Dr. Coombs:  Good afternoon to everyone.  This is Norman

     Coombs.  Hi, Michele.  We're going to get started recording

     seeing.  This is a series about captions and it's week four.  I call

     it C4 and I remember this.  A dangerous exclusive, so we hope

     we don't exclude.  We had three very good detailed and

     webinar just packed with information and have gone through

     the slides and it looks like we're going to have the same thing

     again.

          We've had a busy fall of webinars and we're just in the

     process of nailing things down.  For the winter, we have

     several things -- well, a couple of titles of things, not

     advertising, but we will have several things up there for

     January and February, probably before Thanksgiving.

          One we have left this year is December 15, I believe it is,

     by a man from Elsabir Publishing Company.  We have taken on

     a commitment to buy all their books.  We found three fully

     accessible.  I heard him give a talk last spring and I was

     impressed with the amazing amount of work and coordination

     that was involved.  I thought you just got the right software,

     push the button and bam.  He said, the biggest problem was

     getting the people at the top really committed to the task, but

     more than that putting out a book in several different

     departments and they often value their independence and

     argue with each other and so we get all of them fully

     committed to working on an accessible book was their biggest

     job.  It was cultural, administrative more than technical.  So I

     think when we come to that we'll find it interesting.

          This is the last time we'll be talking to you people before

     Thanksgiving, so I wish you all a happy Thanksgiving and we'll

     see you in December and certainly before Christmas.  With that

     we're going to turn the microphone over to Susan who is going

     to talk about audio descriptions.  I want to say one phenomenal

     thing about audio descriptions, all the big movies that come out

     across the country are now captioned and all the larger

     mainstream movie theatres, when I go in and go up to the help

     desk and ask for a device for audio description, give me a little

     headset and a little device that picks up the audio channel and

     I sit there and I hear the movie through my ears and then in

     the little quiet spots the audio description sound comes in and

     gives me useful information about the scenery or the action

     that's taking place.  So it allows me to get more out of the

     movie than I have for a long time.  My only complaint is the

     people who get the device from me don't know what they are

     doing half the time, they don't work, or they set them up

     wrong or something, but the technology is there.  I'm sure

     they'll get to be more familiar with it.

          So for those of us who value audio description, we -- early

     and magnificent giant change in our movie experiences.  Okay. 

               Need to know how can you put an audio description,

     when do you put it in, how do you do it.  So if you're someone

     who is in school, we need to know about how it's done and

     here we got the queen of captioning and audio, Susan Mistrik

     and I'll turn the Mick over to her. 

          Susanne:  Thank you.  It's a pleasure to be here.  And

     again, I'm very excited about the topic that I'm going to be

     sharing today.  We've talked about a variety of different

     captioning topics and today we're going to talk about video and

     audio descriptions.

          I feel about video descriptions the way that I felt about

     captions several years ago when the wave really started turning

     and the capability really started becoming mainstream.  We're

     not quite as far along with video descriptions as we are with

     captioning, but that's to be understood.  It's a little more

     complex from both the creation and a technical standpoint, but

     it's very exciting, and I think I've got some great resources and

     some interesting tools and information to share, so that

     hopefully at the end of this presentation you'll be as excited

     about it as I am.

          So we'll be talking about video descriptions,equal access

     for the blind and visually impaired.

          Audio description or video description.  According to the

     described and captioned media program, which we'll refer to as

     DCMP, audio description or more correctly video description

     refers to an additional narration track for the blind and visually

     impaired.  And it consists of someone talking through the

     presentation during the quiet parts describing what's going on,

     be it on the screen, sometimes on the stage, when there is that

     pause in the audio.  And occasionally during dialogue that's not

     a best practice, but sometimes it is necessary.

          What do we describe?  Along with access to video,

     descriptions of visual information of both things that are live

     and things that like prerecorded video open really exciting

     doors to art t theater and other cultural activities that enhance

     our lives and Dr. Coombs was just sharing that with us about

     how description enhances his experience at a movie theater. 

