[Athen] captions for ios devices

[Terrill Thompson]

There are many audio description vendors to choose from. Here's a list
from the ACB:
http://www.acb.org/adp/services.html

We've used several different vendors over the years, most recently Audio Eyes.

-- 
Terrill Thompson
Technology Accessibility Specialist
DO-IT, Accessible Technology
UW Information Technology
University of Washington
tft at uw.edu
206-221-4168



On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 7:06 AM, N Dogbo <ndogbo at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Terrill,

> Could you share contacts of the vender to whom you outsource video audio

> description orders?

>

> Thanks,

> Nicaise

>

>

>

>

> ----- Think not with your EYES and you shall have a perfect VISION! ---

>

> -----Original Message-----

> From: athen-list-bounces at mailman1.u.washington.edu

> [mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman1.u.washington.edu] On Behalf Of Terrill

> Thompson

> Sent: Friday, December 28, 2012 1:01 PM

> To: Access Technology Higher Education Network

> Subject: Re: [Athen] captions for ios devices

>

> Hi All,

>

> I'm a little late joining this conversation, but just wanted to share what

> we're doing at DO-IT:

> http://uw.edu/doit/video

>

> We've created a custom media player that uses HTML5 as its primary player,

> and JW Player as fallback for those who are using older browsers that don't

> support HTML5. We've created a highly accessible custom player that

> communicates with both the HTML5 media and JW Player API's so all users -

> even those with older browsers - get exactly the same experience and

> identical feature sets.

>

> For video files, we're using MP4, which is now supported by most browsers

> and will eventually be supported by Firefox (the last major holdout). Until

> then, we're also delivering all our videos using Ogg (older videos) or WebM

> (newer videos), since those are the formats preferred by Firefox (and Opera,

> which only recently began supporting MP4).  JW Player also supports MP4, so

> that same file works in the fallback player.

>

> For captions, we start with an SRT caption file. The standard format for

> HTML5 captions is WebVTT, which at its core is very similar to SRT, so it's

> easy to convert the SRT file to WebVTT with just a couple of edits in a text

> editor (there are also free tools available that will do the conversion).

> Browsers are starting to build in support for WebVTT captions in HTML5, but

> from my experience their implementation is still a little buggy, so we

> decided to build caption support into our custom controller rather than rely

> on browsers to do it.

>

> We upload all our videos to YouTube in addition to showing them on our own

> site. For YouTube, we upload the original SRT caption file.  And for iOS, we

> embed the SRT caption file into our MP4 video file using Handbrake. It's

> great that iOS supports that because we're already delivering an MP4 file,

> so we don't really have to do anything extra-special - we just use that same

> MP4 file for all purposes, including delivery of captions in iOS. I recently

> discovered that my iPhone reports that it "Can't play the caption file" on

> at least one of our videos, so the iOS caption parser is apparently a little

> fussy, but most of the time it seems to work. iOS also supports multiple SRT

> files within a single MP4, so that's an effective strategy for delivering

> foreign-language subtitles. We aren't supporting subtitles yet on our

> videos, but we do have a few of them translated so we're working on

> implementing subtitles soon.

>

> Since you mentioned audio description Ken, we're implementing that in a

> couple of different ways:

>

> First, we outsource audio description for all our videos. The deliverable

> from vendors is a new video, with description mixed into the program audio.

> They do a great job of placing description in the best places so it's

> minimally intrusive plus they adjust volumes so the description can easily

> be heard over background sounds. The media player we've created includes a

> Description button that if clicked, swaps the source media file so if the

> user is viewing the non-described version the described version is loaded,

> and vice versa.

>

> We also provide a text version of the description in a WebVTT file, the same

> file format that's used for captions. This form of description is supported

> by the HTML5 spec. No browsers support it natively yet, but we built support

> into our custom player. The description text is displayed at the appropriate

> times just like captions are, but they're displayed in a box that's marked

> with ARIA role="alert", which causes screen readers to read the description

> as soon as it appears. This is off by default on our player since users have

> the option of viewing a professionally described video, but there's a

> Preferences button that allows users to experiment with different ways of

> getting their description delivered.

>

> One advantage of having a WebVTT-based description, at least as a supplement

> to the professionally described alternative version, is that the WebVTT

> description file can be used in conjunction with the caption file to build a

> transcript. In our transcript we markup the caption and description in such

> a way that they're visually distinct, plus we've added the text

> "Description:" to the start of each block of description content, hidden to

> everyone except screen reader users.

