I am responsible for the video messages that our church produces. Subtitles would be very helpful for when extracts from the Bible are read out.

I was contacted by Jamie Berk from http://deafness.about.com/ who had read about our show Vampire Mob in the Pittsburgh-Post Gazette and then found there was no closed-captioning. 

Thanks to the help of one of our fans, we started a closed-captioning project and thanks to another fan, the show is being translated into French and Dutch.  These fans are DONATING their time to help us reach a larger audience, but right now, I don't see any way to do it on Blip.tv and when I searched the knowledge base, there are NO references to closed captioning and only one reference to Subtitles, THIS thread. 

For the time being, to better serve our audience, I have no choice but to embed YouTube players on our web site -http://www.VampireMob.com - because reaching an audience without generating revenue is more of a priority than making money. 

I know you guys just got the HTML5 player going, almost, but this is a real concern and not having an option for show creators to have their work enjoyed by the hearing impaired is not good service.  

-Joe Wilson

writer/director 

I'm using YouTube as well. It absolutely mystifies me why BlipTV would dump the old player which had captioning capabilities for a new one that does not. As an educator, by law my videos MUST be captioned, so I really don't have much choice. I've tried contacting BlipTV support regarding this issue and I'm aware that the BlipTV support has received a lot of other emails and feedback. I would suggest that we continue to be the "squeaky wheel" until this issue is resolved.

Paul:

Sounds great!

The player for those watching in an iPad, iPhone or any HTML5 prerequisite is still on deck?

-Joe

Thank you! Thats fantastic. Please let us know when .srt is supported as well.

@paul Thank yoy! (although I wish you had started with .srt, but understand that Blip.tv has many things to attend ;)

Just wanted to point to the fact that October 9 President Obama signed into law the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 (http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/10/08/remarks-president-signing-21st-century-communications-and-video-accessib). Similar laws are signed in the EU (including Sweden were I live and mainly produce).

I humbly suggest that Blip.tv, either now or at the next release, consider the idea to publically acknowledge this law. And remark that Blip is in the forefront, and has been supporting captions, even before tha law came into effect.

- /richard gatarski

I did not know about the law: with a little research I found the section that would concern online content any chance Blip let us know that they are legit so I do not have to worry?

Video Programming

Capability, User Interfaces, and Video Programming Guides and Menus.  This section directs the FCC to conduct three inquiries: (1) to identify formats and software needed to transmit, receive and display closed captioning and video programming provided via Internet-enabled services and digital wireless services, including ways to transmit televised emergency information that is accessible to people who are blind or visually impaired; and (2) to identify ways to make user interfaces (controls such as turning these devices on and off, controlling volume and selecting programming) on television and other video programming devices accessible to people who are blind or visually impaired, and (3) to identify ways to make video programming guides and menus (typically on-screen) accessible in real-time to people who cannot read those guides or menus.

Closed-Captioning Decoder and Video Description Capability.  This section expands the scope of devices that must display closed captions under the Television Decoder Circuitry Act of 1990 from the present requirement of television sets with screens that are 13 inches or larger, to all video devices that receive or display video programming transmitted simultaneously with sound, including those that can receive or display programming carried over the Internet.  The section also requires these devices to be able to transmit and deliver video descriptions.  Video description is the provision of verbal descriptions of the on-screen visual elements of a show provided during natural pauses in dialogue.

Video Description and Closed Captioning.  This section reinstates the FCC's modest regulations on video description. Those rules, originally promulgated in 2001, were struck down by a U.S. Court of Appeals for lack of FCC authority.  This section also authorizes the FCC to promulgate additional rules to (1) ensure that video description services can be transmitted and provided over digital TV technologies, (2) require non-visual access to on-screen emergency warnings and similar televised information and (3) increase the amount of video description required. 

This section also adds a definition for video programming to include programming provided by, or generally considered comparable to programming provided by, a television broadcast station, even when distributed over the Internet.  This will make sure that existing closed captioning obligations (and future video description obligations) apply to television-like video programming that is distributed or re-distributed over the Internet.  It tasks the FCC with creating captioning rules for three types of television-like programming on the Internet: (1) pre-produced programming that was previously captioned for television viewing; (2) live television-like video programming; and (3) new programming provided by or generally considered to be comparable to programming provided by multichannel programming distributors (such as cable or satellite subscription TV services).  This section is intended to ensure the continued accessibility of video programming to Americans with disabilities, as this programming migrates to the Internet.
 
