#craptions

[tuttle-did-it]

PSA FROM EXHAUSTION.

Signed up for a series of online lectures. Couldn't understand a word, couldn't lip-read speaker (which is very difficult anyway). Couldn't participate, couldn't engage, couldn't understand. Had to leave because it didn't even occur to them to put captions on

Folks, if you are posting ANY video online or send it to another human, please enable captions/subtitles.

Deaf people need captions

Hard of hearing people need captions

People with audio processing conditions need captions

People with ADHD often need captions to maintain attention

People who are not native speakers of the primary language need captions

People who are watching something in a private space and are not able to watch with volume need captions

People with learning difficulties/differences/disabilities need captions

People trying to watch something with bad audio recording need captions

People who have migraines/headaches and really can't deal with sound but still need to watch the video (for whatever reason) need captions

People who have colds/ear infections/went to a concert without ear protection and have bad tinnitus need captions

People who are very new to a topic need captions

People who are multi-tasking need captions

people with misophonia need captions

People who are neurospicy and just need fucking captions need fucking caption

People need captions.

And, whilst I have your attention, don't just use autocraptions from the computer that only get about 65%. I mean, look-- I'll take auto craptions over nothing, but there is a reason deaf people cal them 'craptions.' We hate them, it's very often word salad, and it's just useless. You can process the video through with autocraptions, and then go in and make corrections where the craptions got it wrong. And, if you feel super fancy, you could even put in things like full stops and commas to make it easier to read.

Also, when captioning, please put actions/reactions in brackets. Anything off screen, any noises we may not be able to hear. Examples: [Audience cheers] [Explosion off screen, people shouting] [sound of phone ringing.]

If something is inaudible or the sound does not catch what they said, please signify this. If it's a montage and there's music with no dialogue, say this. Examples:

[Mulcahy speaks indistinctly.]

[inaudible]

[audio cuts out]

[no audio, no music]

[music- Sinatra' song (song) plays; no audible dialogue or sound from scenes]

[dialogue from film 'My Darling Clementine' plays in background whilst Hawkeye whistles]

[music is interrupted by the sound of a record being ripped or pulled off a record]

If you just feel REALLY generous to the audience and really want me to love you, please feel free to put tone that I might miss, such as [Hawkeye whispers] or [Klinger shouts]. Maybe it's visible on the screen from expressions/body language, maybe not.

Hawkeye: [imitates Groucho] Hello, Room Service? Send up a larger room.

Hawkeye [imitates British accent:] [drops accent]

And, when there may be confusion on when characters are speaking. Examples:

[Multiple characters talk at once.]

Potter: [speaks dialogue from 'My Darling Clementine' at the same time as a character in the film]:

Margaret [interrupts Frank]:

Hawkeye and BJ [speaking together:]

Also also, if there are multiple speakers, please show this. [speaker 1: ] [Speaker 2]:

Even if you don't receive a request from anyone to put on captions, please just add captions. Simple accessibility considerations, please. Some people don't even realise they need captions until they see then and go 'oh, yay. Captions.'

I know it may take a little bit of time and planning, but there are more of us out there than you realise. So please, just add captions.

If you ever doubt how important captions might be to someone, sometime just put on a video. Put on an episode of a show you haven't seen before. Mute it, watch it with no captions. See just how much you manage to get without ANY captions.

CAPTIONS.

CAPTIONS.

[spacenoirdetective]

"And then...and THEN...Dolores was all telling me that I have to do DOUBLE the paperwork before my morning shift even ENDED. I had four TPS reports already lined up. I just do not know how I stay there! And to top it off, someone took my ambrosia salad from the fridge. They won't even put a note up. Well, I never! I have half a nerve to slither on up to corporate and bite their heads off! Yes, I do like peach! You are a dear! I could just eat you up!"

[livingmeatloaf]

It is wild how much the @dropoutdottv captions cannot handle someone saying "D and D". Any acronym, but that one is pretty egregious, considering, you know, everything. Watching a D actual play show now, apparently

[clatterbane]

One of those conflicted moments: when your urge to de-Google and also a dislike for auto-craptions collide with your desire to make things more accessible.

Yeah, I went ahead and added that plugin for Twitch streaming. It's also not like I'm not sending the same feed directly to Youtube, which is already adding craptions by default. It just irks me that Google's API is really the only source for this type of capability currently.

At least, short of probably paying someone with the skill to sit through 4 hours of my blether to live caption it, several times a week. That is really not practical, though if I had the cash lying around on an ongoing basis? You bet I'd rather go that route.

I hadn't actually looked at the quality of the existing craptions on the Youtube end so far. But, on the plus side at least? When I tested the OBS plugin's output, it managed better than I was expecting even when I tried playing up my accent and mumbling more. (Though not at the same time.) That does seem to be improving, at any rate.