     And I think that is true across the board.

          Interesting data is that the U.S. census data shows us that

     just between 2013 and 2015 the statistics show us that it's

     gone from 6.8 million with vision impairments in the U.S.

     between 15 years of age and 75 years of age to in 2015 8.1

     individuals in this country with some type of vision impairment.

          And descriptions help improve equivalent access to really

     all types of visual information.  We're going to focus on video

     today, but we do want to make it known that there are many

     things that can be described.

          And although it was developed for the blind and visually

     impaired, just like captions, audio/video descriptions help a

     variety of others with differing needs.  For example, someone

     just learning the English language, someone with speech or

     learning disabilities, those on the autism spectrum, everyone

     benefits, quite a few people benefit from this content that is so

     carefully described.  And the describing captioning media

     program, DCMP, you'll here me talk about that a lot in this

     presentation, is nonprofit, funded by the department of

     education. 

          And one of its Cornerstone projects along with the projects

     that it does for the blind and visually impaired is something

     called listening is learning.  And that is a focus on the value of

     listening to the visual information as audio and how that

     benefits a very diverse group of people, not just those with a

     visual challenge.

          For the purpose of this presentation, you hear audio

     descriptions and video descriptions, some people are one is

     right and one is incorrect.  My interpretation is audio

     descriptions cover everything that is audio describing the

     visual.  We're going to concentrate on video descriptions today,

     which is just the audio description of video.

          So from here on out I'm going to say most of the time,

     some of the sources that I'm going to quote say audio

     description, but we're going to use it somewhat

     interchangeably with the focus on video descriptions.  I don't

     want to get you confused.

          I'm going to share quite a few resources.  There's great

     information out there.  The Smith Kettlewell VDRDC center,

     video center research and development has a YouTube channel

     with about 12 or 13 excellent instructional videos on

     description.  The FCC has some great information.  The

     American federation for the blind has extensive resources. 

     And then DCMP and American Council for the Blind.  I have links

     here and I also have a document with about 20 links that I

     couldn't fit them all into a PowerPoint, but I will share with

     Dr. Coombs and he can make available on his site with this

     additional resources.

          But you want to, if you're just beginning on your video

     description journey, the first step in that process is to gather as

     much information as you can and really start becoming very

     familiar first and foremost with exactly what the objective of

     video description is, what exactly you are trying to do.

          I don't usually really make a pitch for something, but I've

     recently discovered an excellent text.  It's a little paper back

     that's just about -- it's 162 pages long and it's called the visual

     made verbal by Dr. Joel Snider and it's a comprehensive

     training manual and guide to the history and application of

     audio description.  That's exactly what it is, it is a training

     manual.  It is chok full of fantastic information to really get you

     on track with the great understanding of how to do what you

     are setting out to do and the mindset that you need to have

     when you sit down to describe a video.

          I highly recommend it for anybody that is going to start on

     this journey.

          Another great resource, first one that I discovered and

     used, you've heard me speak in the -- my other sessions about

     DCMP's captioning key and DCMP's transcription guidelines. 

     Well, here they are again.  They have a great description key. 

     This is, I believe, a 27 page manual that gives you lots of meat

     and potatoes in very plain language of again the basic processes

     and techniques and mindset that you need to properly and

     usefully and concisely describe video.

          I would say that probably is your very first go to guide

     because this you can go out and grab right after this session. 

     They have a little cheat sheet, too, that I'll tell you about

     before we finish that's also very helpful.

          How to video describe:  Just some of the overview of the

     top things that I glean from both of my major resources.  The

     fundamentals of video describing our observation, editing,

     language and vocal skills.  So you can see you may not have

     realized prior to this that it's a very fine-tune talent.  I believe

     that it's more challenging than captioning and it's probably not

     everyone can do the actual describing.  Oftentimes they divide

     it up into a describer and then a technical person who puts the

     description together, perhaps does the voice over once it's

     described.  You can even have three people on the team,

     someone who is writing the description, someone who is doing

     the voice over and then someone who is technically putting it

     together.  All three somewhat challenging at this point, exciting

     challenging, but challenging.

