Amara Town Hall -- Oct 23, 2012

(Hangouts Google+)

(amara - Amara Town Hall [up to 0:01:38])

(main screen shows Jules Rincón)

(amara - Amara Town Hall [up to 0:04:17])

(Subpage of Jules Rincón's Google+ page)

(Jules Rincón's Google+ page)

(Dean Jansen, mute [up to 0:04:35])

(Main screen: CART with CART testing texts [up to 0:05:13])

[Metallic voices, lots of static]

(Main screen: CART with CART testing texts)

[Dean Jansen] Hey everyone! We're just about to get started here.

This is Dean. We're trying to get some CART online for folks who are deaf or [audio stops]

[Dean Jansen] And I just had the YouTube video open in the other screen,

so I started hearing my own voice.

Hem, let's see: Michael Lockrey is having us get CART working

and you can see his screen right now, so hopefully we're going to start getting that -

Ah, there it goes, I think.

Hem, and then we've just got a couple other things to get going.

Jules has her sound working, she's in a bit of a noisy environment,

so I'll be doing much of the - much of the talking,

but we'll definitely want to hear a little bit from Jules, as long as things don't get to loud there.

I'm being told that my microphone is a bit low. Can folks hear me OK?

And you should definitely set the capt- errh, the comments in the YouTube video

to display automatic updates.

There is - I see already a lot of folks in there commenting,

Darren, Claude, Seelan, Burgertester (?), lots of different folks.

We have 17 people who are watching right now.

OK.

And Jules, do you - are you able to say hi now?

You've got your - your - you've got your [inaudibe]

[Jules Rincón] Hello, hi. I'm [inaudible] I'm Jules [inaudible]

for answering your e-mail [inaudible]

[Dean Jansen] OK. That was a bit choppy.

Let's see. OK, well, let me pull up a quick -

sorry that we're not totally running: we are just coming, getting all the technology going,

this is still pretty new for all of us.

Is the CART in full - in full effect now?
Still can't tell.

And can other folks in the, in - Jules was mentioning that the volume's a bit low.

Are people on YouTube able to hear me OK?

OK. I see a lot of people saying they can hear me OK.

Now I think we just need to get this CART going and we're going to be ready to go.

Hem -

And is that - is the CART the main thing that's showing on the YouTube screen right now?

Yes, it is.

I mean to get the presentation pulled up and I will show a link to everyone

so that you can have multiple windows open in case you want to watch the CART

and also follow along the presentations at the same time.

Hem, actually, maybe Darren - Darren, could you show that link in - can you share that link

in the YouTube video - in the YouTube comments?

Now there is a published link I believe. OK, cool, thanks.

We've got that coming, I'm going to get it up on my screen now.

I have, like, more screens than I think I've ever had going at one time here, so -

[inaudible: bear with us?] and once we get the CART going,

I think we'll be ready to do some introductions and be ready to take off here.

And for anyone who is able to listen in

and can relay some of this information in the comments, that's really helpful.

Much appreciated.
[clicking noises up to 0:10:04]

OK, let's see: I believe we're getting closer and closer.
[clicking noises up to 0:10:19]

I'm in a message (?) Michael is speaking on the CART right now.

Let's see how that's going.

[Typing noises up to 0:10:37]
(CART: Caption screen share test screen. Further testing of caption reseizing)

OK We're doing caption sizing testing right now
(CART: testing words)

(CART: "further testing of caption sizing resizing caption screen to fit viewing window")

[typing noises up to 0:10:17]
(CART: testing words)

[Dean Jansen] OK. Alright, so we just have the -

the CART operator has joined the - the hangout

and so now he should have the audio feed.

[typing noises up to 0:12:05]
(CART: testing words)

[Dean Jansen] OK

typing noises]
(CART: testing words)

(Beginning of CC subs based on the CART transcript: the CC subs are sync'd with the audio )
[Dean Jansen] Thanks, everyone for bearing with us here.

We have 11 viewers right now.

