RE: Timed tracks

Boris Zbarsky wrote:
>
> On 4/23/10 12:25 AM, John Foliot wrote:
> > Robert, when you say "burned in" are you referring to time-stamp text
> files
> > included in the media wrapper, of converted to a binary format (.scc)
> and
> > merged with the video asset as pixel data?  If it is the later, it
> makes it
> > impossible to repurpose that text to AT like screen readers and
> Braille
> > refresh bars.
>
> Sure, but the whole discussion was about trying to prevent anyone other
> than the video creator from changing the text data or its presentation.

I can certainly appreciate the original authors desire to preserve/protect 
their creative work. However, merging textual data to the binary visual data 
shuts out a significant percentage of users who will still not be able to 
access this information, as noted. If this is the only caption data included 
with a video, I suspect it would not meet accessibility legislation 
(existing or emergent) for this reason.


>   As in, the video author is explicitly trying to prevent such
> repurposing.  I believe Robert meant the "pixel data" option above,
> fwiw.

Yech. This turns your video into a graphic with text, but a graphic that 
'moves'. While we cannot forbid authors from doing this, from the 
accessibility perspective it should be discouraged. There is an oft quoted 
axiom in WAI space: "author proposes, user disposes". 
(http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2002JanMar/0834.html) What 
if a low-vision user needs to enlarge the text captions? How would this 
impact on internationalization? Search-ability and indexing?


>
> > As well, from experience this type of post-production is often
> outside the
> > capacity of smaller and non-professional video producers, which
> raises the
> > bar of entry.
>
> Honestly, I'm quite happy with a high bar of entry to what Sean was
> saying he wants to do!  I just wish people didn't want to do it to
> start with.

No, I want anyone to be able to easily create and caption videos with 
minimal effort - raising the bar simply reduces the output. I'm happy 
(excited!) that people want to do it right away.

Does this imply then that a method of 'locking' a master caption file to a 
video asset will also be required? I am not a video specialist - can this 
even be done?

JF

Received on Friday, 23 April 2010 05:04:51 UTC