          Rule number one of video description.  You describe what

     you see.  Visual elements from general to specific, shape, size

     and texture as appropriate to the comprehension and

     appreciation of the content.  Dr. Coombs and I were talking a

     little bit before this session about how important it is to

     describe in detail only the information that's really relevant to

     the objective of what you're trying to convey.  The extraneous

     information is really not so necessary and can sometimes be

     more confusing to the listener.  And you want to be sure to

     identify people and characters consistently.

          That seems like a simple task, but once you jump into

     describing you'll recognize that you almost have to jot down

     your pattern for identifying people and characters because we

     all just by nature when you have multiple tend to sort of flip

     around and you want to stay very consistent, so that the

     message you convey is clear to the listener.

          Objectivity:  And I'll confess right now, this is my biggest

     challenge.  Dr. Schneider's quote is the best audio describer is

     sometimes referred to as a visual camera lens.  And I think

     what that means is that you're describing only what you see. 

     It's very hard for me not to inadvertently shadow my

     descriptions with my own impressions and my own thoughts

     and my own adjectives and add verbs that may not be true to

     what I'm watching.  So you have to really be very cautious and

     you have to keep in mind all the time that what you are is

     indeed a visual camera lens.  No more and no less is the ideal.

          Just the facts and then some.  Now, you can convey this

     information articulately without adding a mish mash of

     information that is not needed.  But you want to describe when

     and where, in the early morning light, who, the toe headed boy

     stumbled out of bed, what, hearing the jingle bells at the door,

     he wondered if Santa was at hand.  And you knew that because

     he was looking at something that indicated that's what he was

     thinking of.  You wouldn't want to just surmise that.

          A few do's and don't's.  As I said, do paint the picture with

     your words, but only what is there.  Resist the temptation to

     add extra details.  And don't ever say, and this again is

     something that by nature you'd be inclined to do.  Don't say we

     see this or we see car driving down the driveway.  Or we see

     the Sunsetting in the west.  You don't want to preface your

     description with that.  Do describe characteristics and

     movements that are expressive and relevant to the situation.

          So you'll recognize here to really do a good job, you have

     to be familiar with your content.  And you don't want to infer

     what somebody is feeling or what somebody is thinking.  That's

     a temptation that we all have.  You can convey an expression

     saying someone looks pensive, but if you don't know what they

     are pensive about, you don't want to guess, don't want to

     presume that.

          Video description is hard.  It's not as easy as sitting down

     with a video and just transcribing exactly what you hear, what

     you can get in a zone and do that with only a minimal amount

     of concentration when you're creating a transcript, and you can

     similarly even when you are adjusting your timings, you can

     sort of go along with that flow.

          Video description you have to have a certain mindset and a

     true understanding of the goals.  It definitely takes practice. 

     Does that mean that you should not attempt to describe

     something until it's perfect?  Of course not.  You're going to get

     better as you go along.  You're going to make mistakes, but

     especially if you ask for feedback, that's how you're going to

     improve the quality of your material and what you're doing.  It

     definitely takes discipline.  Again, I confess here, this is what I

     struggle here because I tend to have my perspective of things

     and I'm inclined to put my own interpretive slant on something,

     which I have to turn that off when I sit down to do a

     description and I have to put my video description hat on

     where I'm objective and I'm not letting my own interpretations

     influence how I describe.  And practice, practice, practice.

          So now we're going to talk a little bit about the technical. 

     Let's think about what the challenges would be.  Okay.  So you

     know that what we're doing is we're taking video content and

     we're putting extra words where there's silence.  And so we

     want that to flow in a pleasing manner so we have to consider

     from the technical standpoint, when we do the actual voice

     over, we want the audio describe the video described voice to

     be -- to blend nicely with the existing audio that we're working

     with.