So, that should at least provide SOME kind of captioning. Which might come in extra handy besides for disability purposes, considering how few of what audience I've been getting do come from the Anglosphere. And even if the speech impediment and dialect have both toned themselves down over the years, my speech may not always be the easiest for non-native speakers to get their ears around.

Hell, that was a enough of a (sometimes mutual) issue in the UK. Though my half-deaf ass was much more used to listening to them than most of them were to me. I think it sometimes just surprised people when I opened my mouth and unexpected sounds came out. (Just getting on with your daily business, when suddenly: A feral hillbilly appears!)

Which really shouldn't be the same issue at all when you're checking out random game streamers.

[tuttle-did-it]

there's a reason we call them craptions.

i feel strongly about this

[rikaklassen]

Really wish professional YouTubers caption their views more often. I understand captioning is very expensive, but at this point you really should be asking your sponsors to foot the bill for accessibility.

And it's not unprecedent. TV used to be like that. Bumpers like this will forever be etched into my memories:

Video description:

Old late '90s, early 2000s YTV bumper. A monster or alien-like being is sitting by a TV. Text on screen is narrated by an announcer: "Closed captioning brought to you by …" The alien thumps the top of the TV, causing the signal to change to a Coca Cola logo. Narrator continues "Cola Cola." Zooms into the logo.

If every YouTube video is gong to be sponsored, might as well put accessibility on the negotiation table before signing the contract.

[stabbedinthenameofscience]

I'm watching Legally Blonde. I use captions when I watch movies for a number of reasons, sometimes because words make more sense that way, sometimes because the house is loud and it's easier to read it, sometimes it's just because I have to have the volume down because a kid is asleep or something.

So far, I've seen:

***ignment

***ets

***ociate

Someone find/replaced "ass" with *** in the captions.

Or shall we just call them what they are--CRAPTIONS.

Censorship is out of hand when something that is meant to be an accurate transcription of the spoken lines on screen for the sake of accessibility is now being asterisked in order to...what, not offend someone? The WORD WAS SPOKEN OUT LOUD. If you don't want to hear the world ASS, don't watch media that swears, but also @amazon DO FUCKING BETTER.

This shitty captioning makes the movie less accessible to those who need or want captions!! This entirely undermines the purpose of captions! And not to mention the sheer laziness of this find-and-replace error where someone literally just replaced every instance of the letter combination "ass-" with *** instead of 1) human readers checking this and 2) putting a space after "ass" in their find-and-replace terms. Even then, replacing the word with asterisks IS STILL WRONG because it undermines the purpose of captions.

But at least if someone human looks at it, they can make it so words like "assignment" and "assets" and "associate" aren't censored because they happen to have three letters in common with a crass term for one's rear.

Good lord, you're a multi-billion dollar streaming service, DO BETTER.

[sniffanimal]

I love you hard-coded captions I love you human written captions I love you accessible transcripts I love you captioned swear words I love you customizable caption appearance I love you captions that shift screen position to avoid obscuring important text I love you captions that indicate new speakers

I hate you youtube captions I hate you Google translate captions I hate you censored captions I hate you cheeky jokes in the captions I hate you super laggy captions I hate you paywalled captions/transcripts I hate you reliance on speech to text only I hate you craptions

[tuttle-did-it]

There is a reason we call auto-generated captions ‘craptions.’

whenever i click the cc button on a youtube video that clearly has a high budget and is made by a fucking studio and i see “english - auto generated” i spit daggers from my eyes and mouth at whoever decided to not pay someone to make actual captions

[spacenoirdetective]

“Well, little lady, let ol’ Bill here tell you about a little something called…the Maitrayaniya Upanishad. Yup, this here ol’ cowboy believes that the universe was born out of passion! Yessir, them that there is some sacred knowledge! It was only later that the universe evolved purity and goodness. Can I interest you in a marigold?”

“Um, I really think I have to go now…”

[natelm2nd]

"you can pirate tv shows and film" cool. does it have closed captions? like actual honest to goodness captions, not the AI craptions? Does the website look like I need sunglasses to view it? (mostly white background with fucking 12 point Times New Roman font.)

[clueingforbeggs]

Fun fact, I have just used the term 'craptions' in a formal paper.

[should-be-sleeping]

Square Enix, I am begging. Auto-generated closed captions are why we can't have nice things Australia.

[tuttle-did-it]

In 1969, in the episode ‘Love All,’ John Steed met an AI / ChatGP that wrote romance novels. ‘Her’ name was Rosemary Z. Glade. 

They input various scenarios into the computer, and then 'Rosemary' popped out over 400 romance novels based on those scenarios. What's of interest here is

1) how quickly the AI can pop something out when it has all the built in scenarios,

2) even in '69, they realised that to get an AI to pop something out, you have to put something original IN. Funny how someone's imagined version of how this would work is precisely what has happened 54 years later.

Originally aired 3 Feb 1969. Season 7, episode 21. 

Please forgive the bad recording and bad audio- I tried uploading it to YouTube to automatically create craptions, but it just won't do it. Please see below for the transcript. 