User Interfaces.  This section requires devices used to receive or display video programming, including devices used to receive and display Internet-based video programming, to be accessible by people with disabilities so that such individuals are able to access all functions of such devices related to video programming (such as turning these devices on and off, controlling volume and select programming).  The section contains requirements for (1) audio output where on-screen text menus are used to control video programming functions, and (2) a conspicuous means of accessing closed captioning and video description, including a button on remote controls and first level access to these accessibility features when made available through on-screen menus.

Access Video Programming Guides and Menus.  This section requires multichannel video programming distributors (such as cable or satellite subscription TV services) to make their navigational programming guides accessible to people who cannot read the visual display, so that these individuals can make program selections.

I am in the process of converting our .srt files to .tt (and will soon share how I did it). Not sure what Blip means by .tt, but I have assumed it is closed to the Timed Text format (http://www.w3.org/AudioVideo/TT/).

@paul it seems that Blip does not support <br/>. Eg "This is the first line<br/>and this the second" outputs "This is the first lineand this the second".

OK, so I had a bunch of .srt files. At http://flanture.blogspot.com/2010/01/howto-create-flash-video-captions-using.html I found a way to convert these to .tt. I slightly modified the "custom format file" in order to produce .tt files (instead of .xml). Not also, that when you save in Subtitle Workshop you need to click the "Custom format" button in order to have the format file recognized.

Besides the issue regarding line breaks (see above, tried both <br /> and <br/>) it also seems that the Blip player does not display the first caption in my subtitle files. Might be because the are timed to start really early, if I find the time I will try do delay them slightly. The Timed Text format supports larger fonts, which is nice. Because in my view the default font is too small in full screen mode. Not sure if the Timed Text format defines font size in pixels, or in relative. The latter would come in handy depending on how the video is resized.

Also noticed that CC is now supported on our show pages at Blip.tv and in the embedded players - nice!

@paul, OK. Before I go ahead, do you have any info on how Blip approaches captions, and what kind of tt-format you support? I sort of want to clear out my expectations first.

hello, I'm new but I really recommend some form of subtitles. I think that in the current context of global communication, what really matters are mere English subtitles, or original alnguage subtitles when this is the case.

I'd be glad to help, I can make subtitles.

@Richard Gatarski, I'm using the Subtitle Workshop software and downloaded the custom file format, but I can't get it to work. Exactly what changes did you make to the custom file format that worked?

@ Richard: Nevermind, I figured it out. The text is rather small, though. Does anyone know how to make it larger?

@Africanelements: Good to hear! (I was too tired last night to reply ;). I don't know about sizing. A few posts above Paul points to the Timed Text recommendation, which includes support for many things, including size and positioning of the text. On the other hand Blip stips away html-tags (included in the recs) , so not everything is supported. I have to take that up in a support ticket.

@EVERYONE: Thanks for all the tips and suggestions. I wanted to share what worked for me. The easiest way I've found to create subtitles is to upload both the video and the transcript (once you upload the video go to "Edit" and then click the "Captions and Subtitles" tab. YouTube does a pretty good job of time coding the text and video. Then, there's a WONDERFUL site, http://mo.dbidb.com/, where you can just enter the URL of your Youtube video and it automatically converts it to .srt. Load the .srt into the Subtitle Workshop program with the "Custom format" program installed as described above, and you've got the .tt file to upload (Once .srt is supported in the next release, there will be no need for this step).

For me, that has been the quickest and easiest way to create subtitles.

@Africanelements the only issue with your method is that of the 15 minute cutoff with YT videos, if it is longer then 15 minutes it would need to be cut off and could cause issues.  Anyone else have another means?

"We strip out HTML tags in the subtitles in order to better display subtitles on any embed size."

I understand why you'd want to do this, but the problem is that it doesn't seem to work as advertised. Mainly, that the text in fullscreen mode on a 1920x1080 monitor is ridiculously tiny.

Also, I like to break subtitle lines manually to improve readability, so having <br/> tags stripped is a bit annoying.  My subtitle program also warns me when a line is longer than 40 characters, and I like the idea behind that.

