Searching for people willing to help with creating subtitles for Massive Black videos

[Noa K]

ah! thanx Brashen! I didn't notice the link to the original conversation...
well, i actually thought this is an official request by CA, but now i understand it is a private user who needs help with subtitles since he's having trouble hearing all that's being said in the MB videos (madster, to your attention).

i'm still up for it, but very (very) sadly i don't have any of the downloads... this is why i innitially wanted to do this, so i could donate to CA of my time instead of the golden coins i don't have...maybe we could work something out, but i don't have any suggestions at the moment...

I do think, However, that the OP should contact one of the admins of CA or MB personal, just to officially inform them of the much needed project and get their approval. i doubt if they'll have any objection, as this serves them as well, and maybe even they could help in some way.

[madster]

Good. We've now all read how dedicated and selfless and generous you all are.

And why you don't mind "giving back" and helping CA cover it's bandwidth cost, because you can't give money.

Those DON'T answer the question, because the question is not directed to "Hey! Why are you guys giving away your talents for free?" THAT would be the question you answered.

That was not what was asked.

So please, no more Testimonials to how you have the time, you have the energy, you don't mind giving it away (gee...those arguments could be used for A LOT of topics about exploitation, eh?). You ALL have the same general motivations for doing this. That is your choice, whether you make it through naivite, adolation, or fanaticism.

The question STILL is:

Why is volunteer exploitation "bad," unless it is for the benefit of CA? And if there IS no "double standard," here, shouldn't the attitude be adjusted across the board?

Free volunteer work for everyone!
~M

[petitemistress]

*gigantic roll of eyes*
can we get this thread back on track, please? it was a good initiative, I can try translating to french. I would try arabic but I cant type in arabic ;p its just tooo complicated to translate to written arabic o_o

[Noa K]

madster, you are officially a party pooper!

but seriously now,
as you are not satisfied with any of the explanations provided here, it seems to me this kind of discussion will take along time, so i suggest you'd move this to a new thread and leave this one to it's original purpose before it gets locked, or just discoursed, ok?

[Slash]

Madster - the point you seem to be missing is this isn't exploitation! I've heard a lot of industry veterans saying that working for free for a mod team is a great way of getting experience. There is no clash with some sort of holy boardwide mantra here, thats where you seem to be confused.

The subtitles are given away for free, as downloads separate to the video files. Noone is making money off of the subtitles. Why are you insisting on being difficult here? They might help increase sales of the original product, but if we follow that train of thought then people releasing fan-made mods for videogames are being "exploited", which is complete BS.

//edit: Bolded out something you seem to be missing or deliberately overlooking.

[madster]

There's a fundamental difference between approaching a company to enhance their products for free, and the company asking the fans to do this. I've worked for free on projects i believe in. But i would never work for free for a client.

If YOU approach THEM, they will NEVER be your client, you've negated that portion of the interaction.

And yes, I, too, have done work for free for businesses I believed in. One logo I designed as a teenager was used by a business for over 26 years, until the owner died, and the company went out of business. Never got a dime, but got to see my artwork all over town for years...

BUT, and HERE is the point SO many of you seem to either be missing or deliberately overlooking...

It is NOT your willingness. It is NOT your volunteering.
It is the "general philosophy," that if someone is going to make money from your efforts over a LONG period of time (the lifetime of the videos you caption), you shouldn't do it for free.

I didn't make this up. It took literally years before I stopped doing logos and small illys for free. I still feel bad (but less so) when I turn down requests. But it's not about YOU or ME. It's about philosophies that don't seem to apply, depending upon the circumstances.
Take the names CA.Org and MB out of this discussion, and make it anything else that has an interactive audience. The LA Times, The Food Network, Knitting International. That the members volunteer to undertake a somewhat massive project is commendable. That it would help whatever organization is undeniable. That it would STILL be exploiting the labors of others for their financial benefit would still be not cool. Regardless the willingness to be exploited...

~M

[Brashen]

I'm going to answer your question with one of my own:

How long is the proverbial stick shoved up you proverbial ass?

[Noa K]

If YOU approach THEM, they will NEVER be your client, you've negated that portion of the interaction.

