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"Claude Almansi started a topic 3 months ago (2013-04-18) Feedback situation on this Help forum boards: Your suggestions to make Amara great ... Out of the so far 50 posts in this "Your suggestions to make Amara great" board, which is the only board where Amara staff can label posts to indicate the progress of suggestions, only 7 have received such feedback labels, of which 3 are wrong and one I can't check: A. Wrongly labeled "Implemented": 1 Add a feature that imports Youtube machine Auto Captions directly into Amara for editing. It still impossible to import YouTube autocaptions directly. B. Wrongly labeled "Planned": 2 Restore the Send a message link in users' profiles. The link has been restored 2 months ago, but the request to change the label made then in a comment has been ignored. Independent subtitle sets for each video. It's now been possible to again differently time subtitles for a video C. (Hopefully) correctly labeled "Planned": 3 Representing each volunteer's work. Give more info about the implications of team settings choices. Reliable history of revisions. D. ? "Planned": 1 Allow us to save & exit "approve"-tasks. (I don't know whether it's been implemented or not, because I don't do such tasks). So that's 3, perhaps 4 suggestions out of 50 that got a hopefully correct developers' feedback, out of 50, on the only board - out of the four boards of this forum - that enables such feedback: a tiny proportion. Situation on the other boards: Updates and News ... 5 announcements, most recent one - Localization of Amara Website updates put on hold - in January: no reply to question asked in comment, no update as to how long this localization will remain on hold. Amara Questions ... 70 questions. No reply from Amara Staff to the ca 18 questions asked after the end of February 2013 Help me, please! ... 76 topics. No reply from Amara Staff after the end of February 2013, except for an April 1st, 2013 comment in t

No reply. Since April 18, 2013, there have been replies to 2 forum topics from PCF Support: - Mami Kawade's "My subtitles are gone" http://support.amara.org/support/discussions/topics/24667 June 29, 2013 (3 PCF Support replies) - Zikoinak's "New editor: translating existing subtitles" - http://support.amara.org/support/discussions/topics/26493 - July 15, 2013 (one PCF Support reply)

"Hi, again I have a problem here. Thanks to Amara support, my subtitles once gone after the maintenance were restored and after that I could add some new subtitles to the video I had been working on. That's ok, but when I got back from a couple of days' trip and tried to add new subtitles again, I realized I had to "type whatever I hear". I mean, when I started to translate this video, I translated what the speaker says from English subtitles to Japanese subtitles as I usally do, but now, I have to translate what I hear in the video directly to Japanese. Why is this happening? Does this have something to do with the maintenance? Can anybody help me? " Mami Kawade is member of the TED team and this is about subtitles of a TED team video. I pointed her to Dharma Lee's "I am translating talks, but appears the transcribing system" topic on the same issue in the TED help forum, to which PCF Support (Margarita Shamraeva) replied to use the new editor to get a translation interface. Mami Kawade re-replied she'd done that, but had problems getting the 2 transcripts showing subtitles for the same moment in the video. In the TED support, apart from PCF Support's answer, a how-to about the new editor was added to the Solutions section: http://ted-support.amara.org/support/solutions/articles/107527-the-transcript-is-missing-when-i-resume-my-translation No reply from Amara staff on the general help forum and no tutorial added in the general help solutions section 2013-07-15. Mami Kawade reposted the description of the issue with the new editor on the TED help in http://ted-support.amara.org/support/discussions/topics/25107 2013-07-15

In http://ted-support.amara.org/support/discussions/topics/25107 , PCF Support explained: "There is a small lock icon at the bottom of the left column. If you unlock it, then you can scroll each list of subtitles independently from each other and align them as you wish."

"Buzbee at Amara started a topic a day ago (2013-08-06) I would love it if I were able to create a sort of 'watch list' or favorites list. A 'Save til later' list, if you will. Slogging through page after page in the "Watch" list, to try to find ones with 0 languages including no incomplete captions - seems the best way to find ones that someone put here, but which haven't had any work done on them yet. The downside of that, is, there are also many many pages to slog through...As I browse to see which one I will caption next, I run across several "maybes." It would be great to be able to bookmark those "maybe" videos, to come back to later on. For one thing I might be in different moods different times - wanting to caption music one day, a lecture the next, something silly the day after that...etc. But (being able to make a favorites/saved list on my account page would) also simply save time and would make sure I can find the videos again easily. It is too unwieldy to type a list elsewhere, and my computer bookmarks are a mess already, without adding more literal (computer) bookmarks. A saved list or favorites list, right here on this site, would be great. (This could of course be very handy for viewers also - not only for captioners.) I should add, this would not imply that the person has "dibs" on that video - that is a separate issue. If anything it would decrease competition since each person would have several videos handy that they can work on. Thoughts?"

