What is this:

In the scripts directory you will find:

• reformat-extracted-text.py attempts to reformat either an actual SRT file or the output of old/extract-text-from-srt so that the way the transcript is broken into subtitles will make more sense for people who speak English. The result of the reformatting is sent to standard output.

The script might have bugs as it is still a new rewrite. The realigned timings are estimates only and they can be off but should not be too out of whack. However, sometimes it will still break the transcript in a sub-optimal way and sometimes it may fail to find suitable break points. As I continue using it I expect there to be some improvements.

In the old subdirectory inside scripts you can find two more scripts. These are no longer used for my own workflow, but you might still find them useful:

• extract-text-from-srt strips out time codes and outputs the results to standard output. This is a sed script that has been written on MacOS X and which has never been tested it on any other system (not even Linux).

• reformat-extracted-text attempts to reformat the output of extract-text-from-srt so that the subtitles will make more sense for people who speak English; this is also sent to standard output.

The canonical way to run this set of two scripts is to feed extract-text-from-srt an SRT file that you got from Amara, then pipe this to reformat-extracted-text and then redirect this to a text file. Then you can proofread the text file, copy-and-paste it back to Amara (restarting step 1), and then continue on to steps 2 through 4 to produce a timecoded set of subtitles.

Note that reformat-extracted-text is not a particularly intelligent piece of software. You will need to review the output it gives you; but in general what it gives you should at least be better than stock stanford-bot (Cogi) output.

There is also a third:

Things to watch out for if you want to work on Coursera’s subtitles:

June 12, 2012:

As of June 12, 2012, subtitling support on Amara is not working. After exiting the editor (whether through Save and Exit or Submit Your Work) the system will disable the “Modify these subtitles” link and erroneously mark your finished subtitles as a draft. You will not be able to do anything about it until the bot comes along and overwrite your finished work. This has been reported to Amara but I am not sure when this can be fixed.

The interim workaround is that after you have finished a draft or a completed transcript, download the SRT file, and then upload the same SRT file back onto Amara (i.e., mimic the bot’s behaviour). This will reactivate the “Modify these subtitles” link and allow you to continue with your subtitling.

(updated June 14, 2012)

If you have the time and have good ears and good editorial intuition, come, join in and work on the subtitles! A speech recognition system has left a big mess that can confuse and mislead students, sometimes to the point of telling them the exact opposite of what’s being said. Your mission is to slay the dragon and return peace to the land of Coursera :-)

Anyway, if you do help out, there are some finer points that you need to be aware of. These are not obvious, and I found them out the hard way, If you haven’t started yet, then it’d be better to know them before you start.

1. A program called stanford-bot will attempt to automatically generate a transcript, using speech recognition technology. (Note that the fact that this is indeed a speech recognition system has been confirmed through official Amara and Coursera bug reporting channels.) This transcript is always generated.

2. A corollary of the above is that if there are no subtitles when you start working, and still no subtitles when you finish, then be prepared that stanford-bot will overwrite your work. When this happens just revert back to your version, but only if your version is complete, i.e., only if it covers 100% of the video.

3. However, if stanford-bot’s transcript is already present before you start, then depending on how perfectionist you are, you might want to just throw away its transcript, or at least reformat it before using. The transcript that it generates have very strange formatting that is very hard to work with, and the subtitles are cut off at very illogical places which require a lot of work to fix. It can get so bad that it takes as long to try to fix it as to throw it away and start over.

4. Avoid Amara’ “upload transcript” function, and do not use it if anyone has uploaded a translation. Otherwise you will screw up the revision history and you will regret it afterwards. (Note that uploading an SRT of a translation is, however, apparently safe.)

5. The accuracy of the English transcript is paramount. It is in fact extremely important to get it right, because it will be used as the basis for non-English subtitles.

If you are a Coursera student, you can also find these notes on the Coursera wiki.

List of videos:

Here are a collection of all the subtitles I have done or QA’d for the Coursera classes I have taken:

(This list is not currently exactly needed; but it was back when you have no way to get such a list on Amara’s interface)

Transcribed from scratch:

