Section 3.2: Creating accessible video and audio, Part 2
Steps in Captioning
"The process for adding captions to a media clip is fairly straightforward. However, it is dependant on the player that you are targeting for playback of the media." If you are offering the media in more than one format for different players (QuickTime or RealMedia), you may have more than one media file. [ 3 
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- Transcribe the media into a script including, when appropriate, identifying the speakers of each segment. This can be a complex process and may require a professional captioning service.
- Place a timecode on each segment to synchronize it with the media and add other formatting that is appropriate for the media player being used on the site. One tool that is helpful in this process is the Media Access Generator (MAGpie). MAGpie, developed by the National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) at WGBH in Boston, creates "timecodes in the text stream that match a point in the video." [ 4 ] With MAGpie you can add caption lines, audio descriptions, speaker identification and time stamps to audio and video segments. "The most important feature, however, is the ability to 'grab' the timecode with the press of a function key" [ 7, p.381 ]
Tips for transcribing in preparation for using MAGpie
NCAM offers the following tips to make transcripts easier to use in MAGpie:
Text is imported into a table in MAGpie. MAGpie determines what information should be imported into a single cell versus what should be broken up into multiple cells based on carriage returns:
- A single carriage return is interpreted to mean "go to the next line of this same caption".
- A double carriage return is interpreted to mean "create a new caption".
You can insert empty captions by "inserting an extra double-carriage return" where you want to clear a caption. This avoids instances when the caption remains on the screen long after the dialog has finished. "Adding an additional double-carriage return after the last line in the transcript" also works around the issue that MAGpie tends to drop the last caption when text is imported. [ 5 ]
Activity 2
To give a small idea of what goes into transcribing, create a transcript of this 15 second video clip with Lindsey. This is an excerpt from an interview.
Video of Lindsey discussing her use of books on tape. Lindsey: Something about seeing the words and hearing the words at the same time...it's just, I don't really, it's helped me out a lot. But it's just one of those things that makes it kinda just click a little bit more in your head.