"Buzbee at Amara started a topic a day ago (2013-08-06) I can think of a few things that would improve search for captioners. I'd like the videos to be sorted into types. There are certain types of videos I prefer to caption. Probably it's the same for everyone. You have to listen to it several times before the work is done, so it might as well be something you like, right? There are certain videos I couldn't get through, by the same token. And sometimes 200 of those seem to be uploaded all at once. (From the same place.) Doesn't matter which so I will leave that vague. Aside from being able to search categories I would also like to be able to search: Videos which need English captions (can substitute language of choice there; right now can only search for videos which HAVE a given language - or which have no languages - but the latter often has incomplete captions and I prefer not to step on any toes) Videos which have been uploaded - that day, that week, that hour, etc. Videos from favorited channels (captioner can pick 'favorite channels') Videos from favorited topics (this can include a musical artist, key word for title, etc.) Videos by length - this can make a difference if the captioner is tired or hasn't much time that day. Or may be looking for a long project by the same token. Anyone have other ideas for improving search? Making it more efficient? Please specify if the idea is for benefit of Captioners or Viewers. (Both are important, I just think it's important to keep the two searches separate, since there are different needs.)"

"Rodrigo started a topic 4 months ago (2013-03-26) Dear, When I try to search for a video to subtitle, in the "with" filter, could be an option that I could choose the language that has not been choosen to be subtitled. For example: I translate to Brazilian Portuguese, so I want to filter the videos that are not subtitled in my language. I need it to show me the videos that are not subtitled in my language, to make it easier to me, to search directly the videos not subtitled in Brazilian Portuguese. Regards, Rodrigo."

No reply. In a way, this is what the suggestions of team Dashboards attempt to do from the opposite perspective, but Rodrigo is speaking of videos in general, not just teams' - and the Dashboard suggestions don't work.

"Claude Almansi started a topic 10 minutes ago (2013-07-30) Proposals for the elimination of theses paradoxes and issues The paradoxes and issues described above could be eliminated by an approach to deletions directly based on copyright law and Amara's Terms of Service: A) Proposal for the deletion of subtitles: The only persons allowed to delete - or entitled to request the deletion of - a set of subtitles must be its author and the right holder on the video. As per Amara's Terms of Service, section 5: the author of the subtitles cannot delete them if the deletion would also delete or mess up the work of other people (co-subtitlers, people who have translated the subtitle set). Team admins / owners can only prevent subtitlers from deleting subtitles they made for the team's videos, but only if this is explicitly specified in the team's description. B) Proposal for the deletion of Amara video pages The only persons allowed to delete - or entitled to request the deletion of - an Amara video page must be the person who created it and the right holder on the video that streams in it. As per Amara's Terms of Service, section 5: the creator of the page cannot delete it if other people have already started to create subtitles for the video that streams in it, unless s/he is also the right holder on the video. Could Amara developers create software rules that would allow users to delete their subtitles and the video pages they've created, with the restrictions explained in these two proposals? A 3. (the restriction in favor of team owners/admins) might be a bit of a headache, technically. But it should be feasible by adding something to the /settings/permissions/ page of teams AND by making these permissions settings automatically viewable by all."

"Veroneblack 2013-07-09 (ongoing discussion) Half of the time when I submit my subtitles the loading still thinking during hours. I can download the subtitles but I can't send it back to the same video. Editing is not working anymore This is happening to me and few other people since your big upgrate, everything was fine before. Here is an example : http://www.amara.org/fr/videos/MctiWJgOXCyL/info/kid-cudi-going-to-the-ceremony-produced-by-wzrd/#video Plus : 'Rollback' seems to be down as well" Following comments: me: rollback didn't work for me either. Verone: http://www.amara.org/fr/videos/Xd7tj3biEGM1/info/skylar-grey-feat-angel-haze-shit-man-dont-look-down/ not even editable from scratch me: able to edit Verone's subs from the subtitle page and to make them incomplete again, so that he could edit them from the main page. Incoherence of this graying out subs marked complete in the main page droplist, while they can still be edited from the subtitle pages. 2013-07-14 Verone: asked me to edit and save the French subs of http://www.amara.org/fr/videos/ASpv6drn0LEm/info/king-los-love-you-down-becoming-king/ 2013-07-15 It worked for me, from the subtitle page

Presently in the Your suggestions to make Amara great board. Amara staff should reply to this topic, then move it to another board: Help me, please, or I have a question.