Darren and Jules, If you want to update the banner on the website

- [inaudible] this is happening right now - that might be worthwhile

and just update it with the direct link to the you tube video.

[Dean Jansen] OK, I think I'm starting to see some of the CART text showing up.

(onscreen: previous CART text showing)
[typing noises up to 0:14:34]

[Dean Jansen]: I think we're ready to go.

I am going to wait until I see the CART update to really get started.

Darren is putting the announcement up on the Amara website right now

so folks can join in if they are free.

Okay. I see some text coming up. Which seems like good news.

So, thank you, all, for joining. Right now we have 13 folks watching.

And I wanted to start this out. Let me pull up my agenda real quick.

I just wanted to start this out.

Actually Jules was going to be starting this out for us.

She is - you can see her thumbnail in the bottom section of the screeen

She - her internet connection has been going on and off - she is a very noisy coffee house, still helping out.

She is going to be in the comments along with Darren.

So, I wanted to start out by saying thanks to all of the folks

who have helped make this possible, including Michael Lockrey,

who is - his is the screen showing the cart text right now, which is fantastic.

Jules helped get this whole thing organized.

Darren has been involved from the beginning.

And then, even a bigger thanks goes out to the community and volunteers,

the people who are here right now

as well as the folks who are - weren't able to make it,

who are on Amara doing captions, translations, subtitles.

Some folks are promoting and sharing,

we have people on the Captions Requested and the Music Captioning teams

doing a lot of great work and translation happening all over‑the‑board.

Really exciting stuff.

So I think that - that's how we wanted to open this,

just by saying thank you to everyone who has been involved

in making Amara such a success.

Jules was going to introduce herself but again since it's so noisy

I'll do a quick introduction for Jules.

She has been doing a fantastic job of community advocacy

and support for Amara for - I don't know - getting close to a year now

‑ probably a little less than that ‑ but she has been, you know, working from South America

and now she's here in the US with us and has been doing a great job on that.

Darren has also been doing a lot in the community advocacy

and support side of things

and has also been working with me on some of the business stuff

which I'm going to talk very briefly about.

And then, I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Dean.

I'm one of the co-founders of Amara and my title is Outreach and Business Development director,

which in the context of a non-profit organization, because Amara is built by a non-profit,

the Participatory Culture Foundation, business development really means

finding a way to make this nonprofit and mission-driven project and piece of software sustainable

so that we can support our developers as they build the tools out

and make sure that we are able to keep the servers on and everything.

So, moving forward I will give a quick overview of the meeting,

where we'll start getting more and more interactive as it goes on.

But at the beginning, I'¨d like to do a brief slide presentation

that I hope people are excited about, because it's -

We'll share just a few pieces of what is to come in Amara

which I think will answer a lot of outstanding questions

and hopefully get people excited about the future of Amara. We certainly are.

The other thing that I wanted to do

before we went to a full open question and answer

is that we asked people to talk about their big questions,

some of the features they would like to see,

some of the issues they were facing in the forum posts.

And so there are a couple of highlights there we'd like to go over.

And once we do that, then I think it would be great to do a full open Q‑A

over the comments in the YouTube video.

And then once we do that, we'll wrap it up.

So we are expecting to be done ‑

we should probably finish in the next 40 minutes.

So we've had an hour schedule for the full meeting.

So let's start into that slide presentation and for anyone -

I'm going to spell this out so folks can join this URL in case they don't see it in the comments.

It's http://goo.gl/gPdZe . That's a shortened Google URL and it's also in the comments

That's probably the easiest way to get to it, but I just wanted to spell it out there.

OK, so I'm going to switch my screen

and so you will be able to see which slide I'm looking at, at the bottom of the YouTube video.

I'm also just going to say every time I switch a page,

but I just wanted to make sure that if anyone is watching the CART, they're able to easily stick with that.

So I'm going to give everyone just a second to make sure they can load up that slide show,

and if anyone is having trouble, please just comment in the YouTube comments.

and if you turn on automatic commenting, then you'll see that updates in real time:

it's basically just like a chat.

