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?

OK, I just got a note that we're - we're switching from the - the CART screen showing

to a CART screen for Google Hangout.

Hem - something more direct that should have less legs.

And it should be up any moment.

OK. I think we are back on with the CART now.
(some clicking up to 0:25:11)

OK, I see a bunch of people saying they see the slides. This is great.

[Echo from video] OK, I see a bunch of people saying they see the slides. This is great.
[Clicking noises up to 0:25:44)

[Dean Jansen] OK. Now that cart appears to be back online, I think we are going to be ready to go again.
[Clicking noises up to 0:26:18.5)

Excellent. OK. Thank you.

So let's all start on slide number 1.

And 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, I'm sorry.

OK, so, slide number 1, which - actually, I'm going to switch -

I'm going to switch - I'm going to switch my screen - screen share back to that quickly.

Here we go.

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

They are about the mock ups.

And the slide deck is maybe 10 slides long. So it's sure - it's almost purely visual.

This is the only text slide, but it's really important to say upfront:

these aren't 100 per cent final. They are mixed representations.

We were trying to show the most functionality

in the fewest number of screens possible.

So, in other words, you may see some features from a fully moderated, like a team video –

in the exact same screen as features that would normally be exclusive

to an openly translated video that wasn't on any team.

So there's - we're not going to 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.

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

And you'll see in the section below that - it shows kind of a dashboard view of videos that need your help.

Now - right now, I think people are used to seeing tasks in video's tabs.

We're going to try and be simplifying here.

And just to give a bit more context before I dive into the specifics here,

I'm going to kind of tell a story about a new type of work flow and a new type of collaboration

that we're envisioning for Amara in the future.

This is something that we've just started building now.

So it's not going to be ready tomorrow but we do want to release this stuff soon.

And - and 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 trying to kind of get all - get you guys' opinions, your thoughts, your feedback ahead of time.

So I'm going to start by just sort of painting this picture of what we're envisioning

for the future of the collaboration on Amara.

I think a lot of questions will be answered or at least

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

We will go ahead and answer some more questions that we had

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

for any other things that get missed from this presentation.

So this first screen, again, 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

the way that the Music Captioning team is, or the NewsHour team.

The idea is that when we are doing teams

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

If you go to the next slide, which is slide 4, the only thing that has changed is there is a little bit of a help hover.

The question mark that is near the "my projects" header.

I mean, the idea here is that we want to start building some of that 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 just shows

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

If we go to 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

that someone has worked on in the open Amara as well as everything you've done in different teams

and just sort of their 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 just giving people a better overview

of how they have contributed to different projects.

Let's see. I'm going - are we still ‑ we still have CART. I wanted to double check,

as I'm just - I've got the ‑ I going to scoot this over to the side. Sorry: a lot of windows here.

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

And this is just the videos' tab showing ‑

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 your languages"

that's going to be the filter for what is shown below

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

you would see the things that you had selected, a combination of those things.

So for translation, that's going to be very helpful.

And - and I think the other important thing is here is that

the TED paradigm right now is a very - it's an individual person coming in

and creating subtitles and peer reviewing.

And we've 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 then, when there is a team that needs to be more open

and more sort of collaborative and dynamic, like the Music Captioning,

like 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 kind of collaborating at the same time.

A little bit more overlap, but still enough structure so that people can say,

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

and then once the captions are actually built for the video, then it kind of disappears for the list.

And other things that need work and need collaboration go up to the top.

So the idea is to have a flexible model that can work really well with a more -

a more individualistic sort of approach, as well as a group approach.

And so if we go to the next slide, slide 7 ‑ this is a new - a mock up of the video page.

And this, again, is sort of a little bit of an amalgam of different - different things here.

So you can see, 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 were being actively translated or let's say, wasn't part of a team,

you can see on this side, to the side of the video thumbnail, it says

subtitles needed in your languages,

subtitle in French, subtitle in Spanish, apply to team.

That would be adjusted based on

you know, whether or not that video was part of a team,

if it was just open and had been added to Amara as an individual video,

it may only have the, you know, If there were things in progress,

how you could help finish those pieces in progress.