          So that's one of the things, aside from -- what the content

     is, we have to consider how we will voice our -- how we'll voice

     our script so that it flows nicely.  We don't want to speak too

     fast, but we have to do a lot in little bits of spaces, so we have

     to make every word count.

          That's really the key.  And as we talked about at the very

     beginning when we discuss the main guidelines of describing

     and we said:  Observation, editing, language, and vocal skills. 

     So we're observing just to see what we see with our eyes and

     nothing else.  And convey just that visual information because

     our eyes are our camera lens and we're going to convey that in

     our descriptions and then when we go back and edit, we have

     to really fine-tune that so that we can best utilize those little

     spaces of time without having to speak so fast that we end up

     with mush, which I've heard that that can definitely happen.

          So then, another technical element, we have to create

     properly timed tracks.  There's a lot of finesse in in that, too,

     because we have the audio track and we have to create the

     files with the time stamps on them that sinc perfectly with our

     existing audio.  Again, that's a technical challenge that we have

     to think about from the very beginning, sincing those tracks

     with the existing audio and then making the sinc tracks

     available.  Right now, this is still where the challenge comes in

     and just our world of YouTube and videos that we're using right

     now.  The resources aren't freely available.  They aren't as fine

     tuned as some of the captioning tools that we have now, but

     they are heading in that description. 

          I foresee that some of our favorite captioning tools we can

     finesse and use them for combining audio descriptions, even

     though right now there might not be a separate track available. 

     We can still use tools like movie captioner and subtitle edit to

     combine some of these things together.  And to help us

     combine some of these things together.  And then we're going

     to talk about the tools that are available now and the strengths

     and the weaknesses of each one.

          Okay.  They are pretty much across the board four things

     right now that are available.  None of the four at this time are

     a perfect solution.  None of the four are seamless solutions. 

     Just like captioning was some time ago, those of you who have

     been doing that for a while, we've had to sort of muddle

     through and sometimes jump from one tool to another because

     with what's going on in browsers, their challenges that one tool

     has to overcome before it's ready to be used again, and then

     you run into with open source tools and tools that are based on

     grants, et cetera, sometimes great tools grants just run out and

     they don't stay updated as frequently as we would like for

     them to and I'm going to show you some of the challenges that

     come of that as we continue through here.

          HTML 5 is the light at the end of the tunnel.  Even though

     adding the audio description track doesn't work perfectly

     across the board everywhere, captions really and HTML 5 don't

     quite work perfectly across the board everywhere, but that

     eventually will be the solution, the easy solution.  You won't

     have to have another tool.  You'll just be able to put your --

     just like you do with captions, you'll have closed, audio

     description track that you can add to that.  You can do it a little

     bit now and there's some tools that help you do that, but it's

     not an art form yet.  It's a work in progress, so just like we

     were patient with captioning tools and gosh, it seems like only

     yesterday we were saying these very same things about

     captioning and now look where we are, we're working with

     these tools as best we can.

          You describe is a westbound based tool that allows you to

     pull a YouTube video into the interface and then in theory

     create your audio description and then upload the audio

     description and it's one little clip at a time and it is intertwined

     on the YouTube -- I mean, sorry, the YouDescribe, not YouTube,

     your audio descriptions play intertwined hopefully well with the

     YouTube video that you're describing.

          I'd really like to see Google get involved with that because

     that's when captioning really jumped forward, web based

     captioning, when YouTube and -- when Google bought YouTube

     and then they really jumped into the improving the

     transcribing and the web based captioning interface.  So

     hopefully this will move forward and the same thing will

     happen with audio descriptions and tools like you describe. 

     You describe reminds me a lot of the earlier captioning tools

     and we made it through.  We got our feet wet with those and

     it's doesn't seem that long ago that we had these same

     challenges, so we'll move forward, I'm is sure, with these.

          LiveDescribe is -- well, what it was supposed to be -- it

     started out as a downloadable software that you could -- and it

     was through the department of education grant and you would

     in this any I little interface, you would create your

     LiveDescribe -- you would describe your audio track and then

     you could you load it all together as one.  And you had control

     of that.

