridors, the greenroom, the watercooler, the bar and the liminal spaces.

The space between the spaces.

QuiQuo do this well and event wrappers have potential to accommodate this but to date these wrappers have been outside my budget and production timescale. Digital Stagemanagement and the production consulting tend to be too late in the precession for me to augment in these options. 

A single help desk is the first step. It becomes an anchor point between physical and digital in-person encounters. It’s a point of real present. This I can do with Whereby. I have 10 rooms some are on loan to groups and some like this help desk for SparkFestival is a special hosting.

This was my toolset today

• Whereby - a super simple easy access for first time tech shy audiences. I settled on this platform prior to COVID when another app to download or service to sign up to was enough to stifle or demotivate any engagement.
• Splashtop xDisplay - connects a second device to enable monitoring while focusing on your main screen.
• iPad as a second screen with xDisplay - an old iPad 2 connects to extend your desktop. I use this on a stand on my desk for ficus timer and for general social media and news notifications. 

Finally I have 2 documents prepared specifically for this help desk. A festival reference with all the info including ticket links and zoom access links to each performance or workshop and a intro guide to Whereby as a help desk including a outline of the visitor experience.

1. Helpdesk document - Festival Programme (private document not available to share)
2. Helpdesk document - How To for team staffing - http://bit.ly/pcm-helpdesk-sparkfestival

This service is integral to my Extended The Audience offering when compiling extended audience packages. If you want to know more please get in touch.

I must also thank Alison Rouse who staffed the majority of the sessions enabling me to focus on the main digital auditorium as Zoom controller throughout the opening days of the festival.

There’s an app for that! Time shifting a .srt file

Take a video and a subtitling file

 

Upload

 

So good so far

 

Now edit to the beginning a bumper with branding as an intro.

 

Now my time synced SRT file is 37.7 seconds out of sync!

 

As each caption is time stamped I needed to dynamically insert the time block at the start and have the each line time shift to accommodate.

 

Enter...

SubShifter: Sync subtitles by iSolid apps

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/subshifter-sync-subtitles/id1457012736?mt=12

 

This app saved my sanity today. 

This is a Mac App.

 

Downloading from YouTube

Moving media from A to B or collecting from A to show at C.

Frequently media is uploaded or streamed to YouTube and the request then comes, Can I extract it for use by permission. That is key here. This service I’m sharing requires responsible consent. 
Need to share a video from your desktop for events minimising up and down bandwidth traffic?

Downloading from YouTube

https://yt1s.com/

 

Translating PDF to English - #AudDev Reporting Season

Q. What do you can someone who speaks more than one language? A. Bi-lingual.

Q. What do you can someone who speaks many languages? A. a Polyglot.

Q. What do you can someone who speaks only one language? A. English!

I am passionate about audience engagement and developing structures to understand the needs and behaviours of what makes up audiences. These structures often emerge from projects undertaken through collaboration with academics and stakeholder culture practitioners working artistically, educationally, communally, managerially or administratively in the Arts, Culture and Entertainment industries and their various sectors.

In the last 12 months, I have seen the rise of the term Participation enter the crucible of audience conundrum.

Embed Responsively

Illustration by Kevin Cornell

Anybody associated with the arena of web design even on the periphery as I am has heard about responsive design. The concept of designing a single web site that adapts (responds) to the devise it is being displayed upon. A time was that it was by analysing the stats of your visitors you could predict the most likely size of monitor and resolution being required and provide a selection of sites sized accordingly along with a client side query to determine the size expected and deliver pages in response to the query. Then there came mobile! At least that's how I understood it in my limited experience. I was down the rabbit hole! It was at this time I became aware of reciprocity, propinquity and normalisation. Coding a design could be rigidly and inflexibly set in tables with sliced up graphic elements with hotspots and links. These would 'explode' and 'break' displaying in what seemed like an arbitrary manner depending on your favoured browser. The separation of code and style enabled consistency and including a set of instructions to overwrite different browser margin defaults helped. The Cascading Style Sheet (CSS). I was an advocate for responsive as soon as it became a thing. I expect these 'zero default' style sheet addenda still exist and form the basis of secret design formulae many pure coders still closely guard. Its tricky to achieve... or things might have changed.

Web presence and the ability to create one was the objective of my web building education and as each element of building web sites became specialisms in their own right html, xhtml, CSS, asp, php, xml, javascript - these became distinct from the visual front interface which in turn developed its own special branches UDI (User Designed Interface), UXI (User Experience Interface) until being a master of all was an impossibility and engaging a professional was beyond the cost effectiveness of my needs, I turned to the very thing I loathed when I first begun my education. BYO (Build Your Own), drop and drag applications evolved into a necessary evil.

I remember the first drop and drag experiences within browser environments afforded by javascript and flash. The move away from passive unmovable pages with form fields the only interaction was the introduction of user experience integration. Whether that equated to 'engagement' is contentious, still being discussed. I could indeed go on but this post is Embed Responsively.

Many blogging platforms and BYO are now to a greater or lesser extent 'responsive' to varying degrees of success. It is an art. The transition through absolute and relative positioning to fully responsive adaptive web pages has been aesthetically essential to the seamless, cross platform, multi device user experience.

Returning the premise of this post ...web presence and the ability to create one being the objective of my web building education... left me forever needing to learn something new to keep up to date! I just want to gather resources and information for inclusion in one space with a link to share. Simple as! But...

Although BYO and Blogging platforms (the ones I use currently) offer responsive templates and elements, the media I gather from around the web and the media I create and upload are embedded using html code snippets, podcasts from Audioboom, audio interviews stored on Soundcloud, videos and playlists on YouTube, PDF documents published on ISSUU, presentation slide decks on Slideshare or Photo galleries from Flickr or Instagram they are traditionally fixed in size (height and width). 

Yes I'm getting to the point!

The straight copy and paste of these html embed snippets don't adapt to a responsive environment. I was overjoyed when I was introduced to embedresponsively.com - "It helps build responsive embed codes for embedding rich third-party media into responsive web pages." It was created and is maintained by @jeffehobbs based on research and work by Theirry Koblentz, Anders Andersen and Niklaus Gerber.

I love it, I wanted to share it - here it is! embedresponsively.com