Down below you can see there is a little bit more information around the status of things,

and again, some things may - may not ever have official review or peer review

they may just have a couple of different subtitle creators.

So, it's - we're 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 ‑ the 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, who has sort of said what,

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

so you should see you can quickly see who made different revisions,

who has left comments, et cetera, et cetera.

If we go to the next slide, which is slide 9, then you'll see the revisions' tab,

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

And I - we are working on a new diff view

which will make things easier to compare together

but that's still under - 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'll do my best to talk about it. And some of these things have been updated.

And again, if - let's say you weren't on a video that was part of the team,

you might not have that sign‑off button.

Well, it might just be a "add thumbs up" to say these captions or subtitles look great.

But generally speaking, you can see that this interface - let's see - this shows a translation in - 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, you know, if we think you are going to be translating

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

we'll give you - we'll 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 inside of this view.

Let's see. Let's go to slide 11 ‑ that just is a little bit of a closer up‑view of the new layout here.

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

is the save button.

We've - we're working to make saving a little more explicit, a little more automatic

and something that someone feels like they have more control over,

because we've definitely gotten feedback that saving is 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.

Actually, we had some new timing -

So that was slide 12 that we're on. I don't know if I mentioned the slide switch, I'm sorry -

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

And that's still something that is fairly raw.

Let's see: I'm seeing - Jules just mentioned there is a chat.

Paul is asking what's the smallest screen size that is usable for the new interface.

That's something that we are still kind of working at, at this point.

We've talked about having the ability to zip the video up,

so that 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 - this particular layout is going to be

something where you can close some of the side bars.

So if you want to kind of close things down so there is no horizontal scrolling,

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

But we - this is still fairly early, it's not built in HTML yet.

So we haven't gotten down to the nuts and bolts

of what the screen resolutions - 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 just 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

you can time captions and subtitles, you can translate from a set of subtitles.

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

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

and that's a question that will come up.

But we want to make it so that you can now -

so right now if you edit the timing on that translation,

then you're going to no longer have a translation,

you are out of the translation interface

and just solely in the creating subtitles interface.

This new system will allow us to compare side by side

differently timed - differently timed translations and subtitles.

So 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,

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

And that's one of the things that I think

is going to be incredibly powerful about this new system.

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

I want to make sure that - I don't think it comes across in this presentation

but that is something that we're working towards supporting

which I think is really important and really adds a lot of flexibility

to the experience of translation.

So, 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.

and I don't want to bore folks and I don't want to just 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 next to me.

OK. So here we go. I'm going to just answer some of the questions coming from the forum

that came from - and I'll mention who asked them.

There may be other people who are curious about them.

But this is just sort of in broad strokes trying to answer

as many of the questions that came up

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

And we can kind of come back to the slide show and answer questions in realtime

for things that people still don't - have the query that they would like.

So, there was a question from Booger Bender, Vivian and Claude

- by the way, I apologize if I mispronounce any names on - you know,

I told I'm really sorry if I do, but I'll do my best -

So this is about messaging and outreach.

Some folks were saying it would be great for us to highlight

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

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

And 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 are going to be starting an email newsletter soon,

which I think that might be a good place to start highlighting this stuff.

Eventually, we would like to really tighten up our website

because I know there are a lot of loose ends

and it could be better at explaining what our mission is

and how the Participatory Culture Foundation works

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 is going to be very active in the forums.

So if you're not a registered member of the forums, please do join

and we'd love to sort of discuss how can we work together to -

to better highlight some of these things and outreach to different communities

and keep stepping that - those efforts up

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.

And I think that we may have just done a release that actually allows you to see

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

I think 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 with that.

But I'd like to make sure we double check on that before I confirm that one hundred per cent.

One thing - one other technical thing I can confirm a hundred per cent,

this is something that [inaudible name] and Claire asked about editing, subtitling and timing bubbles.

They are asking about being able to end a caption.

So you press the down arrow to lay a caption down

and the caption is on the screen,

and then you press the down arrow and next one appears immediately

where the previous one left out.

The secret here is the up arrow will cut off that current subtitle that's being laid down.

