Video Player in OER Commons

[Cheetham, Anastasia]

We're working to incorporate the Infusion Video Player into the OER Commons authoring tool, Open Author. We're considering options for supporting the addition of captions and transcripts to videos through the authoring interface.

The original designs for this interface are available on the wiki, at

http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/%28Floe%29+OER+Commons+authoring+tool+high+fidelity+mockups+%28February%29#%28Floe%29OERCommonsauthoringtoolhighfidelitymockups%28February%29-Media

These designs show a link above the uploaded video labelled "add subtitle" (which turns into a menu that includes "add subtitle" when subtitles are already present). This is the starting point for what we need to implement.

Requirements:

- The current interface for the Video Player includes support for captions and transcripts, multiple languages for each. The video player supports references to an uploaded file or a link to an external file, so we need to provide an interface that allows authors to provide either.

- We also want authors to be able to go directly to the Amara website to create new captions.

- We'd like to encourage authors to remember to add captions and transcripts while their adding videos, but we also want to allow authors to come back at a later time and add captions and transcripts.


Proposal:

For adding captions/transcripts as part of the video upload process:
Currently, once a media file is uploaded, the type of media is determined and the author is presented with a subsequent dialog that is different depending on the type of media (e.g. alt text for an image, a caption for a video, the file name for a document, etc.). One option would be to expand the video dialog to include affordances for adding captions and transcripts. This would be similar to the current media upload dialog, which supports drag and drop, file browser, and URL text entry, with the addition of an affordance for specifying the language. Once a caption or transcript is added, it would be displayed in a list in the dialog, and the affordances for adding another would remain.

For adding captions/transcripts after-the-fact:
The current "add subtitles" button/menu above the video would be the basis for this, but we would need to expand it to be the same form of media upload dialog used elsewhere, supporting drag and drop, file browser, and URL text entry.


Questions:

How should we distinguish between captions and transcripts in the two different cases?
 dialog: Two separate steps or input fields? Or a radio button?
 menu: Two separate button/menus above the video, one for captions, one for transcripts?

Thoughs, anyone?

-- 
Anastasia Cheetham     Inclusive Design Research Centre
acheetham at ocadu.ca           Inclusive Design Institute
                                        OCAD University