captioning
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Google rolls out real-time captioning starting with Pixel 4
At I/O in May, Google showcased its Live Caption tech, which provides captions for all audio on your device in real-time, except for voice and video calls. Google has now revealed when you'll be able to take advantage of the accessibility feature.
Bullet's captioned snippets make podcasts a lot more shareable
While becoming more and more popular, podcasts are far less share-friendly than videos because of their long-form and audio-only nature. An Adelaide-based company aims to change that with a new iOS app called Bullet. It lets you create 30 second video snippets, complete with captions, suitable for sharing on social media. That way, you can post enticing bits of a podcast that are watchable without sound to share with your friends -- a win for consumers and producers alike.
Personal subtitle glasses from Sony may get trial run in UK next year
It's been quite a while since we've heard any news about those spiffy specs that put private subtitles in your field of view. It looks like they're finally inching closer to reality though, with some help from Sony's UK arm. The BBC recently took hard-of-hearing Brit Charlie Swinbourne to the theater and let him give the glasses a go. Rather than displaying subtitles on screen the eye-wear projects text on the lenses where only that particular user can see them. Going to see a French film in an American cinema, but your first language is Spanish? One day you could pick your language, in addition to keeping the captions out of other movie goers way. Sony hopes to trial the glasses in UK theaters next year. Check out the source link for the full report.
Netflix adds captioning to iOS apps
Adding captioning to movies in Netflix for the iPad, iPod touch and iPhone is going to be a big deal for a lot of people, and Netflix has added that feature today. It's already present when you watch Netflix movies with a browser on a desktop or laptop, but now mobile users can take advantage of captions as well. Unfortunately, not all films have this feature. If there is captioning, a little voice balloon icon will appear on the volume control. Tap it and select English, which is the only option for now. I tried it in several movies, and about half of those I sampled have the feature. The captions are in yellow text and are easy to read. Captions are going to be really great for the hearing impaired, or even nice for watching a movie in a crowded environment. As of this writing, the version listed in the iTunes store is 1.2.1, but the version that was delivered to my iPhone was 1.3. I think the iTunes store information is running behind, but make sure you have the latest version, which contains the captioning feature.
YouTube brings human-enabled closed captioning to live video for Google I/O
If you were glued to your computer during the live broadcast of the Google I/O keynote yesterday morning, you might have noticed a new feature accompanying an otherwise recognizable YouTube video. The online video provider used this morning's conference kickoff as the springboard for its live captioning feature, which brings human input to the transcription process. According to Google's Naomi Black, a team of stenographers banged out translations during this morning's keynote. The resulting captions were then displayed on the conference floor and delivered by an "open source gadget" to the I/O YouTube channel. This new feature apparently prevents the inaccuracies experienced using Google's automatic captioning function, which, if you'll recall, provided us with at least a couple hearty chuckles when we took it for a spin. The code behind the new live captions will be available to YouTube's partners and competitors on Google Code. You can check out tomorrow's keynote to see how the humans fare.
