» What are your thoughts on the controvers … deafologue

Paul Moreau

04:05:24 pm on February 11, 2008 | 189 views

What are your thoughts on the controversy surrounding subtitles on vlogs?

Mike McConnell of Kokonut Pundits and several other vloggers/bloggers are now in a heated debate over the subtitles in vlogs.

My personal opinion is, like his, should be up to every vlogger on if it should be included or not. I have subtitled most of my vlog entries. I also plan to subtitle the remaining vlogs that are not subtitled in English. However, I don’t force it onto anybody. It is there as an option. On my vlogs, you will see an icon, “CC.” You can click onto it to turn it on or off. So for these people who may be not fluent in ASL, they can turn it on to understand what I am saying.

I don’t believe the vloggers should be pressured into adding subtitles if they don’t want to reach a wider audience. Some bloggers/vloggers like to keep their audience to a small number while some want to reach as many as possible. It is their option to include one or not. As some of you may know, I am an advocate for captioning on TV contents and DVD/Blu-ray DIsc contents, commercial video contents on websites like CNN, Fox News and such. So I do feel responsible for doing the same with my vlogs.

I may blog about this later on my blog, but I wanted to give it a shot here and see how much of a difference it would make by posting a subject like this here on Deafologue.

So, what are your thoughts on the subject?

Comments

TheExpatriate 8:28 am on February 12, 2008 | #

Hi Paul,

Let me be the first to truly thank you from the bottom of my heart for subtitling your vlogs. It means a lot to me as a DB person.

When I view vlogs, I do miss out on a lot of signs. Whether it be because of lighting, the signer’s hands moving around out of frame, rocking back and forth totally distorts the camera and so on. Extra lighting does not help me at all because it blurs the hands.

This is where subtitles comes in. They, literally, are a lifesaver and keep me involved in vlogging. I’m very aware that subtitling isn’t available for leaving responses in vlogs.

My first and foremost perspective in all of this, Paul, has always been this… I cannot force vloggers to subtitle. It is their personal choice to do so.

If they leave behind transcripts, I’m even more grateful for this.

I learn daily from others and I constantly learn more about myself as a new person, a DB person. I learn more about my patience, my persistence and my perseverance.

Accessibility for me now is very important for communication and I’m sharing my experiences with everyone.

Once again, Paul, I thank you very humbly. I admire your maturity about this issue.

Just remember, we still have that long-standing date at youknowwhere.. ha ha!!

Tactile smile with big bear hugs,
Patty ox
Nesmuth 8:31 am on February 12, 2008 | #

I’m not in any debate over captioning the blogs cause I can easily do it myself.

What I see is the enormous hypocrisy coming from people who have probably spend 1/5 of their lifetimes fighting for captioning of TV shows, movies, etc… and they don’t bother caption their own videoblogs.

And I’m seeing, with great amusement, our great videobloggers like Carl and Shawn are spitting out reasons not to caption their vlogs.

NAD should be setting an example but the latest video from our supposedly ‘Queen Charlemagne’ isn’t even captioned.

We can see the hypocrisy.
LaRonda 8:42 am on February 12, 2008 | #

I’m okay with leaving it up to each individual. However, I really like the option you mentioned here. Captioning the videos, but having the CC button to turn on and off. That would give people the choice. What program do you use to caption? I’m a PC user. Does the program you use work for PC’s?

~ LaRonda
Paul Moreau 10:08 am on February 12, 2008 | #

LaRonda, there is a freeware for the PC. The name is Subtitle Workshop.

Subtitle Workshop4 BETA 2
This version requires Microsoft DirectX 9 or superior for the video preview. Windows Vista compatible!

http://www.urusoft.net/download.php?lang=1&id=sw4

Subtitle Workshop 2.51
Requires Microsoft DirectX 8 or superior for the video preview.

http://www.urusoft.net/download.php?lang=1&id=sw

For the Mac users, you can use Subs Factory.

http://www.traintrain-software.com/index.php?page=subsfactory&langue=en

The learning curve may vary from person to person. For me, it was relatively easy to learn the basics. Once I did, it was pretty easy to work with.

I recommend you to save the subtitles in the .srt format since it is the most compatible. I upload them to Google Video since they can accept. I am not too sure about Overstream.net, maybe Bill Creswell can answer that one for me.
Paul Moreau 10:08 am on February 12, 2008 | #

Patty, thank you for the comment. Appreciate it.