Amara.org Support Center

Just an update for those who didn't go to the Townhall:

Make primary has been fixed.

You can add different URLs, change which one is the primary URL and that is the URL which will play by default (unless you are using equipment that needs a different url to play well).  You can also delete secondary urls. 

Let us know if you experience any issues.

The primary URL indication seems to work again:

• the player on the home page of Amara shows the primary http://vimeo.com/39734142 video,
• Verone just experimented with several URLs  for Jimi Hendrix - All Along The Watchtower - ORIGINAL MUSIC VIDEO,
• the player in  Dorothy Bishop: Evaluating Alternative Solutions for Dyslexia is playing again the primary  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tBX-lRE2FI mp4 video instead of the original http://www.dystalk.com/images/upload/talks-flv_60.flv flash one.

3 videos make a scanty sample, but let's hope developers have really decided to stop bypassing users' primary indication as they did for 2 months and 10 days.

Again re:

...For example, if the primary is a youtube video, and other is a mp4 one. If you view it on an ipad, which can't play youtube flash videos, you'll get shown the other url, not the primary.   So for two YouTube URLs, it will show the first.   So make primary is working as it was intended to work. ...

Then why does the software favor the original URL http://www.dystalk.com/images/upload/talks-flv_60.flv (pure flash) over the primary URL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tBX-lRE2FI (youtube, but mp4) in Dorothy Bishop: Evaluating Alternative Solutions for Dyslexia?

Mmm, today, the video embedded on the Amara homepage is from http://dev.universalsubtitles.org/en/videos/XT00OAVl6RHc/info/about-amara. Sure, it shows the vimeo video - only URL added - but there are somr inconvenients:

• the only available subs are English (by dean)and Filipino (by janet);
• they can't be downloaded, because downloading subs has been disabled for the http://dev.universalsubtitles.org platform.

However, the impossibility to download subs is mitigated by the fact that they only say, for English:

bababbabab abdslkj alkjd l;kajsdf alsdkfjlkasdf ajkslkjdsafkdsf ajs dk ajsd adksdajksa jdksf lkajsdf

 

and for Filipino, more soberly:

asdf asdf asdf asdf asdf asdf asdf asdf asdf asdf asdfa asdf

 

Not terribly helpful for people who can't understand English.

 

Update: now the embedded video has reverted to the http://www.universalsubtitles.org/en/videos/NmkV5cbiCqUU/info/learn-about-universal-subtitles one where the software continues to bypass the primary indication for the vimeo mp4 video in favor of the YT one. A saner choice.

Thanks for the explanation of the developers' intentions, Jules, but there are still things I don't understand. Expanding a bit on Verone's: "All these new ideas about "make primary" are coming from where ? Because there is a very big difference between what developers are doing and what we really need.", e.g. you write:

For example, if the primary is a youtube video, and other is a mp4 one. If you view it on an ipad, which can't play youtube flash videos, you'll get shown the other url, not the primary.   So for two YouTube URLs, it will show the first.   So make primary is working as it was intended to work.

Last time I checked with an iPad user a few weeks ago, his iPad did not display ANY closed captioned subs, except the ones provided in iTunes. I.e. not Amara cc subs, not YouTube cc subs, not Internet Archive CC subs (that's one reason why I chose an Android device instead of an iPad). So why attempt to cater for iPad users on Amara? If they can't see the CC subs anyway, they aren't likely to use Amara.

Moreover, how does that developers' explanation fit http://www.universalsubtitles.org/en/videos/NmkV5cbiCqUU/info/learn-about-universal-subtitles, embedded in the Amara home page? The primary URL (which worked perfectly well since April until the decision to bypass the primary indication) is http://vimeo.com/39734142, which is an mp4 video, which they say is the format they are favoring. So why should its showing be disabled in favor of the original YouTube video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2IJb1YnAmQ? How does that fit the claim that make primary is working well?

And then, about:

so while we came up with a more robust solution to protect users work, we disabled the ability to delete the URLs

When Verone started this thread, original URLs couldn't be deleted, but at least we could remove added URLs, included the primary one for a working video that the software refused to show. This enabled us to create a new Amara page for the working video, then transfer to it the subtitles of the page for the no-longer working video.

Example: http://www.universalsubtitles.org/en/videos/iGJX2FyAeFZk/info/julian-assange-challenges-the-internet-generation.

• The original - and now sole - video URL is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cwQ2UbsN0s.
• When the YT user who posted it removed it, I added http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL6433U87HU and made it primary.
• When Amara started by-passing this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL6433U87HU primary URL, I removed it from http://www.universalsubtitles.org/en/videos/iGJX2FyAeFZk/info/julian-assange-challenges-the-internet-generation.
• I reused http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL6433U87HU to create http://www.universalsubtitles.org/en/videos/sWbrhY0CM5Zv/info/julian-assange-speech-at-wikileaks-public-meeting-in-melbourne, to which I re-added the English and Spanish subtitles made in http://www.universalsubtitles.org/en/videos/iGJX2FyAeFZk/info/julian-assange-challenges-the-internet-generation.

Upshot: at least, http://www.universalsubtitles.org/en/videos/sWbrhY0CM5Zv/info/julian-assange-speech-at-wikileaks-public-meeting-in-melbourne shows correctly with the English and Spanish subs, and I didn't have to disturb anyone working at Amara for that.

 

But now, i.e. sometime after Verone started this thread, the developers have entirely disabled deleting URLs: not only original URLs that don't work, but also primary URLs that work but that they've decided to by-pass. And that means that if I wanted now to create an Amara page with working video and subtitles for this speech by Assange, I'd have to ask for help. This is not rational.