And yes, I, too, have done work for free for businesses I believed in. One logo I designed as a teenager was used by a business for over 26 years, until the owner died, and the company went out of business. Never got a dime, but got to see my artwork all over town for years...

BUT, and HERE is the point SO many of you seem to either be missing or deliberately overlooking...

It is NOT your willingness. It is NOT your volunteering.
It is the "general philosophy," that if someone is going to make money from your efforts over a LONG period of time (the lifetime of the videos you caption), you shouldn't do it for free.

I didn't make this up. It took literally years before I stopped doing logos and small illys for free. I still feel bad (but less so) when I turn down requests. But it's not about YOU or ME. It's about philosophies that don't seem to apply, depending upon the circumstances.
Take the names CA.Org and MB out of this discussion, and make it anything else that has an interactive audience. The LA Times, The Food Network, Knitting International. That the members volunteer to undertake a somewhat massive project is commendable. That it would help whatever organization is undeniable. That it would STILL be exploiting the labors of others for their financial benefit would still be not cool. Regardless the willingness to be exploited...

~M

please, PLEASE, move this to a new thread!

i personally promise to discuss it there, but not here, out of respect to the OP's original topic.
I urge others to do the same as well.

Noa K

[yoitisi]

Madster: I don't really see any reason why you posted your argument in this thread, and you're making several wild unsubstantiated claims that you might want to check before you start shouting them around. If you want to discuss things further, please feel free to start a new thread but let this thread get back on course please. I know you are very proud on shaking things up with random arguments, but this is not the place.

I think I'm going to delete any further comments on that argument if it keeps on going like this. In fact, please let me know if I should delete the whole argument all together.

[Slash]

Thanks yo!

Back on track: Sork, i'm gonna start with coro's gun demo.

//Edit: Balls.. Subtitle Workshop doesn't eat .mov files, which is the format of choice for the video downloads. Anyone know of alternatives that will eat .mov?

[Qitsune]

I'm not doing this to make MB sell more videos, I'm doing it to allow more users to get the education they seek (if it makes more ppl buy the videos, well, great, I think they are awesome...)

But before we undertake the translation/subtitles, I would like to have Jason's aknowledgement on this, I'm sure it somehow falls under the "fair use" policy provided that we don't supply the texts to users who don't have the vids in the first place, but I don't want to piss off the artists who made the vids or anything.

[Jason Manley]

madster is no longer able to post in the lounge. she knows better than to discourage instead of have constructive comments.

on that note, thank you all. I will talk to aaron to see how we can distribute these using our current system and look at the streaming possibilities. This is a good thing you all are willing to do. Id be happy to share the entire ca library of downloads for those doing the translations..assuming we can get them up for distribution.

much much thanks...much thanks. sharing the info with the world would be great.

for the record, I can handle the chinese translations here...same as thai I think...but that is the extent of our language abilities...oh we can do korean here too.




Jason

[Arshes Nei]

I'll see if I can donate some time since I remember mentioning this a while back how I couldn't pick up Audio in Andrew Jone's Fine Art demo. I think VLC let's you join subtitle tracks by the way, but I have to check on that.

[Tonic]

I've tried to understand you, madster, but I simply couldn't understand and I'm not saying it maliciously. I'm trying to help this project for few reasons:

- me and other people need them to learn from videos
- the more people you help, the sronger their tendency to help other people is.. it's like a circle we're trying to keep in a round shape
- I go to a course where a lot of people works hard, help and share between them various techniques, crititques, tricks etc. and course paying is very low comparing to other courses in my town. I guess my mentality is shaped thanks to this course. I personally think that MB's video downloads are quite lowly priced, considering the fact their authors are really good at what they're doing and they spent many years to learn.

We should keep each other in the loop sork, so we don't double our efforts. Also we could proofread each other.

Good idea for everyone proofreading any subtitles. More people checking them, more errors we can find.

on that note, thank you all. I will talk to aaron to see how we can distribute these using our current system and look at the streaming possibilities. This is a good thing you all are willing to do. Id be happy to share the entire ca library of downloads for those doing the translations..assuming we can get them up for distribution.

