Retooling the captioning workflow for mobile learning

NMC Summer 2006Jeremiah Parry-Hill, Ian Webber

Rochester Institute of Technology

Mobile Learning

• Provides students with a variety of courseware delivery options

• Allows access to media on multiple devices• Makes production process more complex and

expensive

Multivariate Analysis

•Our first attempt at mobile delivery•Exploration to move away from costly CD production•Streamed, Downloaded, on CD and Podcast •Students preferred to download entire lectures for local viewing•http://blade.rit.edu/faculty/smleqa/index.html

Captioning Process

Making multiple formats work•Use batch compress for your video•Reuse caption data•Embedded captions limit your options

Tools

• MacCaption• Magpie• CaptionKeeper• Automatic Sync

Podcast Captioning

• Convert QTText to a .mov

• Add to Selection & Scale

• Reposition caption field

• Export as iPod video

RIT Flash Captioning

• Simplify production process

• Reuse caption data

• Give the viewer a user-friendly interface

• Uses XML to make player extremely flexible

Flash Captioning

• Convert QTText to XML

• Create XML for media

• Select player

• Post file

Future Features?

• Persistent user preferences (size, color, number of caption lines)

• Better scaling of player and captions• Build an authoring tool for creating

caption XML files• Add hooks to display captions from FLV

cue points• Internationalization support

The Future

• Interactive web apps (AJAX, etc.)• Crowdsourcing - group edit• Putting the tools in the hands of the

faculty• More sophisticated search• Voice recognition

Questions?

http://www.rit.edu/~jiwetcJeremiah Parry-Hill jlpetc@rit.edu

Ian Webber jiwetc@rit.edu