Automatic Captions in YouTube Videos

yizuman

yizuman

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Since we first announced captions in Google Video and YouTube, we've introduced multiple caption tracks, improved search functionality and even automatic translation. Each of these features has had great personal significance to me, not only because I helped to design them, but also because I'm deaf. Today, I'm in Washington, D.C. to announce what I consider the most important and exciting milestone yet: machine-generated automatic captions.

Since the original launch of captions in our products, we’ve been happy to see growth in the number of captioned videos on our services, which now number in the hundreds of thousands. This suggests that more and more people are becoming aware of how useful captions can be. As we’ve explained in the past, captions not only help the deaf and hearing impaired, but with machine translation, they also enable people around the world to access video content in any of 51 languages. Captions can also improve search and even enable users to jump to the exact parts of the videos they're looking for.

However, like everything YouTube does, captions face a tremendous challenge of scale. Every minute, 20 hours of video are uploaded. How can we expect every video owner to spend the time and effort necessary to add captions to their videos? Even with all of the captioning support already available on YouTube, the majority of user-generated video content online is still inaccessible to people like me.

To help address this challenge, we've combined Google's automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology with the YouTube caption system to offer automatic captions, or auto-caps for short. Auto-caps use the same voice recognition algorithms in Google Voice to automatically generate captions for video. The captions will not always be perfect (check out the video below for an amusing example), but even when they're off, they can still be helpful—and the technology will continue to improve with time.

In addition to automatic captions, we’re also launching automatic caption timing, or auto-timing, to make it significantly easier to create captions manually. With auto-timing, you no longer need to have special expertise to create your own captions in YouTube. All you need to do is create a simple text file with all the words in the video and we’ll use Google’s ASR technology to figure out when the words are spoken and create captions for your video. This should significantly lower the barriers for video owners who want to add captions, but who don’t have the time or resources to create professional caption tracks.

To learn more about how to use auto-caps and auto-timing, check out this short video and our help center article:

YouTube - Automatic Captions in YouTube Demo

You should see both features available in English by the end of the week. For our initial launch, auto-caps are only visible on a handful of partner channels (list below*). Because auto-caps are not perfect, we want to make sure we get feedback from both viewers and video owners before we roll them out more broadly. Auto-timing, on the other hand, is rolling out globally for all English-language videos on YouTube. We hope to expand these features for other channels and languages in the future. Please send us your feedback to help make that happen.

Today I'm more hopeful than ever that we'll achieve our long-term goal of making videos universally accessible. Even with its flaws, I see the addition of automatic captioning as a huge step forward.
Click to expand...

Source: Official Google Blog: Automatic captions in YouTube

Yiz
 
this is an amazing accomplishment! This may be the solution to the internet captioning issues. :thumb:
 
Of course! Remember an ADer who got a job at Google? He must have pushed them to get CC available!

:applause:
 
Nathan said:
A bread with a hat?
Click to expand...

no. it was an acorn hat.

t89749.jpg
 
I just watched a lecture with the automatic captioning. I have to say, it was pretty darn accurate. Much better than I expected. I was able to follow along a lecture that I never would have understood without the captioning. I'd say it was about 80% accurate, and the video had poor sound in several places. The automatic timing of the captioning is almost flawless. I'm sure they will fine tune this technology to the point where you don't even notice the glitches.

People, I don't think we can recognize at the moment just how amazing and life changing this is going to be...

Incredible. :ty:, Google.
 
TheWriteAlex said:
I just watched a lecture with the automatic captioning. I have to say, it was pretty darn accurate. Much better than I expected. I was able to follow along a lecture that I never would have understood without the captioning. I'd say it was about 80% accurate, and the video had poor sound in several places. The automatic timing of the captioning is almost flawless. I'm sure they will fine tune this technology to the point where you don't even notice the glitches.

People, I don't think we can recognize at the moment just how amazing and life changing this is going to be...

Incredible. :ty:, Google.
Click to expand...
which video for example?
 
I watched Don Tapscott's "Grown Up Digital" lecture on the UCLA channel. As the demo video mentioned, only a few channels have the automatic captioning available right now, and they education channels or google channels. I'm sure within the year it will be available on every channel.

As for the automatic captioning of songs: I bet that will be tricky because of all the different sound involved, not just vocals.

