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Feedback on first Guardian Amara Sub'd video; Fast Ice: Rescue From Antarctica

 Hi,


I am proud to announce the first prototype Guardian video subtitled using Amara is now live on our site using WebVTT:

http://www.theguardian.com/science/antarctica-live/2014/feb/28/-sp-rescue-from-antarctica

Amara source:

http://www.amara.org/en/videos/gEZoiU5Xbsha/info/fast-ice-rescue-from-antarctica/


This is a collaboration between several teams at The Guardian and also wouldn't have been possible without the timely assistance of Amara Support.


Any feedback or additional translations welcome.


We will wait for further feedback internally and externally on this prototype before making further plans around subtitling.


Cheers,


Gideon

5 CommentsSorted by Oldest First
Hi Gideon,

That's great news, but unfortunately, the http://amara.org/en/videos/gEZoiU5Xbsha/en-gb/672131/ link

leads to a page that says "We're sorry - the page you are trying to access does not exist." (1)


Did you perhaps add that video page to a private Amara team? If yes, is there any particular reason why it should be private?


Other question: in the http://www.theguardian.com/science/antarctica-live/2014/feb/28/-sp-rescue-from-antarctica page, I only see one video player, for the "Fast Ice: Rescue from Antarctica" 19:54 video, but, at least with Firefox 27.0.1 on a Mac with Mac OS X version 10.6.8, I don't see any subtitles, nor any player command to activate them. What should I do to view the subtitles, please?


Thank you in advance for your answers,


Claude Almansi


(1) Update: see the new http://www.amara.org/en/videos/gEZoiU5Xbsha/info/fast-ice-rescue-from-antarctica/ URL in the first post, and Gideon's reply to this comment.

Thanks for the feedback, I have fixed the link now so it should work if you try it again now or if you copy and paste the link text.

Re: Firefox, WebVTT which we are using is not currently enabled by default. In Firefox 27 in the address bar enter: 'about:config' in the following page set media.webvtt.enabled to true. Then restart the browser and try loading the page again.

Alternatively it should work in the latest versions of Chrome or IE

 

Thank you so much, Gideon.

I've enabled WebVTT in Firefox'  according to your indications, and now I can see the subtitles.

If  audio descriptions were written as "Meta: Audio Description" in Amara, would you be able to add them as WebVTT to the Guardian's videos, and would browsers then be able to "read them aloud" by text to speech, as explained by Silvia Pfeiffer in  HTML5 video accessibility and the WebVTT file format in 2011. Back then, she presented that as a future development, but three years have gone by since.

I'm asking, because some deaf people have already told me they'd be interested in writing audio descriptions, as they are particularly good at understanding visuals. It will be great when deaf and blind people can collaborate in making videos accessible for each other.


 

Hi Claude,

Sorry I have never tried Audio Description in HTML5, perhaps this is something you could experiment with yourself?

Thanks,

Gideon

 

I tried writing descriptions for the first two minutes of the video in http://amara.org/en/videos/gEZoiU5Xbsha/meta-audio/686092/ , using the new editor that's quite handy for that. But the problem is me: I don't know what to describe and not. So I hope others will take over.

 

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