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

you'd press down when you wanted it to show, and then press the up arrow when you want it to disappear

and it will stop right there.

Let me know if that's the right question that you were asking. I think that's what you were asking.

There's - people consistently ask about full screen.

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

that will be able to do full screen captions.

It's really, unfortunately, a very difficult problem, mostly because of the way that the flash plugin works

the majority of these videos are flash videos - well, I mean, they may be MP4 videos

but they are playing through a flash player

and the problem is, when you go full screen with flash,

the flash is actually taking over the entire experience

and you can't do HTML overlay or Javascript on top of that.

And those are the technologies that power our browser widget, that little tab that you see.

And so we're working some of the major video hosts

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

and display the videos - erh, the subtitles through their video player -

the problem being that you have to be the original uploader

in order to enable that syncing.

So we'll continue to try to see if we can figure out a clever technical work around

to do some kind of full screen or near full screen overlay.

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

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

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

we're working to improve - to improve the support for changing

what language - what language a video is actually spoken in.

So there is spoken dialog in a video. That's something that's coming up fairly soon.

There were a couple of features that had existed before

that people wanted to know about.

Subtitling directly from a video, pasting in a transcript

and uploading new subtitles over existing subtitles ‑

these are things that our current system has, 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.

And I got like two more things left and then we can go to open questions.

Actually, I think that Jules mentioned there was a question from Jim Tobias

which I can try to answer really quickly.

Video- or team-oriented. Will there be a user-focused interface

that shows all the teams I'm on and all the videos I have worked on or have completed.

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

that shows ‑ so let's say a user dashboard.

You log in and you see the videos you have worked on, the videos you've completed.

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

No, 5. Slide number 5 does show past collaborations in the context of a team.

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

so that if you log in and you have contributed to three teams

and different videos on three different teams

plus you've contributed to 20 various videos that are just individual videos on - on Amara,

we'd like to compile all those things together so you can see that all in one place.

I didn't - we don't have a mock up on that yet,

but that is something that we're thinking about and something we want to address and make better.

just because it is important for - it is important for people to be able to see what they've done

and come and get an overview of their history.

I'm seeing another question. Jules, who's that one from?

It's, is there any plan to add Mozilla persona to the available sign in methods?

Oh, I see, it's Pandark Zero (sp?).

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

I'm assuming that thas a - an - that we could potentially do that through oOff (?).

I'm at the Mozilla offices today in San Francisco, so I can actually ask and see if that's a possibility.

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

Paulo Silva asks, maybe an important issue is

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

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

Paulo, I - first of all, I want to apologize that it's not easier in the current system to do this.

And yes, we definitely want to make that simpler.

Because that's - it's one of those tricky things where, you know, the -

the data model that we're working on right now

was something that we created roughly two years ago

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

So that's the first thing that we're working on

and we're actually very close to having something out

that will be more flexible in that respect. So, 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 pieces that you'd like to hear about.

Another thing that came from the forum - let's see, the different timing in different languages ‑

So that was a question about being able to edit timing in different languages.

And that's coming back right now.

But ultimately we're really excited about that - that ability to remain

in the subtitling interface or 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 Diomidis had a lot of really great suggestions for some hot keys and editor functionality

that 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, sort off, through that - that just HTML and Javascript.

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

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

That's a - that's areally great suggestion.

We will definitely try to get that in there and a couple of those other things too.

OK, we got another question coming in.

Dumu- o man, this name is very difficult. I'm not going to be able to say it without butchering it.

[he laughs] dmulvany asks:

"Has there been any thought to providing interactive transcripts?"

So, that's the kind of thing where you see the video.

Yes, TED.com has an example of that: in fact, we have been working on this.

I don't know if we can get a link from - well, darned, I wish we could enable link sharing.

We need to look into seeing whether we can enable links in the YouTube comments,

because we do have a sample of that, an interactive transcript player.

where you're basically watching the video and you see the transcripts in a sort of a text box below the video.

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

So, maybe in the forum we can post a link to it.

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

OK. Do we have other - other questions?

I'm coming to basically 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 - please just chime in on the YouTube - on the YouTube comments.

And we'll continue to keep an eye on the YouTube comments,

even after we're done with this.