Teleplay by Jeremy Burnham, directed by Peter Sykes

Transcript:

[Steed knocks on a door. A woman, Thelma, is inside, talking to a recording device. He watches her.]

Thelma: Sir. Please... Please take the blindfold off my eyes. I know you're there. I sense the aura of evil that surrounds you. I beg you, untie my hands. I can hear you. Your breathing. I can hear your breathing. Why do you torture me this way. Do you keep me in this foul dungeon just to stand and silently gloat over me. Scarlett's voice caught in her throat and she sobbed helplessly. Blinded by the velvet band across her eyes she was unable to see the claw-like hand that reached forward to stroke the ivory flesh of her shoulder--

[Steed puts his hand on her shoulder. She screams.]

Thelma: Oh my goodness you frightened the life out of me.

Steed: I'm most terribly sorry.

Thelma: I should think so too. Scare like that could give a girl grey hair.

Steed: I'm sure that whatever the colour of your hair you'd still be equally attractive.

Thelma: Oooh dear... thank you... It's not original you know.

Steed: Your hair?

Thelma: Your line... it's not original.

Steed: Oh it's been said to you before?

Thelma: Lord Digby Covington said it to Samantha pride in "love under southern skies"... It was just after he'd rescued her from the gorilla who fancied her.

Steed: Of course. I remember now. "Love under southern skies"... It was a very touching story. I read it three times.

Thelma: Something went wrong that day. Couldn't get the end of the story to work. Instead of boy gets girl, it kept coming out girl gets gorilla.

Steed: That's a tricky situation.

Thelma: Very.

Steed: But you solved it with your customary skill. I hope you won't think me immodest if I claim to be your greatest fan.

Thelma: Really?

Steed: I've read all of your books.

Thelma: What, all four hundred and thirty seven?

Steed: On a cold winter's night I like nothing more than curling up in front of the fire with Rosemary Z. Glade.

Steed: Thelma: That's nice.

It's been my life-long ambition to meet Rosemary Z. Glade in the...[flirtatiously] If you'll excuse the expression, flesh. So you can see it's a rather special moment for me miss glade. Or may I call you Rosemary?

Thelma: You may if you like. My name is Thelma.

Steed: You're not Rosemary Z. Glade?

Thelma: No. [points to computer shaped like piano] She is.

Steed: That... writes all those moving novels?!

Thelma: She's a computer... Quite clever really. You see every romantic situation in the world is built into her memory circuits. The keys activate the situations.

Steed: [reading keys on computer shaped like piana] Moonlight kisses. Wife hears rumours. Girl meets wife. Wife sues girl. Wife leaves husband. Husband leaves wife. Girl returns ring. Boy gives flowers. Ah! Fascinating!

Thelma: Once we've picked out the situation, the machine does the rest. It chooses the scenes from the dialogue bank and bingo... Another best selling Rosemary Z. Glade romance. I'll show you if you like.

Steed: Please. The creative arts have always fascinated me.

[Thelma presses several keys, then goes to collect a manuscript that has popped out of the back of the computer. She hands the manuscript to Steed, who looks at it.]

Steed: Ha! Ha!

Thelma: There you are. Instant romance.

Steed: Brilliant.

Thelma: We keep adding new dialogue to the memory banks. That's what I was doing when you came in.

Steed: The machine's a genius.

Thelma: Oh I don't know. It's a very bad speller sometimes, but Mr. Bromfield's working on that.

Steed: Mr. Bromfield?

Thelma: [obviously has a crush on him] Oh he's lovely. And ever so clever with electronic things and stuff. He invented Rosemary.

Steed: Oooh! Well I'd like to meet him.

Thelma: Oh, he's not here at the moment.

Steed: Pity, well I'll call back...[Steed gets distracted when he sees something on a table] Later.

You can purchase the dvds here- https://www.amazon.co.uk/Avenges-Complete-Collection-DVD/dp/B096YF5VJT/ref=sr_1_4?crid=QTXQUD8LA7WJ&keywords=the+avengers+tv+series+complete&qid=1683223825&sprefix=the+avengers+tv+series+complet%2Caps%2C179&sr=8-4 

[bodhrancomedy]

It me with a serious answer to a serious question

[tuttle-did-it]

I've watched a lot of things with hearing people who have to pause the show/film to tell me what was actually said and why the craptions were wrong.

I, a hearing person who likes subtitles just as a preference, shouldn't have to read a subtitle that's obvious nonsense, go back a couple seconds, and listen again in order to figure out what's going on. An accessibility feature should not be the most half-assed part of a professionally made production. Scripted media has absolutely no excuse for not having subtitles or having subtitles that aren't perfectly verbatim. Professional captioning services should be ashamed of the shoddy work that they put out. Captions should be treated as a part of the production, just like filming, editing, audio balancing, etc - and anything that releases with missing or bad captions should be seen as unfinished