"Iván Castellanos started a topic 5 months ago (2013-03-14) In order to make more efficient the translation I added a couple of new functionalities to Amara subtitler interface; feel free to use the same code (furthermore I encourage you guys to do so) - You can press Ctrl+Enter (anywhere) to play/pause the video. - You can click on a pre-created subtitle and quickly go there in the video, use in conjunction with the previous functionality for better efficiency. The code: https://gist.github.com/AltIvan/5163352 (public domain) You can add this functionality before (if ever) Amanda.org does, just use TamperMonkey, Greasemonkey or any other browser add-on that allows you to inject scripts."

Probably made obsolete by the new editor, but in the new editor, the equivalent video navigation shortcuts don't work on a Mac. No staff reply.

"Veroneblack started a topic a month ago (2013-06-29) Firstly, since your last update we lost so many susbtitles. http://www.amara.org/fr/videos/z4f1iVSassHe/info/michael-jackson-smooth-criminal-michael-jacksons-vision/ http://www.amara.org/fr/videos/5JBdZuQlcVBj/info/kendrick-lamar-ft-rza-ronald-regan-era/#video ... Hundreds of them. ___________________ Secondly, I tried your new beta, here is what I think : Subtitling will be a lot slower because we can't adjust subtitles on the timeline (holding left click). Today I spend around 10min to moderate a 5min video (To check if every subtitles can be read easily), with your beta it will be around 1h We lost the 'Re-play last 4s' button as well, 're-play last subtitles' will be a big waste of time to undertstand where we are every time we click on it. And a last thing : 'Tabulation' was so much easier to do play/pause than 'shift+space'. Specialy when you're doing it 100 times per videos. (and so much more convenient to use with 're play last 4s' button 'shift+tab')"

I refered Veroneblack to "My subtitles are gone" for the deleted subs, and added his remarks about time codes etc in the new editor, in the https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ApuzSw0MoY82dDlPYnB3cUlwQlNJV2VVWS1XSy1DSWc#gid=0 spreadsheet linked to in Let's try the new subtitle editor and report about it http://support.amara.org/support/discussions/topics/23464 . Amara staff should reply about the new editor, then move the topic to another board (Amara questions?)

"Claude Almansi started a topic 6 months ago (2013-02-10) Granted: "nick3 changed primary url from http://vimeo.com/39734142 to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2IJb1YnAmQ - 2 days, 22 hours ago [as I'm writing this]" for the video embedded in the home page of Amara.org. But http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2IJb1YnAmQ , in spite of its changed YouTube title, is still the "Learn about Universal Subtitles" video that was added to YouTube on on Oct 9, 2010, and hence to then Universal Subtitles four days later. As a result, the info on how the subtitling interface works and about accepted video formats - from 0:32 to 1:14, i.e. more than half the video - is now misleadingly obsolete. True, changing the title of the YouTube video means you don't have to bang an Amara thumbnail on the video anymore, but it changes nothing to the fact that this is a video about how Universal Subtitles was in 2010."

My comment: "However, it's interesting to see that there is NO automatic syncing between the YouTube channel [ http://www.youtube.com/user/friendlyandfun/videos ] for this video and Amara subtitles."

"Jules Rincon started a topic 6 months ago (2013-01-18) For any users signed up to transifex (to assist in translating the website into different languages): Unfortunately, due to the major improvements being currently made to the software (what we call DMR), updates to the localized versions of Amara have been temporarily put on hold. They will be resumed when this major renovation is over. We are sincerely sorry for any inconvenience this may cause."

The original language file has not been updated on Transifex after that announcement, and no translations made since has been pushed to the website. It might make more sense to only update the original file when the new editor replaces the legacy editors. However, an official update of this help topic is needed now.

