September 19, 2006

Captions on Google Video


Google Video tries to promote captions and features a small list of videos that have captions. Although adding video captions was available in the video status section, I didn't see any video with captions until today.

It's really strange that Google supports only SubViewer (*.SUB) and SubRip (*.SRT) formats, instead of focusing on professional formats used in television, for example. Most people who upload their videos won't take the time to create subtitles, as this requires a software and it's not very easy to do.

Some speech recognition combined with an automated translation software would be really useful in this area. Or at least a collaborative captioning system, similar to the way volunteers translate Google interface.
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7 comments:

  1. UnknownSeptember 19, 2006 at 8:41 AM

    "Most people who upload their videos won't take the time to create subtitles, as this requires a software and it's not very easy to do."

    I think Google's lightbulb blinked on and its wheels are a turnin' after reading that opinion.

    Hmm.. can they make it easier?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Vincent VolajuSeptember 19, 2006 at 2:02 PM

    HA! I suggested that a time ago...
    They responded to me that at the moment they were not thinking about putting subtitles, seems that now it is the moment.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousSeptember 20, 2006 at 1:07 PM

    Hm, why Google add .SRT support, when it (still) doesnt work. Subtitles are showed incorectly. Example:
    http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4984135346671490928

    ReplyDelete
  4. Alex ChituSeptember 20, 2006 at 1:20 PM

    Here's what they see from the transcript in a XML version:
    http://video.google.com/videotranscript?docid=-4984135346671490928

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousSeptember 24, 2006 at 11:31 AM

    Great feature.
    I had been waiting for it for a long time.
    http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8226581489861733163
    (Multilanguage captioning)
    http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6789710328672031046

    ReplyDelete
  6. Myles de BastionFebruary 20, 2007 at 11:33 PM

    Why can't we search videos with captions yet? C'mon Google, the deaf community are crying for this.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Alex ChituFebruary 21, 2007 at 12:13 AM

    You can search for videos with captions. For example, try this search. The second result has a CC icon that means it has captions and also a link that says "Start playing at search term" (when your query was first found in the video).

    ReplyDelete

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