And so it should say "Amara Town Hall" and have the big green Amara logo in the center of it.

That's the first slide and I'm actually just going to check the - the chat window

to make sure that folks are able to get in.

Someone is saying that my audio is screwed up.

Did someone have that link? I'm just going to [inaudible] that google link

I'm just going to send that to you in case you want it.

Sorry.
[clicking noises up to 0:21:23]

[Dean Jansen] OK. Here it comes.
[clicking noises up to 0:21:45]

[Dean Jansen] Hem, I can't tell if the comments are frozen or not.

There it goes.

Darren or Jules, are either of you able to put that link into the - into the YouTube video comments?
[clicking noises up to 0:22:18]

[Dean Jansen] Now I'm noticing that the CART is - is not showing up as well.

Oh oh.

Darren is saying it doesn't - ah URLs, my goodness.

OK. So, this is a bit of an oversight. Let me just do something real quick

to show the URL to folks. Hem, give me half a moment.

It's funny, when you test these things, it's the small little piece that's going to catch you by surprise.

So - I've almost got this up and we'll be able to put this on the screen.
[typing noises up to 0:23:15]
(onscreen: http::goo.gl/gPdZe)

[Dean Jansen] OK. Can everyone see this?

This is the - this is the shortened link that I mentioned,

and apparently, it's not possible to share these links inside of - inside of a YouTube comment.

So we are doing it here.

And Michael, are we able to get the CART showing up again? I'm going to leave you a chat message.

OK. Then I want to also check comments. Can someone in the comments with their thumbs up

if they're able to get into that - that Google short URL just so that I know

that folks are starting to see the - starting to see the slide deck?

Going to a new caption window. Okay.

Now the cart appears to be back online. Yes, we will be ready to go again now.

So let's all start on slide number 1.

If anyone needs that URL please just ask in the comments if you don't have it

and we will figure out a way to share it with you.

That was a big oversight on our part, sorry.

Slide number 1. I will switch my screen share back to that quickly. Here we go.

If we go on to slide 2, there are a couple of important notes.

They are about the mock ups.

The slide presentation is maybe 10 slides long. It's almost purely visual.

These are not 100 per cent final. They are mixed representations.

We were trying to show the most functionality

in the fewest number of screens possible.

You may see screens from like a team video –

a feature that would normally be exclusive to an openly translated video.

We won't be forcing every video to be on a team or anything like that.

It's just an artefact of us trying to get

as much functionality into the slides as possible.

If we skip to the third slide, it's a TED screen that says "let's get started".

The section below shows a video.

Right now people are used to seeing tasks and video tabs.

We will try to simplify here.

To give a bit more context before I dive into the specifics here,

I will tell a story about a new type of work flow and collaboration

that we're envisioning for Amara in the future.

This is something that we have just started building now.

It is not going to be ready tomorrow but we do want to release this stuff soon.

The reason we are share it now is so we can start to get feedback ahead of time,

because we think it's very important to ‑

I know folks in the community have asked for increased transparency

and we think that's really important. So this is part of that.

Just hearing what you guys have to say,

sharing some of what we have been working on

and get you guys' opinions, your thoughts, your feedback ahead of time.

I will paint a picture of what we're envisioning

for the future of the collaboration on Amara.

I hope a lot of the questions that were open will be answered.

We will answer some more questions that we had

that we don't think are addressed by this and then do some live Q and A

for any of the things that get missed from this presentation.

The first screen is the dashboard.

The idea is that as soon as a person comes to ‑

whether it's a team that's moderated like the way TED is

or whether it's a more open team

like the Music Captioning team or the NewsHour team.

The idea is that when we are doing teams

we want people to find projects quickly that they can work on.

The next slide, slide 4, the only thing that has changed is there is a help hover.

The question mark near the "my projects" header.

