Welcome to the Lab!

This page is where we'll post status updates and experiments we've been working on to use for our Election News page

June 11: World Caption

Thanks to Dr. Lalley, our supervising professor, we've been testing a superb, free captioning software called World Caption. It was created at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and you can read more at the University's website.

In spite of our previous conclusions that either MagPie or DotSUB was the best captioning tool, it's clear that World Caption is much quicker and easier to use. Its drop-and-drag interface lets you drop in a video and a transcript, set the timing on a couple captions (World Caption automatically sets the rest), and export a captioned video that plays with either iTunes or QuickTime Player.

World Caption also allows you to change caption text size, font, and background color—a feature very similar to options in MagPie that we found useful. You can even choose where the captioning appears—including below the video. This is especially relevant for news programs, where captioning often covers up important information at the bottom of the screen.

Of course, World Caption also has a couple drawbacks—the most obvious is that it's software exclusively for Mac (Apple) computers. Secondly, if you don't already have a transcript of the video you're captioning, you'll need to make one to upload into the software. That's easily the most time-consuming and tedious portion of the captioning process. Once you've dropped the transcript into World Caption, there's no way to edit it, so all proofreading would need to be completed beforehand.

Please have a look at the sample video below and let us know what you think of the captions.

Sample video captioned using World Caption

Name (Optional):

May 5: Video Captioning Samples

Now that we have some captioning samples up and running, please have a look and let us know which sample you like best. Use the feedback form below to send us your comments directly. We'll post the results here.

Solution 1

Note: To show the captions, you must select 'English' from the drop-down at the bottom right of the video. If the video does not work, you can view it at the link below.


Click here if video does not play

Solution 2

MagPie - Coming Soon

Solution 3

MagPie - Coming Soon

Feedback Form

Which of these examples of captioning was easiest for you to use?
Let us know your preference by filling out the form below.

Name (Optional):
Solution 1 Solution 2 Solution 3

April 14: Testing Video Captioning Tools

We're trying some different captioning tools to figure out what works best for online videos. Below are some notes about the options we've explored to-date:

Apple iMovie: A very slow, painstaking process to caption even short videos. Since iMovie is also expensive to purchase and not available to PC users, we've decided it's not a good captioning tool.

E-sign Virtual Signers (avatars): A really neat tool with animated virtual interpreters. Unfortunately the sign language used is British Sign Language, so we're ruling out this one.

Adobe Flash: WGBH (another broadcasting station) has a helpful captioning tool that we're currently reviewing for potential use.

DotSUB: This online tool is a great resource for captioning videos--and one of our favorites thus far. It was originally created to translate videos into different languages, but it works just as well for English captions. A major drawback is that it doesn't include a spell-check, so you need to check your work to make sure it's correct. Typing out all the captions in the first place, unfortunately, takes awhile. Once the video is captioned, however, you can download the captions as a simple text file that serves as a good starting point if you also want to make a transcript.

MagPie: A great free tool with lots of options for changing the captions' appearance. One great feature is that caption files can be uploaded and merged with a video without typing out and timing each caption itself. This saves us a lot of time re-captioning the same video in different programs. The difficulty with MagPie is that it doesn't post easily to the internet, so we're still trying to figure out how to do this.

April 7: Lab page creation

To document our progress, we've put up a "rough draft" of the Lab page.