***

So it would make more sense, and save time for you and Amara users, if Amara developers would consent to:

• forget about making Amara video pages accessible to iPad users who are unlikely to use Amara as they can't view Amara CC subs anyway,
• let users add and remove and make primary the URLs they want, and respect their primary choice, as before.

You mentioned accessibility as an argument for the changes introduced by the developers. Accessibility means offering videos that work with subtitles that work to people who cannot understand the audio of a video, either because they are Deaf / Hard of Hearing, or because they don't know the original language of the video - not hypothetically catering for iPad users when they can't view Amara subs anyway.

Last thing: this bypassing users' primary choices is just one instance among others where developers have been taking a "Father Knows Best" attitude towards users since Universal Subtitles became Amara. Other cases:

1. the imposition of moderation with workflowed tasks on teams that don't want and can't have that type of moderation, and of a shortened subtitle length which retroactively messed up heaps of subtitles in June, both belatedly rolled back with the July 3 software update, after users had asked for this roll back from the very start of these impositions
2. the ongoing prevention from making translated subtitles directly from the video and to have different time-codes for different subtitles of the same video
3. the ongoing prevention from updating subtitles by upload
4. the ongoing prevention from copypasting a plain transcript, with the entailed UTF8 encoding and other problems caused by having to upload them as .txt.

True, you wrote that 2, 3 and 4 would get fixed with the next software release. But why not consult users about such ideas, as Craig Zheng, UX Design Lead for Amara, wrote developers would do, back in July (see his July 3 comment in The folks at Amara are crowdsourcing caption translation on Google+), rather than imposing them and wait for the excrement to hit the air conditioner, to quote Kurt Vonnegut Jr.?

UX Design stands for User Experience Design. So if there is an Amara Lead for it, users should not have ideas evolved by developers in their ivory tower forced on them, but be consulted about them - which should be done in this help forum or in another public venue. And they should have an opportunity to participate in the beta-testing of these ideas, e.g. on the Developers' platform (1) that was created for that when Amara was Universal Subtitles.

 

That would save both users AND developers a lot of time.

 

(1) https://dev.universalsubtitles.org - it's on the blink presently. I hope it hasn't been deleted, as it is also the platform for testing volunteers' translations of the Amara interface, among other things.

Hi Verone and Claude,

We have an update on this issue. 
Our developers have helped clarify some aspects to this and I hope I can explain them correctly to you.

While make primary is meant to change the video that is displayed on the player,   it's an accessibility feature: it selects the video that gets shown by default, provided that the user can view that type. For example, if the primary is a youtube video, and other is a mp4 one. If you view it on an ipad, which can't play youtube flash videos, you'll get shown the other url, not the primary.   So for two YouTube URLs, it will show the first.   So make primary is working as it was intended to work.
I believe that many users were using Make Primary along with deleting URLs as a way to modify the video record and remove the original URL when it was outdated or "dead", however, this also left a window for other users to use it in less helpful ways and subtitles sometimes got lost, so while we came up with a more robust solution to protect users work, we disabled the ability to delete the URLs.

Regarding "dead videos". Instead of deleting a video when it is removed from YouTube, perhaps because the uploader no longer wants it public or for legal reasons,  then Amara will continue displaying the content created in Amara: the subtitles and the transcription, but we won't be able to play it. 

Our developers are now focusing on a way, not to "fix" Make Primary (which is working well), but to make an easy way for users to flag videos that are no longer active, add new URLs and remove old ones in a way that protects the subtitles made from those videos on the older URLs. Until the issue is well scoped out then, it's hard to specify when it will be completed. In the meantime, we can help you manually fix urls, such as Darren suggested at the start.

They will need to be done one by one so we'd appreciate if you could send us the Amara URL for the video, the source URL (the youtube link for example) that should be removed and the one that is active.

Thanks for your patience throughout the whole process. We appreciate the time and energy you invest in making online media accessible through your subtitles and translations. Thanks.

Hi Verone,

Other issues have cropped up to delay this bit of code, but it is now in the top 3 queue of assignments for the developer in charge of it.

Hello Verone and Claude,

The fix for this bug should be coming out soon, hopefully within the next week. Thank you for pointing it out to us and being so thorough in your explanations. I'll update this when the fix goes live.  

In the source code for a video's main Amara page, I now found a "learn more" passage for the URLs section that had escaped me. It doesn't show in clear in this section because it's in a division labeled style="display:none;". But it might be a clue to why the "primary" indication has been bypassed by the developers. Here's the passage, translated in clear for easier reading:

Learn more
Multiple video URLs let you link multiple videos to a single set of subtitles. Some example uses:

• Two versions of the same video exist on Youtube. You do not want subtitle volunteers to duplicate their work, so you add both versions to the multiple URLs pane.
• You put your video on Youtube, Vimeo, Blip, and Dailymotion and you want the subtitles you make to work on all of those versions.
• You want to provide different versions of a video to different browsers (HTML5/Ogg for free software users, or HTML5/h264 to iPad users). If you add these URLs, our embed code will automatically fall back to whatever format is necessary for the browser.

It's the third item on this list, which I evidenced in red, that might perhaps be a clue to the present by-passing of the primary indication: developers decided to talk directly to users' browsers, by-passing us annoying fallible humans, including those of us who want to make a URL primary: safer if the software decides in our stead.

No doubt the intention is good, but good intentions is what hell is paved with. Moreover, free software browsers are perfectly capable to read proprietary formats like mp4 nowadays and on the other hand, the Amara player CC subs simply don't show on iPads, same as CC added to videos on any web platform (YouTube, Internet Archive). So this solicitous ramming down our throats what's best for us is misplaced.