The idea here is we want to start building some of the documentation

and help into the interface so you don't have to go elsewhere to learn,

what does it mean to sign off on something

or what does it mean to create subtitles

or make a peer review or something like that.

The three languages needed hover down below shows

that this particular video still hasn't had three languages completed on it.

The next slide, slide 5, this is where we show

some of the past work that someone has done.

This view shows an individual team,

but you can imagine this being a list of everything

someone has worked on in open Amara plus different teams

and an overall profile of what have I collaborated on,

what is still going on that other people are working on,

what have I done in the past and giving people a better overview

of how they have contributed to different projects.

Let's see. Are we still ‑ we still have CART. I wanted to double check.

I have the ‑ I will scoot this over to the side. A lot of windows here.

So we're on slide 6 right now. This is another team view.

This is just the videos tab ‑

so basic filters and generally trying to put work

that matches someone's language abilities and I realize

that the languages up the top don't necessarily match in this mock‑up.

But the idea is that where it says "select languages"

that will be the filter for what is shown below

when you have the videos tab filtered by "all of my languages"

you would see the combination of those things.

So for translation that will be very helpful.

The other important thing is here is that

the TED paradigm right now is an individual person coming in

and creating subtitles and peer reviewing.

We have taken that model and made it something flexible

so that when TED does things

they can have that individual person or translator voice

that they think is very important and that we want to support them doing,

but when there is a team that needs to be more open

and more collaborative and dynamic, like the Music Captioning, l

ike the Captions Requested team,

we want to do something that still allows people to do peer review

but has a more flexible approach

so you can have multiple people collaborating at the same time.

A little bit moreover lap but still enough structure so that people can say,

"Well, this caption or this video still needs captions
so let's make sure we get that done"

and once the captions are built for the video it disappears for the list.

And other things that need work and need collaboration,

that can be pulled up to the top.

So the idea is to have a more flexible as well as group approach.

Page 7 ‑ this is a mock up of the video page.

This is an amalgam of different things here.

Up the top it says media from TED team.

So if this was not associated with a team it wouldn't have that button.

If it weren't a video that was being actively translated or wasn't part of a team,

you can see to the side of the video thumbnail it says

subtitles needed in new languages,

subtitle in French, Spanish, apply to team.

That would be adjusted based on

whether or not that video was part of a team,

whether it was just open and had been added to Amara as a video.

If there were things in progress, it may have

how you could help finish those pieces in progress.

Down below you can see ‑

some things may never have official or peer review

but may have different subtitle creators.

We are really working on trying to make the team model

and the open model work a lot closer together and in concert together.

If we go to the next slide, which is slide 8, I believe this is just another view ‑

the original ‑ slide 7 had subtitles in the bottom just showing the transcript.

This next one is the activity and chat window.

So you can see you have a quick overview of who has done what, said what,

and we're combining all of this stuff into a collaboration view

so you can quickly see who made different revisions,

who has left comments, et cetera, et cetera.

If we go to the next slide, slide 9, you will see the revisions tab,

and that's similar to what we have right now.

We are working on a new diff view

that will make things easier to compare together

but that's still under development.

If we go to the next slide, which is slide 10,

this is something that I actually wished I had Craig,

who is our product director, here to discuss,

because he is the one who has been driving ‑

the driving force behind this new interface.

I will do my best to talk about it. Some of these things have been updated.

Let's say you weren't on a video that was part of the team,

you might not have that sign‑off button.

Or it may be "add thumbs up" to say these captions or subtitles look great.

But generally this shows a translation in progress.

But the idea is that we are moving from having a different translation interface

and different timing interface

and having these steps to a more fluid way of working

where someone is guided through

based on if we think you are going to be translating

from English to German because that's how you came in,

we will give you the right pieces and right tools from the get go

with some instructions on how to do it.

But we're going to give you the ability to change your timing dynamically.

Slide 7 ‑ that's a closer up‑view of the new layout here.

One thing that isn't in this mock up but I think is worth mentioning

is the save button.