          Darn the browsers, darn all that happened to flash, darn

     that all happened to Java because that hurt all these resources

     tremendously.  They just haven't gotten around to totally

     keeping up with browse errand flash, not having flashes like we

     did before and Java interface withing browsers differently and

     not at all than it did in some cases.  That's really been a

     challenge here.  LiveDescribe has a simpler, more streamlined

     interface.  From what I can tell the web based version that

     they have is stagnant right now.  Their plan was that they

     would also have a web interface like you describe has and that

     you'd be able to upload your full videos in this case and they

     would host it for you.  That's really stagnant right now.  Again, I

     hope somebody will pick it up and run with it.  We'll see what

     happens.

          Mag pie is really a software, if you need to do audio

     descriptions that makes it worthwhile to dig up one of those

     old computers that we all have around and dedicate it just for

     this.  With the older version of Java and older version of

     windows solely that you can do this.  No longer does the

     software work on a MAC and that's since Intel.  That's been

     quite a well.  Again, this is another foundation based grant

     tool, great captioning tool, saves in every format, but it

     really -- oh, that's wonderful.  I see norm has posted that mag

     fie is coming out with an update.  That's certainly what I have

     been preaching that I'm hoping for all three of these tools.  I'm

     not surprised with the foundation with mag pie that that's great

     to hear.  Mag pie although a little more technically challenging

     to work with, it's the most efficient of the bunch.  You can do

     transcribing, captioning and audio description all with mag pie. 

     Great tool.  Right now if you don't have an old computer you

     pretty much can't use it at all, that's really a shame.  It was the

     first tool I taught people to caption on.

          Okay.  So we're going to touch base on each one of these

     tools.  I'll tell you where they are and hopefully you can see

     their potential and that they are slowly, but surely coming

     along.  I think all three of them come from reputable enough

     foundations and sources that they won't go away.  It's taken

     them a while to move forward because it's really hard to keep

     up with browser technology now.  I know a lot of our third

     party vendors that supply learning materials for our college,

     there are things -- they scramble to make sure to get their

     things working that depend on Java and flash.  That's the

     situation pretty much that we're going through with a lot of

     this.

          HTML 5 as I said before long will be the solution for all of

     this.  Now, there is -- there are tools, Chrome apps, plug ins, I

     guess they are called, one is called HTML 5 audio description,

     via text to speech.  One is with screen reader and one is not

     with a screen reader.  So what you do is you actually make

     separate track, like a captioning track, of text and then it

     converts it to audio and this does this in the browser.

          To be quite honest with you, the couple of times I've tried

     this, it hasn't done a very good job of sincing, but it's a work in

     progress and I'm sure that this is another one that is going --

     that is very promising for the future.  So I try to grab and trial

     these things as soon as they come out.  Sometimes as I learn

     working on this presentation, from one day to another things

     can change.

          That's what we're looking at.  Take a look at HTML 5 audio

     description when you get a chance.  That's in your Chrome plug

     ins.

          Video descriptions, live described project.  This is the tool

     that I've had the longest, that I was really excited when I begin

     with because the software I could download and play with. 

     What it did was let me create a whole new audio track that in

     the audio blended the original audio from whatever video I was

     doing and my audio descriptions.  Now, the key there is I have

     to have control over the audio.

          Again, talk about copyright issues right now because I gone

     over that so much talking about captioning, but we still have

     this same considerations.  I would like to think that in a perfect

     world certainly no one is going to object to us providing

     something that's going to make someone's content more

     accessible to someone, but to use this tool, for example,

     because they are web based version isn't working right now,

     you have to have control over the video.  And I don't

     recommend people using one of the tools that just sort of pulse

     a YouTube video or something like that.  I can't even in good

     conscience recommend that.  You can use this with your own

     videos and with videos that you have control over.  You can

     contact someone with a YouTube video.  I have good luck even

     so far as they all have access to MP 4's of their videos.  You can

     contact -- in one of my presentations I sort of said you had to

     find the contact information for someone through their video

     channel.  You could ask them, say that you're interested in

     creating a video descriptions of their video content.  Could

     they provide MP 4 and in return when you're finished, supply

     the sound track, the combined described sound track and then

     what you can do, because at this point it's not two separate

     tracks that you can turn on and off where you can turn that

     track off, the best thing to do is to have two versions of it. 

