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July 3rd Amara Update: relevance for the Music Captioning team

[What follows is a copy of a message I am sending to the participants of the Music Captioning team, posted here for the reason indicated in it]

Hi, Music Captioners,

On July 3rd, the Amara software was updated: see the full description by Darren Bridenbeck in http://support.universalsubtitles.org/categories/6573/forums/27539/topics/5197 .

Two changes are particularly relevant for the Music Captioning team:

I) Amara is "no longer mistakenly moderating subtitles in workflow-free teams."
This is stupendous news. It means that we'll again be able to collaborate normally, without the various moderation-caused hindrances we had to work around in June, and that in general, people who need subtitles will be able to use them without moderation blocks.
However, in at least 15 subtitle sets of videos added to Music Captioning, previously imposed moderation blocks remain. I have mentioned this on the help forum in a comment to Darren's post about the update, so hopefully, Amara will soon free these subs too.

II) Amara "restored the ability to upload unsynced TXT transcripts."
Or more precisely: after having removed the ability to simply copy paste unsyncedd transcripts on June 20 (1), Amara has replaced it now by the obligation to upload such transcripts as a .txt file.
However, as Verone Black pointed out repeatedly on the help forum, including in the comments to the announcement of the July 3 update, sometimes the accents in the uploaded .txt file get deleted in the process that transform it into unsync'd subtitles.
This change and the connected accented letters issue obtain for all Amara videos, whether added to a team or not, but they are particularly relevant for this team, where we often use existing transcripts to caption music videos, also in languages where accented letters are essential.
So hopefully, Amara will restore the former ability to add a transcript by copypaste.
Meanwhile, there is one possibility to have Amara correctly process an uploaded .txt file, keeping its accents: encode it in UTF-8. So if you can, do that.
If you can't, paste your transcript, indicating the URL of the page where you want it uploaded, in a help ticket - using http://support.universalsubtitles.org/support/tickets/new - and ask Amara to upload it as .txt for you.

In case you have questions, I am also posting a copy of this message in the help forum in http://support.universalsubtitles.org/categories/6573/forums/27539/topics/5233, where it will be easier to discuss them together in comments, than via Amara messaging.

All the best,

Claude

(1) See "Can't upload subtitles directly today" by Richard Gresswell, June 20, 2012 http://support.universalsubtitles.org/categories/6573/forums/28027/topics/5012.

Yeah we still waiting...
Unfortunately not, Richard: I tried again just now.
Hi Verone, Claude

Do we have 'paste text directly' back yet - I haven't seen it, am I missing something?

Best wishes
Richard
Once again, this problem can be solved by amara within 2 minutes they just forgot accents in the upgrate.
I think your idea about to sending each text to the amara team is -with all my respect- completly utopic :
1) We are doing around 100 translations a week (Just for my website).
2) When a music is doing a buzz we have to be very fast and the translation have to be visible very quickly.

Anyway the more you ask and the less you have so let's keep it simple : "Please Amara you forgot accents in the last update, can you do something about this, thank you".
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