It has been brought to my attention that Google (which owns YouTube) has kicked off the start of Automatic Captioning to the many (millions) of videos streamed on YouTube. Now, not all the videos sport this capability as there are just too many videos but they are slowly appearing on channels such as the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis (guthrietheatre) among others.
Read the original article at: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/youtube_turns_on_auto-captions_for_all_vidoes.php
Here's a sample of what it looks on a video appearing on the Guthrie's channel:
Link:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hfdd_yUnqXY
Click on the red CC symbol to activate the Automatic Captions (a pop-up window will alert the viewer of the "raw" captions to be expected - the system is not without glitches yet and that they are working on it).
In addition, Theatre Development Fund (in NYC) has now started captioning their videos on their YouTube channel as well - here's a glimpse on a video about on-stage captioning in London's theatres provided by Stagetext:
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nUoJSTR37c&feature=channel
Some of their videos have burned-on captions (such as the one above), others use the Automatic Captions, and others are still uncaptioned.
Lastly, if one types in Everythingisrent into the search engine at Youtube, one will be pleased to see that the "CC" symbol now appears next to the title for user-created captioning. This makes searching for captioned videos much easier!
Let's put out hands up for Google (and make YouTube as well - let's show the folks at Netflix how it's done!)