Personally, I don't care about autocaptions for songs. You can just download lyrics for that anyway...
 
good lord... I am watching this MIT video of a multivariable calculus course with the auto-cap feature on... I'm really impressed :applause:

MIT has those open courses online for anyone to watch... I used to check on them and they were not captioned before.
 
firetop said:
good lord... I am watching this MIT video of a multivariable calculus course with the auto-cap feature on... I'm really impressed :applause:

MIT has those open courses online for anyone to watch... I used to check on them and they were not captioned before.
Click to expand...
I saw that and I got the audio transcribed then the CC automatically appreared :eek:
 
Onine Auto Caption is on the way! (youtube/google)

Not long ago I started a dicussion about how a friend of mine who is an iPhone app developer and I where talking about an app for us deaf. Well, my friend just sent me a link to something that I think is pretty cool.

Check out this video:
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTvHIDKLFqc]YouTube - Automatic Captions in YouTube Demo[/ame]

Of course it's still in it's developement stages but I think it's awesome that it's even being worked on.

To help address this challenge, we've combined Google's automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology with the YouTube caption system to offer automatic captions, or auto-caps for short. Auto-caps use the same voice recognition algorithms in Google Voice to automatically generate captions for video. The captions will not always be perfect (check out the video below for an amusing example), but even when they're off, they can still be helpful—and the technology will continue to improve with time.

In addition to automatic captions, we’re also launching automatic caption timing, or auto-timing, to make it significantly easier to create captions manually. With auto-timing, you no longer need to have special expertise to create your own captions in YouTube. All you need to do is create a simple text file with all the words in the video and we’ll use Google’s ASR technology to figure out when the words are spoken and create captions for your video. This should significantly lower the barriers for video owners who want to add captions, but who don’t have the time or resources to create professional caption tracks.

You should see both features available in English by the end of the week. For our initial launch, auto-caps are only visible on a handful of partner channels (list below*). Because auto-caps are not perfect, we want to make sure we get feedback from both viewers and video owners before we roll them out more broadly. Auto-timing, on the other hand, is rolling out globally for all English-language videos on YouTube. We hope to expand these features for other channels and languages in the future.
Click to expand...

Click here to read the full article.

Ron
 
Mod note:

Thread has been merged.
 
Google to Add Captions, Improving YouTube Videos

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/20/technology/internet/20google.html

In the first major step toward making millions of videos on YouTube accessible to deaf and hearing-impaired people, Google unveiled new technologies on Thursday that will automatically bring text captions to many videos on the site.

The technology will also open YouTube videos to a wider foreign market and make them more searchable, which will make it easier for Google to profit from them.

While the technology can insert captions only on English-language speech, Google is giving users the choice of using its automatic translation system to read the captions in 51 languages. That could broaden the appeal of YouTube videos to millions of other people who do not speak English but could use the captioning technology to read subtitles in their native language.

The speech recognition technology that Google uses to turn speech into text is not new; Google currently uses it to transcribe voice mail messages for users of its Google Voice service. But Ken Harrenstien, a deaf engineer who helped develop the automatic captioning system, said the technology had never been applied on such a large scale.

“This is something that I have dreamt of for many years,” Mr. Harrenstien said, speaking through an interpreter. “To see it happen is amazing.”

YouTube already has several hundred thousand videos that have closed captions, which typically come from broadcast networks that include them in their programs. Some other online video sites like Hulu and AOL also have some professionally created videos with closed captioning.

But Mr. Harrenstien said a vast majority of clips on YouTube did not have captions and the new Google technology would generate them automatically. YouTube is initially applying the captioning technology only to a few channels, most of them specializing in educational content. They include channels from universities like Stanford, Yale, Duke, Columbia and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, PBS and National Geographic, and Google itself — its corporate videos will be captioned. The company plans to gradually expand the number of channels that work with the automatic captioning technology.

“Because the tools are not perfect, we want to make sure that we get feedback from the video owners and the viewers before we roll it out for the whole world,” Mr. Harrenstien said. “Sometimes the auto-captions are good. Sometimes they are not great, but they are better than nothing if you are hearing-impaired or don’t know the language.”

Google also introduced a related service to give anyone who uploads a video to YouTube the option of uploading as well a text file of the words spoken in the video. Google will turn the text file into captions, automatically matching the spoken words with the files.

The technology, which Google calls “auto-timing,” will make it easy for anyone to add captions to their videos. It will be available to YouTube users worldwide, and Google said it would be particularly useful for videographers who shoot from a script, since they already have a file of the text spoken in the video.

In addition to helping people who are deaf or do not speak English, the captions will make it easier for anyone to search text inside videos and find specific snippets within a video.

Google announced the new features on Thursday at an event in Washington. The company said they would be available by the end of the week.
 
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