So if there is anything that we missed, we can follow upon.
[clicking sounds up to 0:56:06]

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

This has been really exciting. Let me - I'm going to check the window.

OK, there's - here is another question.

The launch date for the new embedder?

We don't have a solid date yet.

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

OH, ok, let's see. I'm just getting more information on that question.

So that was - that was Joshua Barajas

and the new embedder, is there a more specific launch date for that.

So that's the embedder with the interactive transcripts. [inaudible]

We basically have it out in Beta form right now.

So we can - we will share on the forums how to use that.

It's still kind of experimental so it's not perfect

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

So it's a piece of code that we're comfortable sharing with folks

saying use this in situations that aren't mission-critical

and check it out, see what people think.

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

once we do in the YouTube comments.

Let's see. Paulo Silva asks:

"a very important feature missing: a kind of "guideline conflict spot out warnings" -

like sentences larger than 70 characters,

smaller than 1.5 seconds, etc."

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

let's continue that thread in the forums so we can develop that idea a little bit 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 kind of gives some highlights

if maybe you have things that seem like

they may be less than optimal for captions or subtitles. Something like that.

That's a really good idea.

dmulvany asks again - see - 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,

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

to start thinking about both video description as well as dubbing or voiceover translation.

Both of which we think could be really 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.

Seelan asks: *Why was it kept a secret that the up arrow key is the way to cut a subtitle

instead of using the down arrow key?"

It wasn't really kept a secret. It was a lack of time to update the documentation -

a lack of - we've just been crazy busy with a lot of different projects

and hadn't had time to update the - the interface instructions on the side bar.

So, we're definitely not trying to keep secrets or leave Easter eggs lying around,

that happened to be something that we just didn't get as widely publicized as we probably should have.

So, my apologies for that.

And we'll make sure and try and have a comprehensive list of all of the keyboard shortcuts.

All right. We're getting close to the hour. Let's see.
[clicking noises up to 1:00:43]

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

And 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 got one more.

dmulvany 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 that you -

sometimes the terminology is a bit confusing - video description versus audio description

and I think I may have been mixing the two up. My apology.

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

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

you know, 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.

So I think this is just a really good opportunity for us to ask you guys to help us learn more

and understand better how we can support

all of these different uses and and all these different use cases.

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

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

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

about what folks are thinking about what would be the most effective approach

for us on some of these different issues.

And - just totally appreciative of everyone's time and thought and effort on helping us walk through these.

And I've got two more and then we will cap it after that.

So Claude asks: Could you go back on the future chat feature, please?

I think I'll need more clarification on that,

but 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 now 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 sort 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,

I think partly because I, you know, 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 something out.

I will answer one last question:

Seelan is asking: "Are there plans to auto-sync subs made on Amara to videos on YouTube.

We have created lots of great subs on YouTube videos

but many people don't or can't re-upload these subs on YouTube source."

I'm not sure I totally understand that one, Seelan

but we - right now we're syncing in one direction from Amara to Yout-

Actually, we do grab subtitles from YouTube, and captions from YouTube

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

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

So I think we're on the right track there.

And if I'm not understanding that correctly we should also

carry that discussion forward in the forum as well.
[typing noises up to 1:06:29]

Okay. Sorry, I'm just seeing people typing - typing things

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

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

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

but I really want to make sure that we are able to address those

and that we are able to have those conversations and figure out

what - 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.

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

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

I think that's going to be a major step in that direction.

And that there will still be obviously a lot of room for improvement, a lot of room to grow.

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

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

what volunteers have done, how do we show,

you know, here is a set of captions done primarily by this user but also this user helped.

And that's a really big question and a really big thing we have started to think about

but is so huge that we want to make sure

that we have the communities' voice and support and sort of heart in

as we move forward on it.

So, 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 both for helping kind of DJ the comments

and organize and get this whole thing off the ground.

And then of course, thanks to everyone who is here right now

and everyone who wasn't able to make it,

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

and everything that it has become.

So, thank you, all and we will do this again ‑ I'm not sure exactly when.

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

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

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

So thank you, all.

(town hall ends)