Captioning?

It seems like a lot of the video in SL require audio and don't have captioning. Is that true or do I have to turn on the captioning somehow? I had read about captioning in SL, but ever video/movie I have found doesn't have it. I hope there's captioning I'm just not turning on.

I also read that some conversation in SL is audio-based. Is this captioned or at least some alert that audio is being used?

Sorry if this question belongs somewhere else. I tried searching the knowledge base, but I didn't find an answer and the page about access was very vague. Thanks!

There is no automated captioning system in SL. If someone chooses to use "Voice Chat" as part of a presentation, by using a headset with a microphone, they the only way that voice could be converted to text on-screen would be after the fact, as when a fan group dubs in English-language subtitles for a Japanese Anime film.

If you want to ensure all conversation is in text on the screen, then insist that Voice Chat not be used, and require everyone to use the text chat feature. You can leave the Chat window open at the bottom or top of the screen, to act as your scrolling captions when you video-capture the session.

Thanks for the reply, Ceera. I wouldn't insist on others not using Voice Chat - that is their decision. But I don't want to look like I'm ignoring a person who is using Voice Chat. Does an icon appear to show when someone is using this?

A small ball appears above the heads of people who have Voice Chat activated. But only those who themselves have it activated can see that ball. Also, only those who have Voice activated can hear the vocal chatter. You do not need a headset and microphone to listen, but you do need one to reply by Voice.

If you look at the recent video of Mitch Kapor's closing speech at SL5B, in the Blog, you'll see those balls over his and other people's heads, as well as the green "volume indicator" that shows when an avatar is speaking.

http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/07/07/sl5b-mitch-kapors-keynote-mp3-now-up-video-coming-soon/

In my opinion, Voice Chat still isn't worth using in SL. The sound quality is terrible, and there are numerous technical and social reasons why a lot of people simply refuse to use it. Search the forums for "Voice Chat", and you'll read a lot of passionate arguments, both pro and con, regarding this feature of SL.

Thanks again for the reply, Ceera. I saw the green above the guy's head in the video and read some of the comments below it about "voice". I didn't know voice was a big issue in SL and don't really understand the argument, but I've been in SL for a short time.

One more question: If I have voice on, can I reply with text? I would like to have it on to see if someone is using it. I wouldn't use it, but I would like to acknowledge the person in text.

Yes, you can still reply with text when listening to someone who insists on using Voice. But they might not see your words. Depends on whether or not they are even looking at their screen, or just staring off into space like many people do when they talk on a phone... I've had very mixed results trying that. In general, I would much rather stick to Text Chat. But I have, on occasion, had building clients who insisted on using Voice. Most of the time, I could barely understand what they were saying. And sometimes I had trouble getting a reply back from them to my text-typed responses.

One of the biggest problems in doing a lopsided Voice converstion is that as soon as someone who likes Voice Chat sees that ball over your head, they *assume* that you also love Voice and have a headset on, ready to chatter at them vocally. There is no way to indicate "I'm only listening". And some Voice users think you're "hiding something" if you don't immediately speak up via audio.

Voice is sort of OK if all you represent in SL is a carbon-copy of your Real self. When you can actually get it to work... But if that is all you need, a phone call works far better.

It's terrible if you like to roleplay as a variety of diferent characters, some or all of which look, and should sound, nothing like your Player. I have avatars that are male, female, old, childlike, dragons, dogs... Why in the world would I want all of them to have the same voice? I'm not Mel Blanc. I can't come up with amazing and diferent voices for each character on the fly, and change back and forth at the bat of an eye.

I'm not sure that is always true. It is my understanding that products like Dragon Naturally Speaking can be used to convert speech into text on the fly in SL.

I have not tried it myself.

Doug

I never thought of some of things you mentioned. Thanks very much, Ceera. Audio doesn't work for me, either with speaking or listening. It is too bad that there is not a way to show others are using voice without using it yourself. It's also too bad that more of the video content like movies aren't captioned. I didn't realize voice was even possible until after I joined. I guess I had the wrong information and idea about SL.

Thanks for all the information, Ceera. I appreciate it.

Maybe I am wrong, but Dragon Naturally Speaking looks like a voice recognition software. If so, a person could use it to avoid typing and have their speech appear as text. I don't know it something like this would work in SL. I just wish there was the opposite: something that could caption what others say. But it seems like this can't happen with voice chats and doesn't happen with a lot of audio content.

I wanted to bump this thread back up on the front page because I think it raises questions that could become pretty important, if SL voice ever really catches on.Yep... and https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-1795 would do something about that.Right... and there's nothing in the scripting function call that would activate stream-embedded captions--think alternate language subtitles on DVDs--even if the media stream contained them. What I don't know is whether the common QuickTime libraries even expose such functionality. I could try to wade into the gstreamer documentation (or the source) to see if anything like that exists, but wondering if anybody knows off the top of their head whether such a thing is possible. Presumably some encodings can support such embedded captioning and some can't. (There remains the problem of the paucity of media *sources* with captioning, but that's kind of a different question.)

I believe it does. A person can indeed avoid typing (except for the occasional edit) and have their speech appear as text in SL using DNS.


Doug