     One with the audio descriptions and one without the audio

     descriptions.

          If you're like me, it's sort of like captions, I watch every

     video that I watch now with captions on all the time.  Mostly

     because I love to see how different people caption in different

     countries.  But also because I get more out of the information

     when I'm reading at the same time I'm looking at it and that's

     my learning style.  But a little bit of background.  Inclusive

     media and design center.  I'm going to provide a link and I think

     that I have this word document that I'm going to send to

     Dr. Coombs and I think, if it's okay, I'm going to go ahead and

     put -- I have a lot of links, but I want to put the link to this

     particular download because, so that you can do it.  I won't add

     it here.  It's not going to let me grab it real quick, so that I can

     flip around and send it to you.  It will be available for you so

     that you can download.  It's pretty hard to find a link on the

     actual website.  They sort of have it hidden in a lot of text that

     says the link is here.  If you go through the LiveDescribe

     website chances are you're not going to stumble into it easily.  I

     want to make sure I make the link to the download of the ZIP

     file available to you.  I've downloaded it twice this week.  I'm

     confident if you get it directly from here, I ran virus scans on it

     and I didn't see any problem.  Granted this is the kind that

     occasionally does have susceptible to things like that, but I

     don't believe that's the case and I was very careful before I

     recommended it to make sure that there were no problems.

          And this is for everything that is in this presentation is for

     PC only.  Hopefully when mag pie comes back out with an

     update, they'll come back with an update for PC and MAC

     because at one time -- early on you could use that for both and

     that was fantastic.

          Okay.  LiveDescribe,  download it and install it.  You can

     see it from IMDC, get the little icon.  When you open up the

     interface, it looks like the new project environment on the

     left, which is a -- an area for the video to show.  At the bottom

     you'll see a line where your WAV file will be that will represent

     the audio.  Then above you'll have a list of all your spaces that

     you have available for your description tracks and then you'll

     see also that you have a -- an extended description track which

     will actually stop the video if you need to convey information

     that you just can't fit in the spaces, which is the case. 

          So when you start a new project, you're going the name

     the project.  You're going to connect to the video.  You always

     want to say yes, make a copy of the video so it will store it in

     whatever folder.  And now I'll warn you.  This software crashes

     a lot.  So you want to make sure that while you're working, you

     save frequently.  Just go into it with the mindset knowing that

     that's the case and that it is like the others, a work in progress.

          I save frequently.  I don't do it when I'm rushed because it

     doesn't like that.  And you want to close everything out and

     just work in the LiveDescribe environment when this is what

     you're doing.  Caudal it a little bit for now.  As I said, I predict

     that they'll come -- that this will be a great tool when it has

     another refresh, right now it's definitely a work in progress. 

     It's got a few little kinks.  As I say, I still think it's very cool.

          Okay.  Now, when I open a video you'll see on the left side

     of the software interface, I can see where my video is running. 

     To that -- to the right of that I see numbers and a time stamp

     for each one of my spaces that I have, that it thinks I have

     available, and not always a great judge of the spaces, but that's

     okay.  It's very easy to fix.  And then at the bottom I have my

     audio WAV represented with little bars, little areas that cover

     the spaces or what initially it represents is the spaces for me to

     come and edit.