"András Fuchs started a topic 6 months ago (2013-02-20) I'm working with a team on Khan Academy's site and when you're watching a video with subtitles there, it is often the case that the subtitle covers part of the active screen area and you can't see what the speaker is showing you. It would be much better to have a small, but separate control with black background to display the subtitles under the actual video. It might be Khan's task to do this, but I think Amara could do an option in its control too to decide where to display the subtitles."

"Jules Rincon started a topic 9 months ago (2012-11-01) Hello! You may have heard us mention that we were expecting to do a few hours of planned downtime for a database migration, and that time has arrived. When - The Amara service will be temporarily paused at 8pm EDT tonight (Nov 1st). We expect the service will be back up in 1.5 - 2 hours, but our designated window is from 8pm EDT - midnight EDT. Why - This downtime is for a database migration that will increase the accuracy of subtitles. We're really excited to get these underlying components improved-once they're all complete, it will pave the way for many more visible changes to Amara!"

Only bookmarking this announcement, because there should have been a similar official announcement about the June 29, 2013 upgrade: all users knew was that Amara was not available while it was taking place, and that a lot of recent subtitles and subtitle revisions weren't showing any longer when it was done. Moreover, if unavailability due to an upgrade is not officially announced, it is difficult for users to know if the unavailability is due to an upgrade or ust to the server maxxing out (see "Bad Gateway" pages after the June 29, 2013 upgrade). Such official announcements should be made for each future system upgrade.

"Jules Rincon started a topic 9 months ago (2012-10-23) A special thanks for all the wonderful Amara community volunteer captioners, translators, subtitlers, promoters and sharers who joined us in the live broadcast. We'd love to get more feedback about the new Amara platform mockups we shared on the October 23rd, 2012 Townhall. The video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXj9Qcneo_s&feature=plcp With Communication Access Realtime Transcription (CART) provided by Jason Bradley from bradleyreporting.com (Thank you so much Jason and Michael!) The slides with the mockups of the new Amara look are here: goo.gl/gPdZe IMPORTANT INFO Before adding more ideas: This forum is an "idea" forum. Every separate post can be voted up or down (and discussed), we can also track the progress of the ideas, to see which ones will be implemented and see how they are progressing. We suggest: Post one idea per topic. Add really descriptive titles. Vote ideas up instead of duplicating, feel free to expand through replies."

So far it is not possible to track the progress of the ideas submitted by users in this board, due to lack of - and lackadaisical - tagging of posts by Amara staff. However, this could be corrected if developers start reviewing the submitted suggestions, and this could help them in applying UXD to further changes they make to the software.

"CC started a topic 25 days ago (2013-07-03) I know there was a big upgrade recently where subtitles were lost, but also being restored. I haven't really seen any missing subtitles, but instead, I've noticed that all my subtitles are missing the line breaks that I put in (I originally used SHIFT-ENTER to put line breaks and it's been displaying perfectly on 2 lines until now) So a line that looked like this originally: There were 3 little pigs who lived on a farm in Houston. Now looks like this: There were 3 little pigswho lived on a farm in Houston. The line break between "pigs" and "who" is gone and the 2 lines are now squished together and displayed all on one line. For example: http://www.amara.org/en/videos/mR3iGd5jpr0w/info/part-1-evolving-role/ Will these be restored somehow from a backup? ----- Edit: I tried going back to an old video which lost its line breaks and tried manually adding them back in (with SHIFT-ENTER). I found that if I just added the line breaks back in and pressed save, none of the changes were saved and was as if I hadn't edited it at all, no new revision was created and the subtitles still on a single line. It only saved a new revision if I changed or added new letters into the subtitle and pressed save. And in that case, line breaks were recognized. So does that mean that Amara doesn't recognize just adding line breaks as a change to the subtitle and cause for a new revision to be created? I'm pretty sure that I've just added a line break or two before and it saved properly, not sure why it doesn't now."

Several comments with other instances of deleted line breaks after June 29, 2013 upgrade.

"Sorin started a topic 6 months ago (2013-02-07) Now I remember why I gave up using Amara some time ago! And they haven't fixed it yet. 1. It's so hard to set the subtitle's end. You have some video, some dialogue, you set the beginning of the subtitle, but the end is just floating loose until the next subtitle. When you want to set the end, you have to deal with a lo-o-o-ong sausage. You have to drag the subtitle eng back 4 sec, and 4 sec, and 4 sec, until you get sick. Why don't you just make a right click menu like "End subtitle here"?? 2. When you wnat to watch the video in full screen, the subtitles just disappear! How incredibly stupid is that?? Hasn't anyone complained yet??"

