Accessibility

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Transcribing your video
  3. Adding captions to your video using Captionate
  4. Displaying the captions
  5. Customizing the caption display
  6. Assigning tab indexes
  7. Creating a new captioned skin
  8. Using cue points

Captioning Flash video with Captionate and the captioning-supported FLVPlayback component skins

Adding captions to your video using Captionate

After you create a transcript text file, you will want to embed the caption data and assign times to the captions using Captionate.

Captionate from the Manitu Group is a desktop application for Windows that embeds data into FLV files. The embedded data can then be retrieved from the FLV file as the video is played through Flash Media Server or by progressive download. Captionate provides an easy-to-use interface for entering and editing the data, and for previewing the FLV file.

Captionate supports three types of embedded data with different properties:

  1. Markers define simple cue points with an optional string label.
  2. Captions define multiple language tracks of caption or subtitle data.
  3. Cue points are defined using the Flash cue point format. Cue points can have an optional and variable number of Name:Value pairs and type information as Navigation or event.

I'll use the captions format in this tutorial, but I will also explain how to define captions using Flash cue points that are compatible with the FLVPlayback component skins with captioning support.

Captionate has thorough help documentation that I won't attempt to reproduce here. Instead, I'll focus on how to import caption data from a plain-text file:

  1. Launch the Captionate application.

  2. Select File > Open from the File menu and browse to locate and open the FLV file to which you intend to add captions. The file will open into the main Captionate window (see Figure 1).

    Main Captionate window

    Figure 1. Main Captionate window

  3. Select File > Import > Captions from Plain Text, which will open the Import from Plain Text dialog box (see Figure 2), which enables you to import lines from a plain-text file and type or paste any text, which will be converted to captions.

    Importing captions from plain text

    Figure 2. Importing captions from plain text

  4. Enter the name of your text transcript file into the File Name text box or click the button labeled with an ellipsis (...) to browse for the file. Click Import to load the text file into the text area labeled Text for caption conversion. Click OK to convert the text to captions and to transfer the new captions to the Assign Caption Times dialog box (see Figure 3).

    Assigning caption times

    Figure 3. Assigning caption times

  5. In the Assign Caption Times dialog box, press F9 to start the video preview.

  6. Press F12 repeatedly while the video is playing to assign a caption in the captions list to the current playhead time. Here are a few keyboard commands that you may find helpful while previewing the video:

    • F9: Play/Pause
    • F12: Assign Time
    • F5: Go back 10 seconds
    • F6: Step back 0.5 seconds
    • F7: Step forward 0.5 seconds
    • F8: Go forward 10 seconds
    • ALT+F9: Stop

  7. Click OK to close the Assign Caption Times window and return to Captionate's main window after you have assigned a time to each caption. The newly imported captions with their assigned times will appear in a list under the Captions tab (see Figure 4).

    Captionate main window showing captions and their assigned times

    Figure 4. Captionate main window showing captions and their assigned times

  8. In the main window, you can edit caption properties in place. When you select a caption property, the playhead goes to the time code of the caption unless View > Do not Seek Selected Item Time is checked. You can adjust the playhead position using the timeline controls and assign the current playhead time to a selected caption by pressing F3 or by selecting Utility > Set Item Time to Playhead Time.

    Note that if the Video Preview Window is open, the times to which you can seek can only correspond to the time codes of key frames in the preview video. In order to be able to seek to any time, Captionate provides the option to use the audio of the current FLV file for preview. Select File > Choose Video for Video Preview, and select "Use the audio from the current FLV file" from the list of choices for the video preview. Click OK. The Video Preview window will open using only the audio of the current FLV file, and you will be able to seek to any time in the file.

  9. Test the FLV file by selecting Utility > Test FLV or by pressing Ctrl+Enter.
  10. Select File > Save or press Ctrl+S to save the FLV file with the embedded caption data when you have finished entering your captions and adjusting the caption times.

The captioned FLV file is now ready for use with the FLVPlayback skins with captioning support. You can close Captionate.

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