>

> We're planning to make our custom media player available as an open source

> project sometime in early 2013. The best place to stay abreast of that is my

> blog: http://terrillthompson.com/blog

>

> Regards,

> Terrill

>

> --

> Terrill Thompson

> Technology Accessibility Specialist

> DO-IT, Accessible Technology

> UW Information Technology

> University of Washington

> tft at uw.edu

> 206-221-4168

>

>

> On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 2:39 PM, Ken Petri <petri.1 at osu.edu> wrote:

>> Hi Dean,

>>

>> The Handbrake method works just fine. But if you have a Mac iSubtitle

> gives

>> you more options.

>>

>> Here's the too-long URL on how to do this with Handbrake:

>>

> https://carmenwiki.osu.edu/display/10292/DIY+Captioning+Techniques#DIYCaptio

> ningTechniques-AddingCaptions%28Subtitles%29toMP4VideoforUseiniTunesorVLC

>>

>> A short URL to the entire DIY Captioning Techniques page is:

>> http://go.osu.edu/diy-captioning

>>

>> Other good info in this page as well. The info about how to add an audio

>> description track is forth-coming. That technique does, however, require

>> QuickTime Pro....

>>

>>

>> ken

>> --

>> Ken Petri

>> Program Director, OSU Web Accessibility Center

>> 102D Pomerene Hall, 1760 Neil Avenue, Columbus, Ohio  43210

>> Office: 614.292.1760 | Mobile: 614.218.1499 | Fax: 614.292.4190

>> http://wac.osu.edu | petri.1 at osu.edu

>>

>>

>>

>> On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 5:10 PM, Sean J Keegan <skeegan at stanford.edu>

> wrote:

>>>

>>> > I want to learn how to add captions for iOS devices. I found a

>>> > vendor site that gives instructions, but it says it only works using

>>> > QuickTime Pro on a Mac. I have been unsuccessful in searches to

>>> > confirm this. Can someone please tell me whether this is accurate?

>>>

>>> Hi Dean,

>>>

>>> Generally speaking, there are two ways to add captions to iOS media:

>>> embedding a caption file so that it requires the closed caption decoder;

> or,

>>> embedding a caption file as a subtitle track.

>>>

>>> The first method is what I call the "closed caption decoder" solution.

>>> This requires that you create an SCC file and embed this file into the

>>> original media file.  In order to view these captions on an iOS device

> you

>>> have to enable the closed caption decoder feature in the Videos menu

>>> (Settings > Videos > Closed Captioning).  The SCC file is the same file

> type

>>> as is used for captioning VHS media content and is a bit of a pain.  From

>>> what I have found, you need to have Compressor (Mac only) in order to

>>> integrate the SCC caption into the original media file.

>>>

>>> The second method is what I call the "subtitle track" solution.  This

>>> involves using the subtitle track to embed caption information into the

>>> media file.  I have had much greater success using this solution as it is

>>> far easier to deal with the SRT caption file and the application used to

>>> embed the captions (as subtitles) into the original media.  I have used

> the

>>> application iSubtitle (Mac only) to perform this process. Subler, also

> Mac

>>> only, also works.

>>>

>>> For Windows, the options are varied.  Wondershare Video Converter

> Ultimate

>>>

> (http://www.wondershare.com/video-editing-tips/how-to-add-subtitles-to-mp4.h

> tml)

>>> is one tool that you could try.  Previous versions seemed to work with

>>> getting a subtitle track into an MP4 media file, so that may be one

> option

>>> (I only tried this tool years ago, so your mileage may vary).

>>>

>>> Handbrake may be an option now that there is improved subtitle support

> for

>>> MP4 media files.  With a user created SRT caption file, you can run the

>>> media file and caption file together through Handbrake to get soft or

> hard

>>> subtitles (soft-subtitles can be enabled/disabled whereas hard-subtitles

> are

>>> burned into the video itself).  See

> https://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/Subtitles

>>> for more information.  I have not tried this method myself (yet!).

>>>

>>> Take care,

>>> Sean

>>>

>>> --

>>> Sean Keegan

>>> Associate Director, Assistive Technology

>>> Office of Accessible Education - Stanford University

>>> http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/oae

>>> _______________________________________________

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>>>

>>>

>>

>>

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