Eastern Illinois University Multimedia and Web Technology Video Captioning Worksheet

TEC 5343 Multimedia and Web TechnologyHomework: Video Captioning
Individual assignment. Duplicate work (or obviously similar ones) will result in at least
a one letter grade reduction for the course.
Introduction
An important issue in web and multimedia is the accessibility of digital media. Digital media
must be accessible to all users including those with disabilities. Learners with disabilities
shouldn’t be prevented from using multimedia materials as their peers and shouldn’t be
prevented from having equal educational and career opportunities. Federal and state laws
have been established to mandate the accessibility of digital media. Various techniques have
been developed to enhance the accessibility of multimedia. For example, captions help deaf
and hearing-impaired persons access media resources.
About Captioning
Closed captioning displays the dialogue, narration and sound effects of a video program as words
on a television screen, similar to subtitles on a movie. Closed captioning allows the viewer to
choose whether or not to display the captions that are transmitted within the broadcast signal in
encoded (or closed) form. A decoder built into or attached to a television set is used to “open” the
captions and display the words on the TV screen. (http://www.ncicap.org/acapintro.asp)
In this assignment, you will learn how to add captions to a video clip. You may record a video
clip using your computer, video camera, or phone. You can also use the video from your
Camtasia project. This assignment requires two minutes of video with captions.
In Camtasia, you can directly add captions to your video. The tutorial is
here: https://www.techsmith.com/tutorial-camtasia-8.html
Alternatively, we can use a free software called MAGpie 2. The following explains the
MAGpie approach.
Feel free to use either Camtasia or MAGpie. If you use Camtasia, create a new project in
which your video only last about two minutes.
1. Convert MP4 to MOV
You may use Camtasia to save your video as QuickTime MOV format directly. Change the
video size to 320×240 to reduce the file size. Use only about 2 minutes of video.
If your video is in MP4 format, you can convert to MOV format using a number of free
software. I used a trial software called Xilisoft Video Converter Standard 6 to do the conversion.
It can be downloaded from http://www.xilisoft.com/video-converter.html.
The trial version allows converting about 3-minute video, which is good enough for this
assignment. You may use other software to convert to mov file. The mov file just needs to be 2minute and 320×240.
The following are instructions for Xilisoft conveter.
–
Add the mp4 file from Camtasia project.
In “Profile Settings”, set Video Size to 320×240.
–
In “Profile” for “Save As”, select “General Video”  “MOV – QuickTime Video
(*.mov)”.
You can change the “Destination” to a different foler, where your mov file will be saved.
The result file will have the same name with your mp4 file but with the extension of
mov.
–
– Click the convert button
.
2. Caption Authoring
MAGpie 2 is a tool for creating closed captions and audio (video) descriptions. Authors can add
captions and audio descriptions to QuickTime, Real, Windows Media Player, or Flash
presentations (via Adobe Flash components and players that support it, e.g. NCAM’s “CC for
Flash” component and ccPlayer.) You can also use MAGpie to add captions to YouTube videos.
(http://ncam.wgbh.org/invent_build/web_multimedia/tools-guidelines/introduction)
MAGpie2 installation guide can be found here:
http://ncam.wgbh.org/invent_build/web_multimedia/tools-guidelines/magpie2installation
Download and install MAGpie 2 Windows version:
http://ncamftp.wgbh.org/magpie2/magpie251_setup_008.exe
MAGpie 2 requires QuickTimer Player. If it is not installed on your computer yet, you need
to download and install QuickTime Player first (http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/)
The following are instructions for authoring captions in MAGpie 2.
– New Project
– Browse and select the mov file, click OK
– “Create New Project Track”, click OK
Important function keys:
F6 – Play and pause the media file as you transcribe the audio.
F9 – Assign a start time (the time at which the caption will appear on the screen) to
a caption.
F10 – Add an end time to a caption (the time at which you want the caption to disappear
from the screen). However, if you want the captions to appear one after the other
without pause, you do not need to add an end time to each caption.
Detailed instructions can be found at
http://ncam.wgbh.org/invent_build/web_multimedia/tools-guidelines/magpie2-captioning
–
Save project as Captioning_YourGroupNumber
Export  QuickTime SMIL 1.0 Format. The captions will be exported in two files:
Captioning_YourGroupNumber.qt.smil and
Captioning_YourGroupNumber.en_US.qt.txt.
– Play the smil file in QuickTime Player to see the captions.
MAGpie 2 is a free software and hasn’t been updated for a while. If for some reason your
audio is not clear (i.e., with noise), that will be fine. I will mainly look at the captioning for this
assignment.
3. Submit
Submit a zip file (caption_ yourname_date.zip) to D2L. If you choose the MAGpie
approach, your zip file should contain the following files:
1. MOV file
2. qt.smil file
3. qt.txt file
If you choose the Camtasia approach, your zip file should contain the working folder of your
new Camtasia project.
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