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Feedback on ClipFlair Studio application REVOICING OPTIONS  Viewed 998134 time(s), 38 post(s), 3/7/2013 2:33:27 PM - by noatala

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noatala

noatala

698 Reputation 56 Total posts
3/7/2013 2:33:42 PM

Dear George,

In the revoicing tasks, there are a series of aspects I would
like to point out. The first two are, in my view, problems that would need to be solved for the students to work comfortably with the activity, the other more of a suggestion.

1. The audio that students record cannot be
stopped, nor from the revoicing component (the play icon could become pause to
allow for this) nor from the video. The problem here is that you start
listening to the audio while you watch the video, so everything is perfectly
synchronized; however, once you stop/pause the video, the audio goes on and on
until is over and you can even end up having many audio tracks playing at the
same time, none of which you can stop until they are over. The perfect solution
here, I think, would be for the audio to pause when the corresponding video extract is
paused; and, if the play icon becomes a pause icon once clicked so that you can pause it that way
too (by clicking it again), it would be great.

2. When the different captions are introduced and
you want to start recording, you need to click ‘rec’ in the caption and also 'play' in the
video. When you dub or audiodescribe, you need to watch the video
simultaneously, so I think it would be ideal to click rec and have the video
starting playing automatically in the corresponding timecode. Related to this,
once the time devoted to revoice that particular caption is over, the rec icon should
automatically stop so that you are not allowed to record more audio (beyond the corresponding time spam); if not,
students can end up thinking they had more time to describe or dub a particular
section that later is not well synchronized because part of the audio is either
missing or goes beyond the extract they intented it for. Thus, the ideal
solution here would be, in my view, for the rec icon to be synchronized both with the video
play icon and with the corresponding time code spam, so that when the caption
finishes, the recording of that piece of audio is also over.

3. I think there should be an option where students
could save the whole audio they have recorded (at real time, with the
corresponding timecodes) so that they could later merge the video and the audio
elsewhere. Do you think that would be posible?

Thanks for your help.
Regards,

Noa

Rated 5.00, 1 vote(s). 
1
George

George

3425 Reputation 460 Total posts
3/8/2013 12:18:53 PM

1) initially there was play/pause (it was an intense green play that you could press again to go back to normal pale green play and it would stop the playback), but there is a bug in Silverlight that doesn't always inform me that the audio has finished playing so that I would change back the icon when audio finishes. I will probably need to add my own polling timer there (even though this is not optimal in terms of coding) since the MediaEnded event doesn't work and check the audio periodically if has finished

2) I had in mind that one would first fill-in the captions column, then revoice each entry. I know this isn't the classic case though, so I'll see what can be done (and then provide an option for rec to start rolling time when pressed [possibly set time to minus current time at the captions component under the hood for the connected player to notice and start playback])

regarding stopping rec when out of the caption time period, one could see it the other way arround, that you could ask for the caption period to expand automatically if one records more time. Probaby should have options for those (not both on at the same time). some thing like a RecordingLimit dropdown list at options ={infinite, stopAtCaptionEnd, expandCaptionEnd}.

The infinite option is useful if you want to show to students that they get an overlap if they fail to speak inside the given timespan (obviously it would be nice to be able to see the timespans [if it is set to autoplay when rec is pressed] - it is planned to add a zoomable/scrolling timeline component where you will be seeing the timespans of connected captions as lonzenes)

3) I can add support for saving the whole audio by insterting blank areas in the resulting wave output. We don't have ADPCM or similar WAV compression now so that would make a big WAV, especially if the video is of long duration. I could save audio up to the last revocing entry and blanks at regions in between from the start (time 0), but not save any blank after the last revoicing entry till the end of the movie time (which the captions component doesn't know anyway). So that would be ok even for long videos unless they have some revoicing entries only near the end and not much at other areas. I guess 3d party software doesn't need video and audio to be of the same duration, do you know what is the case? (e.g. Windows Live Essentials 2012 has a version of Windows Live Movie Maker that allows one to merge-in audio if you want to try)

Rated 5.00, 1 vote(s). 
2
noatala

noatala

698 Reputation 56 Total posts
3/10/2013 6:49:38 PM

Dear George,
Thanks very much for all the information.
As to 1, let us know if you finally add a timer there.
In terms of 2, I understand. Let us know when that timeline component is added too.
Finally, I think the solution for 3 would be the most urgent one; I think what you suggest would be perfect. When do you think it could be available?
Regards,
Noa

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3
Admin

Admin

2550 Reputation 349 Total posts
3/18/2013 10:55:01 AM

Now that we finished with the first restyling cycle for ClipFlair Studio I think I'll be able to look into [3] this week

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4
noatala

noatala

698 Reputation 56 Total posts
3/18/2013 4:06:33 PM

Great, George, I will wait until next weekend then to prepare an ad-hoc tutorial using captivate for the students of the pilot study at the UNED.
Let me know if '3' is an option as soon as you know.
Thanks,
Noa

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5
noatala

noatala

698 Reputation 56 Total posts
4/2/2013 4:59:50 AM

Dear George,
'3' (saving the whole audio) is not going to be an option in CLIPFLAIR in the end, or is it?
Thanks for letting me know.
Noa

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6
George

George

3425 Reputation 460 Total posts
4/2/2013 9:40:11 AM

A save all audio as a single .WAV file button has been added, needs some work to save the audio only over defined timespans (cropped)with silence in between and ignoring overlapped areas (just concatenates now)

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7
George

George

3425 Reputation 460 Total posts
4/2/2013 9:43:26 AM

expect to have it for testing in the afternoon

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8
Admin

Admin

2550 Reputation 349 Total posts
4/4/2013 2:54:36 PM

Hi Noa, have you tried that new feature? Does it work for you ok?

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9
noatala

noatala

698 Reputation 56 Total posts
4/8/2013 3:03:07 PM

Dear George,
I tried it out yesterday and it seems to work just fine. I tried to synchronize it later with the video using AEGISUB and loading the .wav file I had saved in CLIPFLAIR instead of the original audio track of the video.
Thanks :-)
However, there are three things as far as the revoicing component is concerned that are still a bit troublesome I think:
1. The video and the recorded audio are not synchronize as captions alone are.
2. One of the reasons this happens, I think, is because the audio recorded in the different captions cannot be paused when you replay it in CLIPFLAIR, so there may be overlaping audios (from different captions) playing simultaneously. No matter how you move around the video, the audio that started at some point will keep playing.
3. When you click on record the video does not start simultaneously, so to correctly revoice, you need to click on record and quickly click 'play' in the video and even so, it will no be accurately synchronized.
I think '2' and '3' is the most urgent ones.
Regards,
Noa

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