In comments: explanation about up arrow and making a "buffer" subtitle.

"Antony Brand started a topic 5 months ago (2013-02-26) I am a teacher and learner of languages including a number of non-latin scripts (ie. not abcde...) I excitedly entered my first subtitle track for a song (in its original script) which is Bengali (Bangla) together with an English translation. http://www.amara.org/en/videos/gas6mX5g1uWU/info/hrid-majhare-anusheh-anadil/ I ended making my Bengali track with the original script on the top line and made a line break to show the pronounciation on the bottom line but this solution was anglocentric. This gives undue weight to English/Latin script and excludes the possibility of transcribing into other scripts.. How much more powerful would it be to have transcriptions of videos in multiple scripts for people all around the world. If implemented it could be so so useful for: Koreans learning English Japanese studying German Russians singing Sanskrit Urdu speakers beginning Chinese in fact anyone anywhere needing to get their head around using a new script. Is this of interest to anyone else?"

rereading my comment: maybe I didn't understand the 1st topic.

"How do I know what is an acceptable rate to charge? Depending on the nature of the audiovisual medium, rates vary. When subtitling DVDs, for instance, subtitlers tend to be paid per programme minute. The rates for documentary or commentary subtitling are usually higher than those for feature films. Subtitling companies have their own budget and the rates they offer can vary. A good way to evaluate if a rate is acceptable is by estimating the equivalent hourly rate you would be paid for the job. Some given rates are so low that if you decide to accept them you will - in addition to not doing yourself any favours - be endorsing the general downward slide of rates which will inevitably hamper the future of the profession. "

"Ezar Soeparman started a topic 15 hours ago (2013-07-28) Hi, I just recently found out about this site and as I was watching, I somehow couldn't load the English subtitle when it said that it is complete. But when I try the Greek one, it loads very quickly but the thing is, I don't speak Greek! I was watching Fatmagul episode 26 part 2 and the subtitle never loads. I waited for hours on end and it wouldn't load. But the Greek one only took five seconds. Episode 26 part 2 cannot. Episode 27 part 1 and 2 cannot. (it kept going back to turkish when I have already clicked the english one.) Episode 28 part 1 and 2 cannot aswell. Please tell me. My internet connection is quick enough to fully load the video so it's impossible that it isn't quick enough to load the subtitle. Thank you."

Related to Eri Pançi's "My subtitles doesn't open or noone subtitles doens't open??!! :(((" - http://support.amara.org/support/discussions/topics/28007 ? But in Eri's examples, there had been no subtitles in the defined video language, and when I started them, it became possible to select and display the other existing subtitles. Whereas in the one video I perhaps identified from Ezar's "Episode 27 part 1" description - http://www.amara.org/videos/1JeMDQ7uLtr4/info/fatmagulun-sucu-ne-27bolum-part-1/ - there are subtitles in the defined video language, Turkish, and the issue only affects English, British subtitles: the other subtitle sets can be selected and displayed. I've asked Ezar to give the URLs for the other videos he mentions.

"András Fuchs started a topic 6 months ago (2013-02-20) My team of translators often finds itself in a situation when the original transcript is out of sync, missing, misspelled or shows something other than what the speaker said. Sometimes we fix the English subtitle as well, but then the other subtitles in different languages which are already started (or finished) might have problems. It would be great to combine the subtitle versioning feature (planned to implement) with subtitle rating and/or approval. Amara should limit the translators in a way, that nobody could start a language specific subtitle until the original transcript is 100% finished and approved by let's say at least 3 independent users (or even native speakers). I think this step would increase the quality of the subtitles greatly."

Dean's rely: "... We've thought some about the idea of requiring a translation to be complete, before allowing translations to be based from it. However, in certain cases it is better to allow translation directly from the dialogue in a video. For example, during the Arab spring, we had a number of politically sensitive videos which were done in spoken Arabic - for the translators, speed was the most important thing, so needing to wait for an Arabic transcript, before they could translate into English, would have been a major disadvantage. We are working towards a simplified system for peer review that will first appear on teams and later become available for every video. ..." Mine: mentioned problem with autocaptions in the - now deleted - Coursera team.