We are working to make saving a little more explicit and automatic.

We have definitely gotten feedback that save something tricky right now.

If we go to slide 12 ‑ this is another closer‑up view

showing some more timing information in the side bar

so you can see for this particular piece it's showing

there are 21 characters at 5.25 characters per second.

A lot of people who have come from the subtitling and captioning worlds

have requested this feature. That was slide 12.

I'm realizing we don't have the new timing interface mock ups.

That is still something that is fairly raw.

Jules just mentioned there is a chat.

Paul is asking about the smallest screen size.

We're talking about having the ability to zip up the video

so you could just see the lower third of the video

and have all of the timing and translation stuff show below

in order to save space.

This particular lay out will be something

that you can close some of the side bars.

If you want to close things down so there is no horizontal scrolling,

you can do that. If you're on a screen that's smaller.

But this is still fairly early. It's not built in HTML yet.

We haven't gotten down to the nuts and bolts

of what exact screen resolutions will be supported, et cetera.

So let's see, before we get too off ‑

before we start doing too many question and answers,

I want to clarify that the other piece of this

that I don't have here to share you but I think is going to be really exciting

is right now we're in a place where you can create captions

and time captions and subtitles and translate.

But if you want to change the timing of the new translated set of subtitles ‑

I will get to this. We're going to re-enable that.

That's a question that will come up.

We want to make it so ‑ so right now if you edit the timing on that translation,

then you will no longer have a translation,

you are out of the translation interface

and solely in the creating subtitles interface.

This new system will allow us to compare side by side

differently timed translations and subtitles.

If you have English to start with, and you translate into Spanish,

and then you want to change ‑

you want to add a couple of lines in the Spanish side

and you want to shorten some of the subtitles,

you are actually able to still compare English and Spanish next to one another.

That's one of the things that I think

will be incredibly powerful about this new system.

It's one of the things I'm most excited about.

I don't think it comes across in this presentation

but that is something that we're working towards supporting

which is really important and really adds a lot of flexibility

to the experience of translation.

Slide 13 is just the end cap. That's the basic presentation.

And I did have a number of different questions that came up in the forums.

And I'm really sorry that Jules isn't able to join me on this piece,

because this has been me talking and talking and talking.

I don't want to bore folks and sound like I'm the only person talking here,

but I do think these questions are important to get to

and we have ‑ we really read carefully and ... yes?

I'm in the Mozilla offices right now.

And there is there is something ringing.

I will answer some of the questions in the forum.

I will mention who asked them.

There may be other people who are curious about them.

But this is in broad strokes trying to answer

some of the questions that came up

that I don't think were addressed in the slide show.

We can come back and address other things in realtime.

There was a question from Booger Bender, Vivian and Claude

about messaging and outreach.

Some folks were saying it would be great to highlight

the nonprofit nature of our project, the open source nature of our project.

Some other folks were suggesting we did more outreach to deaf communities.

We think those are both great ideas.

Our focus right now really is getting this new technology going.

We will obviously be ‑ we will be doing some ‑

we will be starting an email newsletter soon,

and that might be a good place to start highlighting this stuff.

We would like to tighten up our website

because I know there are a lot of loose ends

and it could be better at explaining our mission

and how the participatory culture foundation works

and how Amara is totally volunteer driven.

And up our outreach to deaf communities.

In the meantime, if there are any folks here who can help us with this,

we would be more than thrilled to work with you.

Jules will be very active in the forums.

If you're not a registered member, please do join.

We would love to discuss how we can better work together

to highlight some of these things and outreach to different communities

and keep stepping up those efforts.

Another question was about video management,

which ‑ this is a technical question about the platform.

Someone was asking about the primary URL, being able to switch away.

We may have just done a release that actually allows you to see

the history of what the primary URL was and to switch that.

That used to be more ‑ I think that was just a minor bug or hiccup in our development

and that we're back online about that.

I would like to double check on that before we confirm that one 100 per cent.