          Now, adjusting the spaces is very easy.  I just click on the

     ones I want to delete and the tiny spaces that are one or two

     seconds, I delete all of those.  I sort of go through and try to

     get an idea of how much I'm going to need to be able to convey

     what I need to convey.  In the case of -- in the case of this one,

     this one was really just an example.  The one that I'm showing

     on the left of this screen, so that I could show the space timing

     and then the WAV bar, with the visual representation of the

     spaces indicated is something that didn't have a lot of place to

     put something in.  I really didn't need a whole lot.  On the right

     I'm showing something that has more spaces.  It was me read

     ago story book to my grandson.  And so I wanted to make sure

     that I can describe every page as I turn it.  So that when I turn

     a page, I need to have a space prior to that as much as I can so

     that I can describe that new page before I'm reading that page.

          And I'll briefly try to give you a low down on how that

     works.  So you can see on the left of the screen I'm showing the

     audio WAV with the bar representing what its interpreting as a

     space.  There is a little bitty space in there, nothing I can use,

     so I just right click on that bar and delete that space.  But I can

     tell where I've paused because that's where the larger spaces

     are.  And I know that the book has 14 pages.  So I'm aiming for

     13 spaces, so that I can describe each page of the book as -- it's

     just a little board book -- each page of the book as I turn it.

          So what I can do, if it has a space that's not big enough, all

     I have to do is move my -- brain freeze -- what the technical

     term for this is and it's not like I don't know it -- but move my

     indicator bar to the beginning of -- to the end of where I want

     my space to fill.  I just right click on it and then I click over on

     the left side, I have a little button that says end and it will

     expand that.  I have another little button that says begin, if I

     need to stretch it to the left, I put my play bar, I'm going to call

     it, I can't think of the name, on the left and click that and it

     will easily change the size of my spaces to what I need them to

     be.

          So pretty quickly I can go through there, delete the spaces

     that are shown that I don't want or that are not big enough and

     then I can funnelling around and make sure that I have as many

     spaces as I have, so I'll be able to read the -- I'll be able to

     describe the page before I read that page as we go through it.

          Okay.  In an interest of time, this next slide I'm just

     showing you with the -- on the left I'm showing you the story

     book legends on one of the pages, very simple image, and I

     have about five second space.  Now, if that's enough to

     describe that, which probably will be for most of these pages,

     I'll use that space.  Otherwise I'll use part of that space and

     then you'll notice I have an extended space check box that I

     can put, so I can fill the existing space with part of my

     description and then I can create -- I can stop the video and

     create an extended description and when that finishes, the

     video will move forward.  So that's very handy.

          So this is what I'm deciding now.  I'm looking at it and

     figuring out how much time I have in each one of these spaces

     and if it's enough time to convey what I need to convey.  In

     some of the cases it will be.  In some of the cases it won't be. 

     But you can see, it's a very handy process, save often because

     remember unfortunately it does crash pretty much, but you

     can get through a project, but just go into it knowing that it's

     probably going to crash on you a couple of times so you want to

     save frequently.  Always want to save to your -- you always

     want to save to your hard drive.  Don't save to a flash drive or

     to an external drive, especially when you know that the

     software has some problems like this, because that's just going

     to exacerbate anything else that might be going on.  You want

     to be -- as I said, Molly caudle it as much as you can.  I'm sure

     down the line another version of this will come out that is a

     little more zippy, but for right now, this works great.

          Now, what you can see right here and I just have two

     captions, but two descriptions, but you can see in the first

     description at the beginning of the book I did that as an

     extended caption, so it shows at the lowest part of the timeline

     in a tiny little bar that the video does not -- the video does not

     move while that's reading.  It freezes the video in place.  And

     then you can see in the next space I've recorded some of it.

          And you can see I didn't start at the very beginning

     because the page hadn't actually turned and I didn't want to

     start describing the next page until you could see the next

     page.  You want to be conscious of what's going on on the

     screen, too, because in this case all the audio is going to be

     blended together and so I wanted it to be a good experience

     for equally accessible and good experience for everybody.  So

     part of it goes with the description and the time -- the video

     continues moving, there's not quite enough room to get the

     whole description in that I wanted to get in here describing the

     little cowboy and that they are on the prairie, which sort of

     sets the scene for what's going to transpire on down the line

     and their 10 gallon hats and so you can see the little bar at the

     end is the extended description and the green bar is the

     regular description that happens while the video is continuing

     to play.