Jason, this idea of giving videos to "subtitlers" makes things a lot easier now. Thanks!

Anyway, I think I will create new topic once we get roughly solid plan. There are information to show where we're standing. There are people I'm not sure how they can help. If you're one of them, please specify there what you can do, so I could you put in proper lists:

People who are actually working:

1). Slash - going with el coro's gun demo, but have issues with finding proper subtitle editor that could recognise .mov video format.
2). petitemistress - working on James Kei's "Clothed Figure digital Painting" and "Digital Figure Painting".
3). Swampdigger - working on ZhangLu's/Jason Manley video.
4). spaztastic - working on Jason Chan's Quick Sketch.
5). Brashen - working on Jason Chan's Style Exploration
6). Aphotic Phoenix - working on Whit Brachna's Snow mountain, part 1 of 2
7). Brain - working on both parts of Gregory Manchess "Above the Timberline"
8.). Studio Colrouphobia - working on Carl Dobsky's Perspective, part 1 of 2

People who agreed to write text from video:

1). Qitsune
2). Brashen
3). alesoun
4). Slash - agreed to make Norwegian subtitles for one or two videos
5). Noa K - can make English and Hebrew subtitles
6). Edward Cherniga - can make English and German subtitles
7). Sorknes - agreed to make Norwegian subtitles
8.) spaztastic
9). carlosranna - Brazilian Portuguese subtitles
10). Studio Colrouphobia
11). -HAWK-
12). Brashen
13). Swampdigger
14). Aphotic Phoenix
15). Dave_ - can make English, Dutch and eventually German subtitles

People who agreed to translate subtitles:

1). alesoun - you said your friend might help with translating to Danish
2). petitemistress - can translate to French
3). Jason Manley - can translate to Chinese, Thai and Korean
4). Tonic - can translate to Polish
5). Edward Cherniga - can translate to German and his friend may translate to Japanese
6). carlosranna - can translate English to Brazilian Portuguese
7). Studio Colrouphobia - can translate to Swedish and eventually to Flemish/Dutch
8.) Noa K - can translate English <-> Hebrew
9). Tetrodotoxin - German translations
10). Dave_ - Dutch and eventually German translations

People I don't know how they could help:

1). Maidith - you said you're having problems with understanding videos and you were interested in this project - could you help with other jobs, like cleaning/checking text?
2). Arshes Nei - she needs to check if she can donate time for project
3). Tetrodoxin - could do transcription, but doesn't have any videos

People who can synchronise subtitles with videos:

1). Noa K
2). Edward Cherniga

People who can help with proofreading:

1). JazzW
2). Tonic
3). Asatira
4). -HAWK-
5). Swampdigger
6). Tetrodotoxin - German proofreading

And everyone else who wants.

As so far, that's all notes I did take. If I missed someone or made a error, please write there and I'm sorry if I did it. And in anyone can do other jobs, tell there!

My next thoughts:

-Slash, you're right, Subtitles Workshop 4 doesn't support .mov video format. I've checked with .avi and .mp4 and they works fine. We will have to find another subtitle editor with inbuilt video preview.

- we need to create a topic where anybody would see all actual informations (like who and what is doing, what's progress, work log, etc.). I heard about web-based organisers, maybe it's a good idea to keep the whole team organised and informed? I must check them

- I did read a bit about voice recognition and unfortunately it doesn't look good - it's simply not developed enough to work well for us.

- which videos are for subtitling? If anyone wants to write text for video she/he wants, it's fine - just let tell us there so we could be aware you're doing job. But for rest that don't know where start, we need to create a list and then assign jobs. We would have two options:

• we use download statistics to see what videos are the most popular (using downloads per week/month, not the overall number of downloads, for more reliable statistics) - Jason, can you give hand there?

• we can eventually use these statistics (or your suggestions), then make a poll in Lounge (as it's most active forum section) and let people choose for which videos they would like to have subtitles

That's all. Anyone has any thoughts?

[Mebiusu]

I can translate the English to German. Additionally, I have a friend who may be able to handle the English to Japanese, if I get him drunk enough.

[carlosranna]

I can translate the audio or a written english text to brazilian portuguese. No problem at all.