One other technical thing I can confirm 100 per cent,

it's about editing and timing of subtitle bubbles.

They are asking about ending a caption.

So you press the down arrow to lay down a caption

and the caption is on the screen,

you press the down arrow and next one appears immediately

where the last one left out.

The secret is the up arrow will cut off the current subtitle being laid down,

if you want to do a quick caption that says "music playing"

you would press down when you wanted it to show, press the up arrow

and then it would stop right there.

Let me know that that's the right question you were asking. I think it is.

People consistently ask about full screen.

Will the widget, the embeddable tab that goes on the bottom of the video ‑

the majority of these videos, they may be MP4 videos

but they are playing through a flash player

and it's taking over the entire experience.

You can't do HTML overlay or Java on top of that.

We're working some of the major video hosts

to provide syncing that can link subtitles directly into their video player

or display the subtitles through their video player.

The problem being that you have to be the original uploader

to enable that syncing.

We will see if we can figure out a technical work around

to do some near full screen overlay.

But bear in mind that's just a tough technical problem.

I'm sorry I don't have a more exciting and uplifting answer for that one.

Another question we had was the original and primary language of video ‑

we're working to improve the support for changing

what language a video is spoken in.

So there is spoken dialogue in a video. That's coming up fairly soon.

There were a couple of features that had existed before

that people wanted to know about.

Subtitling directly to a video, pasting in a transcript.

Uploading new subtitles over existing subtitles ‑

these are things that our current system, we have hit some different hurdles.

We're working on getting these features re‑established.

But they will likely be re‑established in the newer system,

the stuff I have just shown in the slides.

I have two more things left and then we can go to open questions.

Jules mentioned there was a question from Jim Tobias

that I can try to answer really quickly.

Will there be a user-focused interface

that shows teams and videos I have worked on.

So Jim asked if we're going to be doing a user-focused interface

that shows ‑ let's say a user dashboard.

You log in and you see the videos you have worked on

and videos you have completed.

I'm not remembering the number of the slide. I think it was like 3 or 4.

Slide number 5 shows past collaborations in the context of a team.

But we do want to do something similar that goes across teams.

If you log in and you have contributed to three teams

and different videos on three different teams

plus you have contributed to 20 various videos that are videos on Amara,

we would like to compile all those things together

so you can see that all in one place.

I'm seeing another question:

Is there any place to add Mozilla to the presently available sign in methods?

I don't think we have immediate plans to add Mozilla.

I'm assuming we could potentially do that through MoOff.

I'm at the Mozilla offices today so I can see if that's a possibility.

It hadn't come up on our radar yet but we can check into it.

Another question:

Can we fix the original language if we set it wrongly at first?

It happened to me once and I struggled in fixing it.

Paula, firstly, I apologize that it's not easier in the current system to do this.

Yes, we definitely want to make that simpler.

Because it's one of those tricky things where the data model

that we're working on right now

is something that we created roughly two years ago.

Of course it's not the ideal thing for where we are at with the project right now.

That's the first thing that we're working on.

We're very close to having something out

that will be more flexible in that respect. Thanks for that question.

Feel free to keep asking questions about anything that I have talked about,

any of the slides, anything that has been missing from the presentation

or anything you would like to hear about.

Another question was about the different timing in the differences ‑

a question about editing timing in different languages.

That's coming back now.

Ultimately we're excited about that ability to remain

in the translation interface even if you have changed the timing.

Let's see, we have gotten a lot of good suggestions on the product front.

I'm not sure if I'm saying this name right

but Diomides had good suggestions for hot keys and functionality

I have passed on to the development team.

One suggestion that was put forth

was the ability to change the speed in the video play back.

Right now that's difficult with our system

because we aren't hosting the videos

and it's all done through the HTML and Java script.

There may come a time when we are able to start doing that,

specially as HTML5 becomes more powerful and that technology grows.

But right now that is going to be a tough one.

But some of the other things ‑ there is a suggestion for a hot key

to skip to lines that haven't been translated yet.

