2012, The Summer of Tech
LABS:
DCMP is constantly researching ways to make its service better. This often leads to the development of internal tools, or "apps," that are written to accomplish specific tasks. Knowing that other companies and organizations might be able to use these tools (and several recently expressed interests in our development activities) resulted in the creation of DCMP Labs (labs.dcmp.org). This simple website is a place for the DCMP tech team to share tools and workflows with anyone who can use them. If you host your own video, produce video, or simply have interest in accessible media and technology, keep an eye on DCMP Labs.
PLUGIN:
In January the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) released a report containing specific captioning requirements for owners, providers, and distributors of video content delivered via Internet protocol that is either live or previously broadcast. These parties must follow the requirements therein to be compliant with the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA). These regulations currently do not cover programming that originates online and is never broadcast.
Existing captioning technology is far from being ready for these requirements. Sure, captions can technically be shown on many types of devices but, for example, the requirement of "consumer's ability to control the caption display, including the ability to turn it on and off and to select font sizes, styles, and colors, and background color and opacity" requires much more work from software developers and hardware manufacturers. The de facto standard web captioning file-types (.SRT, .SBV, DFXP, and .SMI) do not support all of the key features such as placement, text color, italics, bold, text outline, text box, and this renders the file-types useless for those who require CVAA compliance.
The DCMP currently uses burned-in (open) captions, meaning that they are physically part of the video file. This allows us to stream to any device capable of playing video content without worry of losing captioning due to a player or device incompatibility. This approach has inherent flaws including the loss of search engine indexing, and the fact that the text may become less readable if a low-quality video is maximized full-screen. For our application, the good outweighs the bad.
One of the most exciting tools that DCMP developed is a captioning plugin for JW Player (an extremely popular web video player) that DCMP is calling Capstone. This plugin is, to our knowledge, the first-ever implementation within a player (for self-hosted video) which utilizes .SCC (Scenarist Closed Caption) files. This means that broadcasters and DVD producers who already have EIA-608 .SCC broadcast captioning files can repurpose them for the web without editing. It is also, to our knowledge, the first captioning plugin that meets the requirements of the CVAA in the web browser, including all user selected options. See the live demo and let us know what you think!
STREAMING/MOBILE:
If you haven't already started using DCMP media on your smartphone or tablet, please give it a try! Simply visit our website (www.dcmp.org) on your device and search for media as you would on your computer. DCMP has tested streaming with great results on the iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad along with newer Android devices. Our goal is to make streaming compatible with as many devices as possible. If you have issues streaming to your device, please let us know by emailing support@dcmp.org and include the device model and operating system.
NEWSLETTER:
You may have noticed that the newsletter you're currently reading looks a bit different than in the past. We've redesigned it with every user in mind. Our newsletter is now mobile friendly, so rotate your device portrait or landscape and enjoy dynamic resizing that fits your screen.
|