My Latest Thoughts On Transcripts
Jun. 9th, 2010 12:05 pm[My self-appointed to-do list is getting really really long. Is anyone shocked by this?]
So,
meloukhia (who is awesome) put up another post at Feministe today that is a video with description and transcript.
I'm not terribly interested in the video (I'm not really into the visuals in videos unless they're fanvids) but I'm really interested in the transcript. meloukhia does an awesome job on both the transcript and the description, and transcripts are, as you know, a Thing I Care About.
I view this as the Platonic Ideal of a transcript & description. As someone who has no desire to watch said video, I know what is going on in it. It's really awesome and well done.
I admit - because transcripts like this are very difficult to produce, I have posted fewer videos than I had in the past. I'm not a big video person, so I'm sure no one has noticed the lack, but I'm aware of it. I know that, in order to allow everyone to participate in a conversation about a video, I need to do a lot of work, and I'm lazy. Rather than exclude anyone, I just don't much talk about videos anymore.
I don't really feel this is a loss.
There are videos that I think really do need a wide-ranging audience. I'm in the (strangely going slowly) process of transcribing a few videos right now, and I've found an awesome partner who has agreed to do the visuals for me.
I know we often talk about working together to do transcripts, because everyone knows they're time consuming. I don't like the way we talk about this, though. Like we're somehow doing the Poor Folks Who Can't Deal With Video A Favour. No we're not. We're acting like they are part of the audience. They are value-added.
I'm all for doing work around transcripts - I also regularly email creators of videos asking for transcripts, and I have instructions on how people can put up captions on YouTube videos and I do think that a google group or DW-community of folks willing to do transcripts - partials, in tandem, or on their own - would be useful. But I think these are all necessities, not extras.
I should poke around DW and see if folks would be willing to do a transcript-share community.
So,
I'm not terribly interested in the video (I'm not really into the visuals in videos unless they're fanvids) but I'm really interested in the transcript. meloukhia does an awesome job on both the transcript and the description, and transcripts are, as you know, a Thing I Care About.
I view this as the Platonic Ideal of a transcript & description. As someone who has no desire to watch said video, I know what is going on in it. It's really awesome and well done.
I admit - because transcripts like this are very difficult to produce, I have posted fewer videos than I had in the past. I'm not a big video person, so I'm sure no one has noticed the lack, but I'm aware of it. I know that, in order to allow everyone to participate in a conversation about a video, I need to do a lot of work, and I'm lazy. Rather than exclude anyone, I just don't much talk about videos anymore.
I don't really feel this is a loss.
There are videos that I think really do need a wide-ranging audience. I'm in the (strangely going slowly) process of transcribing a few videos right now, and I've found an awesome partner who has agreed to do the visuals for me.
I know we often talk about working together to do transcripts, because everyone knows they're time consuming. I don't like the way we talk about this, though. Like we're somehow doing the Poor Folks Who Can't Deal With Video A Favour. No we're not. We're acting like they are part of the audience. They are value-added.
I'm all for doing work around transcripts - I also regularly email creators of videos asking for transcripts, and I have instructions on how people can put up captions on YouTube videos and I do think that a google group or DW-community of folks willing to do transcripts - partials, in tandem, or on their own - would be useful. But I think these are all necessities, not extras.
I should poke around DW and see if folks would be willing to do a transcript-share community.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-09 07:15 pm (UTC)I get fiercely annoyed when people link to "oh, this is so neat, about x" and don't freaking mention it's a video, so I waste bandwidth AND screw up my head when moving things suddenly appear on my screen. Feh.
I often read either transcripts or synopses before trying to watch a tv show or movie, as well, since if I already know what's going on, I don't have to use processing time on keeping track, so I have enough to watch the show.
So THANK YOU! <3 <3 <3
no subject
Date: 2010-06-11 06:49 pm (UTC)