That's a really great suggestion.

We will definitely try to get that in there

and a couple of those other things too.

We have another question coming in.

This name is very difficult. I won't be able to say it without butchering it. I

t says: Has there been any thought to providing interactive transcripts?

That's the kind of thing where you see the video.

Yes, TED dotcom has an example.

We have been working on this.

I wish we could enable link sharing.

We need to look into whether we can enable links in the you tube comments.

We do have a sample of that. An interactive transcript player.

You're watching the video and see the transcripts in a text box.

You can scroll down it and click on the word

and the video will jump to that word and start playing immediately.

You can search through and look for key phrases.

We have something like that that is just coming out of the lab.

Maybe in the forum we can post a link to it.

Darren, can you get that link if you have it?

Do we have other questions?

I'm coming to the end of the questions from the forum posts.

There may have been a couple that I missed

so if there is anything on the forum that you left and I didn't get to it,

please just chime in on the you tube comments.

We will continue to keep an eye on the YouTube comments,

even after we're done with this

so if there is anything we missed we can follow up on it

... it sounds like we're getting closer and closer to the conclusion of this event.

This has been really exciting. I will check the window.

Here is another question.

The launch date for the new embedder?

We don't have a solid date yet.

There are so many things that are hard to predict in what we're doing right now.

Let me see. I'm getting more information on and that question.

That was Joshua.

The new embedder and whether there is a specific launch date.

That's the embedder with the interactive transcripts.

It's out in Beta form right now.

We will share on the forums how to use that. I

t's still experimental so it's not perfect

but it's not anything that will ever mess up subtitle data or anything like that.

It's a piece of code that we're comfortable share

being folks saying use this in situations that are not mission-critical

and check it out, see what people think.

So we will get that up in the forum and also try to mention

once we do in the YouTube comments.

Let's see. Another question:

A very important feature missing, a kind of guideline conflict or warnings

like sentences larger than 70 characters,

smaller than 1.5 seconds, et cetera.

That's a really great idea. If I understand it right, we should ‑

let's continue that thread in the forums so we can develop that idea further.

Just so that I know and our team knows exactly what you're suggesting here.

But I think the idea sounds good, something that gives some highlights

if maybe you have things that seem like

they may be less than optimal for captions or subtitles.

That's a really good idea.

Dumovney asks another question:

Has there been thought given to providing video description?

We have definitely talked about it.

It's something that, you know, with this new system that we're building,

once we're there we will be in a much better position

to start think being both video description as well as dubbing

or voiceover translation.

Both of which we think could be exciting, important pieces

to the puzzle for greater accessibility

both for folks who are blind or have visual impairments

or people who, let's say, don't read ‑ they speak a different language

than the video is in and also don't read their primary language particularly well,

this could be really great for increasing accessibility there as well.

Okay. Let's see. There was another question. Another question:

Why was it kept a secret the way the up arrow was a way to cut the subtitle

instead of using the down carry key. It wasn't really a secret.

It was a lack of time to update the documentation.

We have been crazy busy with a lot of different projects

and hadn't had time to update the instructions

on the interface on the side bar.

We're not trying to keep secrets or leave Easter eggs lying around,

it was just that that didn't get as widely published as it should have.

My apologies for that.

We will try to make sure we have a comprehensive list

of all of the keyboard short cuts.

All right. We're getting close to the hour. Let's see.

Do we have any other questions before we cap this discussion?

Let's see, just so ‑

I don't know if it says how many was the largest number of viewers

but I have seen that we have had between 16 and 17 viewers,

which is pretty cool.

Okay. We have one more. From Lavney:

It says on video description adds deaf blind people would benefit

from seeing video description as text rather than as audio.

Ah, yes, I think I was misunderstanding you.

I think sometimes video and audio description terminology

is confusing for me, my apologies, I may have been mixing that up.

I think there are a lot of different things that we can do f

from the perspective of accessibility, that we should ‑ we would like to ‑

I think a lot of this just needs to be unpacked for us.