• http://www.universalsubtitles.org/en/videos/vz9OvM97buqT/info/ (SaaS 5.8)
• http://www.universalsubtitles.org/fr/videos/RqPMqHtxcsbA/en/325911/ (HCI 1.2)
• http://www.universalsubtitles.org/fr/videos/hZbYw3S5emvp/en/325638/ (HCI 1.3)
• http://www.universalsubtitles.org/fr/videos/tJCi1dIa5lBJ/en/326521/ (HCI 1.4)
• http://www.universalsubtitles.org/fr/videos/xOoOaLfas4Mz/en/327172/ (HCI 2.3)
• http://www.universalsubtitles.org/fr/videos/Ccd5NxCIzc3v/en/328862/ (HCI 3.1)
• http://www.universalsubtitles.org/fr/videos/x1HgL7TWQEkw/en/329248/ (HCI 3.2)
• http://www.universalsubtitles.org/fr/videos/KK3G5CfxEMkK/en/330023/ (HCI 4.1)
• http://www.universalsubtitles.org/fr/videos/N3TqLfUnlrAg/en/330224/ (HCI 4.2)
• http://www.universalsubtitles.org/fr/videos/cCinMZkk8IfM/en/335507/ (HCI 7.2)
• http://www.universalsubtitles.org/fr/videos/bMF01JVrNxmV/en/337489/ (HCI 8.1)
• http://www.universalsubtitles.org/fr/videos/WBCHIQgmVtYu/en/337942/ (HCI 8.2)
• http://www.universalsubtitles.org/fr/videos/yPBoprhssxol/en/347192/ (Soc Midterm remarks)

Reformatting and QA of stanford-bot’s transcripts:

• http://www.universalsubtitles.org/en/videos/ayR3VR8BXJdL/info/ (models 9-2)
• http://www.universalsubtitles.org/fr/videos/4rCunfbLShfw/info/ (PGM 1-1)
• http://www.universalsubtitles.org/fr/videos/KUprgjyoAjfq/en/303905/ (NLP 17-3)
• http://www.universalsubtitles.org/fr/videos/vPfFsyG2H2w1/en/321441/ (NLP chat II)
• http://www.universalsubtitles.org/fr/videos/8qWn2qbDGOHI/en/325003/ (HCI 2.2)
• http://www.universalsubtitles.org/fr/videos/FZdagnyVGlGX/en/329585/ (HCI 3.3)
• http://www.universalsubtitles.org/fr/videos/wB9UdDAP8a5X/en/329502/ (HCI 3.4)
• http://www.universalsubtitles.org/fr/videos/P4C1NvtfhveB/en/335002/ (HCI 5.1)
• http://www.universalsubtitles.org/fr/videos/Nq8BVvfcrJMI/en/334621/ (HCI 5.2)
• http://www.universalsubtitles.org/fr/videos/DdShqs9hOPZk/en/334563/ (HCI 5.3)
• http://www.universalsubtitles.org/fr/videos/4e1VKeiCW3BD/en/325004/ (HCI 6.1)
• http://www.universalsubtitles.org/fr/videos/J4g1fGjMz6BN/en/325002/ (HCI 6.2)
• http://www.universalsubtitles.org/fr/videos/GMB76WUpPRAc/en/325001/ (HCI 6.3)
• http://www.universalsubtitles.org/fr/videos/rlfgSzTcqzTQ/en/336161/ (HCI 7.1)
• http://www.universalsubtitles.org/fr/videos/k2OzfMj6MfNr/en/347098/ (HCI 9.1)
• http://www.universalsubtitles.org/fr/videos/iNKD8Lv04vAM/en/336567/ (Soc 1-5)
• http://www.universalsubtitles.org/fr/videos/VFvUZx3I0xcd/en/335098/ (Soc 2-1)

QA of other transcriptionist’s work:

• http://www.universalsubtitles.org/fr/videos/ZEW0CIMyUoft/en/324971/ (HCI 1.1)

Minor revisions to transcripts already revised by other students:

• http://www.universalsubtitles.org/fr/videos/ZVF6pWv6LSlo/info/ (PGM) (2-8)
• http://www.universalsubtitles.org/fr/videos/JfejIomQXOV9/info/ (PGM)
• http://www.universalsubtitles.org/en/videos/tThIgKFLeJ7w/info/ (models)

TO DO:

• http://www.universalsubtitles.org/fr/videos/VbaciFSlgnqW/en/227447/ (NLP) (5-1)
• http://www.universalsubtitles.org/fr/videos/MQpvCWmjNXXC/en/226619/ (NLP) (4-8)

Current focus:

• To get all HCI videos properly transcribed.

• If time permits, to get at least the SaaS videos either transcribed (this would mean the instructor chats) or properly QA’d.

See also:

1. The Video Subtitles article on the Coursera wiki, where I wrote the whole Finer Points section.

2. Some thoughts on transcribing Coursera lectures on my blog.

3. Some comments about Amara’s speech recognizer on my blog.