If I may suggest how the subtitles should work, here's what makes sense to me:

• Scale text proportionally with the size of the player window.
• Strip all tags except <br/> tags.
• Set a limit of three lines per subtitle, to avoid filling the screen with a wall of text.
• Make the text stand out a bit better on lighter backgrounds.  I noticed there is a slight halo around the text to make it stand out, but it may be a bit too subtle for its intended purpose.

Otherwise, I like the new player's subtitles better than the old player.  Actually, I like the new player better in general, so thanks for that.

@Patrick That's true ... forgot about that. Maybe we could do a feature request for Blip to offer the same  program that Youtube has?

+1 on Albert's suggestions

(and btw, Paul's referring to the TTML spec's is kind of rudiculous as all HTML tags are stripped out)

I am very happy to note that Blip now supports SubRip files (.srt) again. Unfortunately it seems that line breaks in a two-row subtitle is not handled properly. E.g. if the .srt files containts "This is first line<cr><lf>and this is second" then there is a double lined space in the video. See http://wudse.blip.tv/file/4380849/ The possibility to have two lines is important, eg for dialogues. But the lines must be closer aligned.

And to repeat another crucial issue "Make the text stand out a bit better on lighter backgrounds", see for example about a minute into http://wudse.blip.tv/file/4380370/

Another interesting feature (bug?) is that if captions are turned on, the playlist navigation (overlayed on the player) disappears as soon as the first caption is displayed. If captions are turned off, then the playlist navigation menu reappears.

You're welcome Annie. How about the other bugs, that the captions have bad line breaks and are hard to read (moves the problem from "hard of hearing" to "hard of seeing").

I have many files with captions in languages other than English that I would very much like to be able to display on our websites. Our audience is all over the world and the captions would be very helpful to them.

I am really happy to see that captions in Portuguese are displaying correctly now. I uploaded an srt file created with Subtitle Workshop.  But there is still a problem. On captions with 2 lines of text there is too much space between the 2 lines, there is an extra empty line between the two lines of text. Is there something that can be done to fix this?

Also, captions in Russian are not displaying correctly; it's just a bunch of characters. Is there something that can be done to make them display correctly?

I'm leaving the captions up so you can see it.

http://www.riverganga.org/index.shtml

Thank you.

Carla

Carla, I believe we have already pointed out the double lined spacing (as well as that the captions need a better background). Regarding the Russion characters, are you sure the captions file is encoded as UTF-8? (something you can make sure with Windows notepad, or the open source editor Notepad+).

Thank you Richard. I spent a couple of hours this morning looking through forums on the we, trying to figure out how to make sure the .srt file with the Russian captions is encoded as UTC-8. I've tried different things, like opening the file in Word, then copying and pasting it into Wordpad (I tried Notepad ++ too) but I am unable to save the file as .srt. Just changing the extension will not do it. The Russian characters display correctly in Subtitle Workshop (Cyrillic). But when uploaded to blip.tv they appear as a bunch of question marks. I am at the end of my rope here. Anybody can help me please?

Carla, this is how I have done it with Swedish characters, when they are displayed properly in Subtitle Workshop. Save the file in Subtitle workshop as .srt (eg textfile.srt), then open that file in Windows notepad. In Notepad do a "a save as", make sure to change the default drop down "Save as type ... (.txt)" to "All files (*.*) with another file name (eg textfile-UTF8.srt) AND Encoding to "UTF-8".

If that does not do it I am afraid I cant help you, character encoding is a mess. Good luck!

AND PLEASE BLIP, fix the double spacing and better background for subtitles in the Stratos player.

Dear Richard, thank you very much for trying to help me. When I open the srt file with the Russian translation into Notepad (or any text editor) the characters don't appear correctly. They change into a bunch of meaningless characters (ex: î çàòðóäíèòåëüíîé ñèòóàöèè, â êîòîðîé îêàçàëîñü ÷åëîâå÷åñòâî). So, even is I save the file as UTF-8, it still displays the wrong characters. I was hoping somebody at Blip.TV would be able to tell me how to solve this problem.