          So you'll see what you do first is you go through and in

     every space you go ahead and compose your description.  And

     that's very helpful.  And then you can edit it as you come back

     through before you record it.  And then at each space you're

     just going to hit your little record button to begin and then you

     hit your little record button to stop.

          Now, it says record options.  And what that's supposed to

     do, it wasn't working very well today -- what that's supposed to

     do is pop up and show you how much time you have in that

     description and the clock's supposed to count down so you can

     in real time see how much time you have left before you have

     to stop talking.  Well, that just wasn't working today.  And I

     don't know if I didn't switch around to another PC, but such is

     life.  I just made do with what I had and I fudged around with it

     and I watched a timer to make sure I said what I wanted to say. 

     It's not a fast process, but it works quite well.  And you could

     get a good work flow going, go ahead and write all your

     descriptions, and then come back and do all of your regular

     descriptions and then if you wanted to come back again and do

     your extended descriptions last.  And you could be going -- that

     might be smoothest work flow at that point.

          So then when you finish this you're going to save this whole

     file.  It will be one audio file.  At the end you can save it as one

     audio file.  You'll also have individual files of the descriptions,

     but what's most useful is the one audio file.  That then I take

     into another software, ham break or something like that and

     then I sinc the track with the video.  Then I render it again and

     up load it to YouTube.  For now that works pretty well.  As I

     said, it's not quite ready for prime time.  The video describing

     of web based video is not 100 percent there yet, but boy it's

     made some great progress.

          And now we're going to look at another tool called you

     describe.  And you describe is another funded by a grant, a

     large grant program that pulse in YouTube videos and then

     allows you to add audio descriptions.  And in theory everybody

     can continue to describe these videos.  And improve the

     quality of them.  It didn't seem to be the case on all these

     videos.  I didn't know exactly what was going on right now, but

     this too seems to be a work in progress because the directions

     don't exactly follow the -- the directions don't exactly follow

     the what's available here.  In fact, you'll notice and this is

     important to note because it's not real clear in the instructions,

     you're going to be looking for a button that says edit by the

     interface.  What you do is actually go to YouTube and you get

     the link to the video that you want to add your descriptions to

     and then you click submit and then you'll see, and I just pulled

     in the same video I had before, you'll see that the video comes

     in to the you describe interface.  And it says create

     descriptions.

          So most of the videos available there -- now, one thing you

     have to recognize is anybody can come in and fine-tune your

     descriptions.  So it's a crowd sourcing tool, which is great.  But

     be aware of that.  So I like to keep samples of mine.  It's a little

     harder to down load anything in this interface.  When this tool

     is working perfectly, which it wasn't this week, but in the past,

     what you do is you just go through and you start and stop the

     video and when you get to a point that you want to record your

     description, you record your description, you stop it, then you

     have to upload one description track at a time and then you

     tweak the placement of it once you upload it.

          Now, this week I was having trouble uploading anything

     and it may be -- this happens with these tools that the newest

     updates of browsers, I have windows 8.1 and for reasons like

     this which is why I avoided windows 10.  Maybe I should go to

     win dose 10, but I don't know, I didn't try that.  In theory you

     upload each description track and it goes to the you describe

     interface online and then you tweak the placement of it there. 

     You see you have a variety of options that you can nudge it one

     way and nudge it the other way and this is another good

     resource, too.

          Again, not perfect, but a great way to get the information

     out there and you can go through the you describe

     environment.  There's a LiveDescribe web based tool, but the

     majority of the videos that are you -- you can't upload anymore

     there.  In the majority of videos that are you there are not

     described, but you describe has some really good examples of

     amateur descriptions that are just fine and you can tell they

     are not professional, but you can tell somebody -- there was

     somebody that does Sponge Bob and does a really good job

     describing Sponge Bob.  It's great to listen to some of that and

     to get started with it.