We put a lot of effort and time into trying to figure out

what the best approach is to accomplish ‑

to keep a simple interface that is something that is approachable

by people who are both young and old

in order to start creating subtitles and start creating captions and translate things.

We also want to make sure that we're being as inclusive as possible

with the interfaces,

with the things that people are creating through the interfaces.

And to be honest, it's a big, big job to understand

what the universe of accessibility means.

This is a really good opportunity to ask you guys to help us learn more

and understand better how we can support

all of these different uses and use cases.

I think a lot of this conversation that we're having right now,

these sorts of seeds, could really blossom on the forum.

I'm hoping we can continue these conversations so we can learn more

about what folks are thinking might be the most effective sort of approach

to some of these issues.

I totally appreciate everyone's time and effort and thought

on helping us walk through these.

Two more and then we will cap it after that.

So Claude asks: Could you talk about the future chat feature, please?

I think I will need more clarification on that.

Maybe we could just take care of that in the forum as well.

And discuss that one in the comments or the forum.

Okay, Alex asks: We Chinese need double subtitling display on team.

Could you implement that?

Double means showing both English and Chinese subs

in two lines simultaneously. Alex Mo.

That's another thing that there are ‑ that is another piece

outside of the accessibility thing that I was just talking about.

This is something that I think we should definitely discuss

so that we can better understand how something like this

might work in the system, given all of the different ‑

the challenges that we're facing of keeping the software usable and simple

from the perspective of it has to work on as many languages as possible,

how can we accomplish what you're asking about with Amara.

I think we can definitely find a way to do it.

But I don't have an answer off the top of my head.

Partly because I'm not someone who speaks English and Chinese

and so figuring out exactly how ‑ what the expectation is

and how something like that would work,

we definitely just need to get a little bit more information

and I think we can and should be able to figure out something.

I will answer one last question:

Seelan: are there plans to auto-sync subs to videos on YouTube.

We have created many of these

but people can't up load them on and to YouTube sourced.

I'm not sure I totally understand that one.

Right now we're sync one direction from Amara.

We do grab subtitles and captions from YouTube

and we're just now starting to sync them back to YouTube,

as long as you're the creator of the video on YouTube you can do that.

I think we're on the right track there.

If I'm not understanding that correctly we should also

carry that discussion forward in the forum as well.

(pause)

okay. Sorry, I'm just seeing people typing things

and want to make sure I have got this all down correctly.

All right. I think we should make sure to just continue these conversations

and I know there are a couple at the end that I semi‑dodged

but I want to ensure we are able to address those

and have conversations about how we can expand on those different pieces

and make sure that we're serving as many different communities

as best as we possibly can.

I think that the new editor, the new collaboration model,

all of the stuff that we have shared and that we're working on right now,

I think that will be a major step in that direction.

And that there will still be obviously a lot of room for improvement

and room to grow.

I think there are probably a lot of things that we didn't discuss today

that have to do with how do we ‑ how do we best represent

what volunteers have done, how do we show,

this is a set of captions done primarily by this user but also this user helped.

That's a big question and thing we have started to think about

but that is so huge that we want to make sure

we have the communities' voice and support and heart in

as we move forward on it.

That's another big thing and maybe that's a topic for the next town hall meeting.

Thank you so much to everyone who participated.

I see that our viewership has dropped off a little bit.

Thank you to Michael for bringing CART into the ‑ into the picture.

Thank you to the CART operator for actually providing CART, totally amazing.

Jules and Darren, thank you for helping DJ the comments

and get this whole thing off the ground.

And of course thanks to everyone who is here right now

and who wasn't able to make it,

who has been helping us to make Amara such an amazing project and tool.

And everything that it has become.

So, thank you, all.

We will do this again ‑ I'm not sure exactly when.

But let's talk about it in the forums and discuss

when we do want to do it again and what we thought worked

and what we thought didn't and how we can improve on this process.

So thank you, all.

(town hall ends)