One thing i can´t do, is buy all the videos... One thing i´d love to be able to do, is watch all of them.

That being said, i would be much happier translating if i could be learning while i do that. And my girlfriend is already buying the Coro´s Storyboard video as a late birthday gift for me, but that would be the only one i could have for a long period of time.

[Tonic]

And the group is still rising, and rising

I can translate the English to German. Additionally, I have a friend who may be able to handle the English to Japanese, if I get him drunk enough.

Updated! But, wait, drunk!?

I can translate the audio or a written english text to brazilian portuguese. No problem at all.

One thing i can´t do, is buy all the videos... One thing i´d love to be able to do, is watch all of them.

That being said, i would be much happier translating if i could be learning while i do that. And my girlfriend is already buying the Coro´s Storyboard video as a late birthday gift for me, but that would be the only one i could have for a long period of time.

carlosranna, I've added you to two lists (audio transcription and translating). About buying videos, as long as you participate in transcription job/translating, Jason will give videos.

Id be happy to share the entire ca library of downloads for those doing the translations..assuming we can get them up for distribution.

[Studio Colrouphobia]

People I don't know how they could help:

1). Studio Colrouphobia - you said you will help somewhat - meaning..?

Hey there, sorry didn't see this topic till now, I was still on the other topic

I can help with subtitling on all the videos I bought so far, they are a few and I'm pressed with time right now so no rounding them up right now.

I can also do translations-
English to Swedish (which could work as a doable solution for Norwegian and Danish unless anyone from Norway or Denmark also can do translations- or at least as a temporary solution).
I am also learning Flemish/Dutch and can, if no other option is around, do some translating for those.. as a place-holder till someone with better skills arrive.

On helping out-

Obviously everyone has their orwn reasons for helping out- I have hearing-impaired relatives but to be quite honest it could just as easily ended with:
If I had this problem, _I_ would want someone to help, therefore I _will_ help.

[spaztastic]

@ EDCherniga: I have a friend who may be able to handle the English to Japanese, if I get him drunk enough. I am still lol'ing

I did read a bit about voice recognition and unfortunately it doesn't look good - it's simply not developed enough to work well for us.

Tonic: as far as I know, when I captioned for the deaf. we used a voice recognition system, it had to have a lot of tweaks but after you got used to it, it worked rather brilliantly. but I agree that it is probably too time consuming at this juncture.

And I still want to help with this, so I am at your service.

Jason: free vids would KICK ASS!!!!!

[Asatira]

Coming into this late, but I can also edit/proofread subtitles. It'll be a good exercise for me.

[Tonic]

And I still want to help with this, so I am at your service.

At my service? That sounded.. um, nevermind But seriously, thank you for helping out.

Coming into this late, but I can also edit/proofread subtitles. It'll be a good exercise for me.

It's not late - we just started to sort things out. Added you to list

Hey there, sorry didn't see this topic till now, I was still on the other topic

Right, I need to add link in the other topic.

I can help with subtitling on all the videos I bought so far, they are a few and I'm pressed with time right now so no rounding them up right now.

Jason will give videos to anyone who can do transcription/translation, so this isn't a issue. Can you tell when more or less you will have more time?

I can also do translations-
English to Swedish (which could work as a doable solution for Norwegian and Danish unless anyone from Norway or Denmark also can do translations- or at least as a temporary solution).
I am also learning Flemish/Dutch and can, if no other option is around, do some translating for those.. as a place-holder till someone with better skills arrive.

Added you on board!

[spaztastic]

At my service? That sounded.. um, nevermind But seriously, thank you for helping out.

ahem...*blush*...cough cough dirty minded cough cough... well anyhooooo..........

edit: it's better than what I had originally intended to post

[Noa K]

i'm so glad to this pushing through so quickly!

Tonic - pls add me also to the translation team (can do subtitles in english and hebrew)

Jason - You rock man!

edit: either you added me in or i just missed my name there. anyway, all is good. (yay! i got sunglasses? )

[Swampdigger]

Count me in for typing the text from videos. If it comes down to it I could also help with the proofreading and checking of the text, but that's not my strongest area. Either way it sounds like fun.

