Amara.org Support Center

Dawn Jones kindly messaged me that I could add the http://universalsubtitles.org/en/videos/7Gq9p7f1X3ik/info/take-that-the-flood/ video she has captioned to the Music Captioning team. 

But when I tried to do so, choosing Music Captioning from the Choose a team droplist under collaborate, and press "Save" in the new page, I got a message that said:

"Amara does not support that website or video format. If you'd like to us to add support for a new site or format, or if you think there's been some mistake, contact us!"

pointing to the "Video URL" box. And that box itself has the following puzzling explanation:

"Enter the URL of any compatible video or any video on our site. You can also browse the site and use the 'Add Video to Team' menu."

Well, 

1. The 'Add Video to Team' option, which used to be the only way to add a video to a team, is what I'd just done  but doesn't work.
2. The 'enter the URL of any video on [Amara] site' is what the 'Add Video to team' option had done but doesn't work
3. that leaves only "Enter the URL of any compatible video"

So I backed out from the video adding to team interface to http://universalsubtitles.org/en/videos/7Gq9p7f1X3ik/info/take-that-the-flood/, went to the URL's tab, fished the original URL, back to the video tab, back to the team choosing list, chose Music Captioning again, banged the original URL in the URL box, hit save and that did add the video to the team.

But what's the idea exactly?  What's the point of this new option to add a video to a team directly from its original URL? Team participants are used to adding existing Amara pages to teams via the choose a team drop list, so why sent them on that roundabout misinforming trip?

Update Oct 30 2012: Adding video to a team seems back to the previous working version.

It's doing it again: if I first add a video to Amara, then use the Choose a team droplist under Collaborate in the Amara page to add it to a team, the software messages:

"Amara does not support that website or video format. If you'd like to us to add support for a new site or format, or if you think there's been some mistake, contact us!"

And again, I can still add the video to the team if I fish out the URL of the original video that gets streamed in its Amara page.

Adding the URL of  an Amara video to a team works again. Just wondering why it occasionally doesn't.

Hi Claude! Our current system has hiccups like this sometimes, which is why we're looking forward to bringing out the new data model to help iron out these kinds of wrinkles!