OT: Closed captioning online video

I have an 11 minute project that the client wants put online and also have an option for closed captions.

I've never done this before and don't know how to do this.

Apparently, YouTube offers the ability to do captions on their videos, but alas, at 11 minutes, I'm out of luck. Apparently, this can be done in Flash professional, but my knowledge of that is a little better than my 4 year old's, but not much. I don't think this company has a place to host the video, either.

We're working with a professional captioning company to actually do the captions.

Anyone with any experience or advice for me would be super!

Thanks,
Casey Petersen

This might help:

[www.apple.com]

-Noah

Final Cut Studio Training, featuring the HVX200, EX1, EX3, DVX100, DVDSP and Color at [www.callboxlive.com]!
Author, RED: The Ultimate Guide to Using the Revolutionary Camera available now at: [www.amazon.com].
Editors Store- Gifts and Gear for Editors: [www.editorsstore.com]

First there is no way to do Closed Captions for any online movie what you can do is Open Captions or subtitles
For YouTube you need an SRT file, it looks like that:
1
00:00:24,720 --> 00:00:26,720
Have a seat douchebag.

2
00:00:43,960 --> 00:00:45,960
So what's happening here weirdo?

3
00:00:48,280 --> 00:00:50,280
You want some wine?

4
00:00:53,800 --> 00:00:55,800
You have Cocacola light?

Like the QTText example Noah linked to SRT uses 1000 as time base.

With QTText it's quite easy as you can match the timebase to your movies frame rate i.e. 2997 for NTSC where each frame will a duration of 100 relative to the timebase. That would allow to use the standard TC entries from the subtitle list you got from your translation company and just modify them a little without having to worry about the conversion from 29.97 to 1000 as timebase.
The QTText file just can be opened in QT Player and then pasted into the original movie.

Finally to make it easier you can use my TitleExchange Pro. It does convert many subtitle formats. As you obviously only need one movie the demo should work fine for you as it works for 30 days with all features - though the amount of titles is limited to 50. But you can convert them as blocks and then merge them.

An even better option is to tell your subtitle company to deliver the format you need.

Andreas

Some workflow tools for FCP [www.spherico.com]
TitleExchange -- juggle titles within FCS, FCPX and many other apps.
[www.spherico.com]

Where is that dialogue example from? Sounds like NYPD Blue.

-Noah

Final Cut Studio Training, featuring the HVX200, EX1, EX3, DVX100, DVDSP and Color at [www.callboxlive.com]!
Author, RED: The Ultimate Guide to Using the Revolutionary Camera available now at: [www.amazon.com].
Editors Store- Gifts and Gear for Editors: [www.editorsstore.com]

Adobe has a Flash tutorial on how to do closed captions in Flash Professional:

http://www.layersmagazine.com/closed-captioned-video-in-flash-cs3.html

Also, YouTube has captioning abilities on their videos as well...here's a random example:








click the little CC button on the lower right corner of the video.

My problem is, I can't use YouTube because my clip is 11 minutes long. I don't know Flash very well...I MAY be able to figure out that tutorial, but then again, there really is no host for that file. This is a state project and they don't have a website that they were going to embed this on, or post this to. The intent was just to have a link emailed to people to a YouTube like site.

Noah,

I've no idea where the dialog comes from, it just was funny and I was not bound to any contracts with that one.
I do have millions of original subtitles even from the big block busters since in many cases I helped to get them organized - mostly for free
My daughter and me often have did have fun watching some of them as I knew the subtitles in advance - without having seen the movie's pictures before - when having a time display .



Casey,

I can't see your problem.

To be honest I don't know a lot about YouTube because I don't like it and I don't know a lot about Flash because I use it seldom.
I do know a lot about subtitling formats.

In case of YouTube it's easy: upload your movie and attach the SRT file.
With Flash a it's bit more complicated as the XML structure may not look like something you're used to work with on a daily base. But it's simple. Just use the structure which is explained in the little tutorial:

Quote

<p begin="00:00:00.00" dur="00:00:03.00">What's up everybody.</p>

In this case the timebase is 100 and you've to convert the timecode frames to 100's of a second. The method is the same. Just use the example , duplicate the '<p> paragraphs' enter your own values and go from there

In any case, you mentioned:

Quote

We're working with a professional captioning company to actually do the captions

These people should be able able to deliver the right format.

You may also look at "http://www.bitfield.se/isubtitle/" which uses SRT input as well

Regards
Andreas

Some workflow tools for FCP [www.spherico.com]
TitleExchange -- juggle titles within FCS, FCPX and many other apps.
[www.spherico.com]

Basically the problem is the client wants it on YouTube so they can send an email link to people to watch the video...they don't necessarily have their own website they can host it on.

YouTube allows videos up to 10 minutes long, this video is a tad over 11 minutes long.

We use Vimeo typically for uploading rough edits of videos for clients to look at. As far as I was able to tell, Vimeo does not do closed captioning (in the way that it is able to be switched on and off by the user...which is the problem with putting permanent subtitles on the video).

Maybe there is another YouTube-like site out there that will allow longer videos and closed captioning that can be turned on or off by the user's request. I don't know what that site would be.

We really don't want to host this video on our server...more out of principle, I guess...plus this won't be the only project for these clients and I don't think they'd be willing to pay us for the space they're taking up on our server.

Thanks for your wisdom!

Casey

Also, the captioning company gave us a .SCC file and a .DOC of the captions (used for DVD Studio Pro).

Make it two parts on Youtube then- that's totally done every day of the week.

Noah

Final Cut Studio Training, featuring the HVX200, EX1, EX3, DVX100, DVDSP and Color at [www.callboxlive.com]!
Author, RED: The Ultimate Guide to Using the Revolutionary Camera available now at: [www.amazon.com].
Editors Store- Gifts and Gear for Editors: [www.editorsstore.com]

Is it possible to get the second clip to start playing immediately after the first one? I haven't been on YouTube for a long time.

They can be cross-referenced but won't auto play AFAIK. But believe me if the client isn't able to provide a web site and you can't do Flash- this is a fine option. Just title them appropriate- i.e. Part 1 of 2, etc.

Noah

Final Cut Studio Training, featuring the HVX200, EX1, EX3, DVX100, DVDSP and Color at [www.callboxlive.com]!
Author, RED: The Ultimate Guide to Using the Revolutionary Camera available now at: [www.amazon.com].
Editors Store- Gifts and Gear for Editors: [www.editorsstore.com]

Quote
Casey
Also, the captioning company gave us a .SCC file and a .DOC of the captions (used for DVD Studio Pro).

Both types are wrong for that what you intend to do.
SCC is fine if you want to burn a NTSC SD DVD and you can use it with DVD Studio Pro. A whatever .doc format might be usable for something else but not for DVDSP and probably not for any of the YouTube, Vimeo etc sites.

So go the way Noah suggested. And ask your professional captioning company about subtitle formats they can provide.

Regards
Andreas

Some workflow tools for FCP [www.spherico.com]
TitleExchange -- juggle titles within FCS, FCPX and many other apps.
[www.spherico.com]