I have an update regarding Russian captions. I copied the whole file which was open in Subtite Workso=hop, where it displays correctly. Pasted it into a Russian converter online, where the characters displayed incorrectly (ex: î çàòðóäíèòåëüíîé ñèòóàöèè, â êîòîðîé îêàçàëîñü ÷åëîâå÷åñòâî) . Reconverted the whole thing into Russian Characters using the website's converter (http://www.artlebedev.ru/tools/decoder/) Pasted the resulting text which displayed correctly into notepad. It displayed correctly, to my surprise. I saved the file as srt in UTF-8 and then in Unicode.  Uploaded the first one, same result: gobbledygook. Uploaded the second file (UTF-8), still the same gobbledygook: î çàòðóäíèòåëüíîé ñèòóàöèè, â êîòîðîé îêàçàëîñü ÷åëîâå÷åñòâî)î çàòðóäíèòåëüíîé ñèòóàöèè, â êîòîðîé îêàçàëîñü ÷åëîâå÷åñòâî). You can see it here: http:www.riverganga.org. Will somebody in SUPPORT please take a look at this? And also at the space between the lines, which makes it really hard to read the text, as Richard already pointed out?

Thank you.

I'm having a problem displaying captions in BlipTv's embedded player. They used to display just fine, but now they are not. They display on the site here, http://www.blip.tv/file/4194072, but the same video does not have the "CC" button displayed  here http://www.africanelements.org/. Any suggestions?

Hi there,

Well it's been some time and I just wanted to thank blip.tv for getting the captions functionality out the door and getting rid of any unexpected bugs that came up.

I have a question – is there any way to embed the video and include some code that will load a specific .srt track by default when the user clicks to play the video? Currently the captions option is there for the user to activate, but not activated by default.

This would be great to have. I'd be happy to go into more detail if need be.

Thanks!

Thanks Paul. Thats great!

Also – is it possible to do the same and add the defaultcaptions to the embed code? Any idea?

Thank you Paul for that info! I have been looking  for it for a long time. I updated the wiki with this parameter (http://wiki.blip.tv/index.php/Showplayer#Available_Parameters)

I recently ran into ODI's (the UK Office for Disability Issues) "most accessible player on the web". Worth while looking at. Both for  things to  consider, and ways to implement them. Info at http://www.odi.gov.uk/about-the-odi/odi-news.php#amp and check out at http://www.odi.gov.uk/player

I would highly recommend everyone checking out Universal Subtitles - http://universalsubtitles.org/en/ - it's an Open Source project, free, and it's a project of the Participatory Culture Foundation.

I'm not affiliated with them, I just think this project is awesome and will prove to be exceedingly helpful to anyone seeking translations and subtitles of their works and the consequent growth in community and audience it can create.

Here's a link to a great blog post about the project explaining what it is and how it all works: http://www.addictivetips.com/internet-tips/add-subtitles-to-youtube...

Cheers

I do want to acknowledge that BlipTV has put some effort in support for captioning, BUT ... Come on, people! It's REALLY bad.  I don't want to discourage your efforts, but let's be real. You know the captioning is bad. (If you don't know it's bad, just go to ANY other video hosting site that offers captioning with their videos, and you'll see how bad your captions are in comparisson).

1. The captions are so tiny as to barely be legible
2. The lines are WAY to long and there's no support for line breaks
3. There's no support for any formatting whatsoever
4. Readability is even worse on light backgrounds

I know that all of this has already been stated, but PLEASE reassure me that you are still working on this.

I completely agree with Darius on every point. Please, let us know that you're working to fix these problems. I would also add that it would be a great thing to make the subtitles change size according to the size of the screen. If you maximize the screen, the subtitles stay the same size and they look kinda ridiculous.

By the way, we have used Bliptv for a long time, and we love it. But the captions thing is getting on my nerves...

It takes so much work to prepare captions for our videos, which are of talks between 1 1/2 and 2 hours long, so it's a lot of text. And then, we can't display the captions in a way that people can read them comfortably... That's a real bummer.

Carla

Hello,

Sorry the srt file url didnt come completely ..please find it below...

http://blip.tv/file/get/Niruma-samayikDDGharniVyaktioSathenaKashayV...

Regards,

Jinesh

Dear Blip TV,

It's March 14th.

The last response to this thread from a Blip.tv rep was Paul Dumoulin on February 4, 2011.

Will someone from Blip respond to the inquiries above?

Will Blip post a comprehensive how to on closed captioning video?

- Joe Wilson, IAWTV Closed-Captioning Subcommittee