I've already got a few videos so I can start at anytime. But before I do, are we going to assign the text of certain videos to people? Just to avoid redundancy? If we are and you're taking volunteers, I already own and would enjoy doing the Zhanglu video.

This is a really sweet idea.

[-HAWK-]

I used to do this all the time in college so I'd love to help ^^ I can transcribe from the videos as well as help with the proofreading/editing.

[Brashen]

Tonic I originally wished to help subtitle the videos I have in English. And if the need arises in Arabic as well.

[Tonic]

ahem...*blush*...cough cough dirty minded cough cough... well anyhooooo..........

edit: it's better than what I had originally intended to post

Well, it can't be helped, I'm a man after all

Tonic - pls add me also to the translation team (can do subtitles in english and hebrew)

Added!

Count me in for typing the text from videos. If it comes down to it I could also help with the proofreading and checking of the text, but that's not my strongest area. Either way it sounds like fun.

Added. About fun, yes it may be fun, but please keep in mind that it will be surely a time-eating task. Depending on how participants will manage their times (mostly will have probably own studies, works and other things) and how well all groups will be organised, it may take from one to few weeks per video.

I've already got a few videos so I can start at anytime. But before I do, are we going to assign the text of certain videos to people? Just to avoid redundancy? If we are and you're taking volunteers, I already own and would enjoy doing the Zhanglu video.

I think I will need few days or more (in Saturday I have entrance exams so..) to get a solid organisation. Then we would start without any problems during process. But if you want, you can start already with Zhanglu video, nobody is working with videos at this moment, except Slash. And you can get videos from Jason for free if you're participating in transcription job/translation.

This is a really sweet idea.

Glad to hear

I used to do this all the time in college so I'd love to help ^^ I can transcribe from the videos as well as help with the proofreading/editing.

Great, I've added you to two teams Welcome on board!

Tonic I originally wished to help subtitle the videos I have in English.

Ok, I've added you to transcription team

[petitemistress]

I'm all over James Kei's latest (and first video) they just must get out there. I will write everything he says down first, then translate to french. Might need some proofreading for technical photoshop terms like "layer" and "brush" and the like. Anyone with a working french copy of photoshop would be great help or I could just search online, works too!

[Tonic]

I'm all over James Kei's latest (and first video) they just must get out there. I will write everything he says down first, then translate to french. Might need some proofreading for technical photoshop terms like "layer" and "brush" and the like. Anyone with a working french copy of photoshop would be great help or I could just search online, works too!

Are you talking about "Clothed Figure digital Painting" and "Digital Figure Painting"? They're the two only titles James Kei has made, so I guess it's them. Alright, I will add you to working people For proofreading we have few people, so that's not problem. With French Photoshop words there also shouldn't be problem - we will need to contact person owning French Photoshop and ask him to translate words.

[Tonic]

I've checked briefly few subtitles editors. Quick notes:

Aegisub - similiar to Subtitle Workshop 4, but I felt it was more well developed and user friendly. It doesn't support .mov video format
Subtitles Workgroup - I don't recommend it, it's in very early stage (0.4 version is newest) and it's rather problematic. No .mov support
SubCreator - the interface is simple and relies heavily on keyboard hotkeys. Easy interface. No .mov support
SubtitleProcessor - the interface is very complex - I was stunned when I saw at first time. Works similiarly to previous editors, including the lack of .mov support
SubtitleTool - no video preview

Overally I recommend Subtitles Workshop 4 beta 4 and Aegisub. Aegisub is also multi-platform - it can be installed on Linux, Windows, FreeBSD and Mac!

I've tried playing with installing .mov codec, but it doesn't help with getting compatibility. I will look more for subtitle editors, but I highly doubt I will find the one that is freeware, has video preview and support .mov video format.

If it's true, we will have to convert .mov to any popular video format, such as .avi. In that case I will see what is the easiest and fastest way to do this and write tutorial.

Slash, are you able to convert this .mov to another video format supported by subtitle editor? (.avi and .mp4 in case of Subtitles Workshop 4)

Swampdigger - do I have put you under working people with Zhanglu video?