Grant Laird, Jr. Blog

Last September 2006, Google Video announced that it now offers closed caption support. I see more people start using this feature – probably not as many as I hope but its good start since it’s only six months old.

In the past, Google Video used to have CC list on their front page. It’s not there anymore and you won’t find link anywhere. Lucky, I did bookmarked it before and found it. It goes to http://video.google.com/videocaptioned.

Well, if you look at captioned category, its only three pages long. (10 videos each page) There’s a lot more out there if you type “captioned” in Google Video search box. (Not 100% accuracy — some are open captioned, too) I noticed it hasn’t updated at all – look like maybe they should fix their system whenever video offers CC, it should automatically add at captioned category.

Also, it would be nice if they add formal category for captioned group similar to sports, entertainment, popular, etc. It should show under “more” list.

I’ve emailed to Google Video Team about it today. I hope they will follow it up and make some adjustment in near future. If you can, please contact them at video-support@google.com and tell them about it!

I’ve been member of Netflix for about a year now. Most of the time, I never check and make sure the movie have closed captioning or subtitle in it. 99% of the time, DVD is always captioned.

Yes, I discovered couple of times that it doesn’t have CC or subtitle in it. I rarely read movie spec and see if it support CC or not. What I did is put message that it should have offer one in their comment box. Since all comment is monitored by Netflix staff and they approved my comment. Hmmm…

Anyway, Netflix announced that they now offers download movies online (Not mail version) even it is not available to all members yet. I know couple deaf bloggers mentioned it and I wanted to say it too in my own blog. The more we talk about it, the more it will spread thru Internet world. Sonny James mentioned about it, too.

The Unofficial Netflix website confirmed that Netflix Watch Now doesn’t support CC at this time. Click here.

Does Watch Now include captioning, subtitles, or DVD extras? No, not at this time.

Finally, NAD has already made comment about it. See it for yourself, click here. Many companies do read our blog site these days. You have to understand that Netflix is not alone. There are many other services that are not offering same thing.

• Xbox 360
• PlayStation 3
• AppleTV
• Amazon Unbox
• iPod / iTunes and other media portable unit & services
• Slingbox
• TIVO - To Go (computer version)
• Wal-Mart Video
• CNN and all other news video online
• Starz Vongo
• Netflix & Blockbuster
• Delta Airline Movie Online - click here
• Endless list - trust me! 

I’ve mentioned about closed captioning frequently at my blog. Click here.

Rocketboom.com now offers subtitle for English and several another language starting right now. How cool is that? I know that Rocketboom.com have been doing podcast video for few years – of course I never bother to check it out because it doesn’t offers captions till now.

In case you are not familiar with Rocketboom, you can look it up at Wikipedia.com for its little history: Click here.

I watched several rocketboom videos with subtitle and it works great. Too bad it’s not widescreen and high quality video like their original video but its start. I hope other companies like Scoble Show will follow Rocketboom step.

According to announcement, dotSUB CEO Michael Smolens, they want to offers subtitle options even before it ever become mandatory by law. Smart move, Michael!

P.S. I tried to embedded one of the Rocketboom video thru dotSUB into my blog but it didn’t work. I guess it’s still beta like he mentioned.

Rocketboom’s announcement:

One of the most popular video podcasts is having all its episodes captioned

Beginning January 4th with its first daily episode for 2007, Rocketboom announced, in its video podcast, that all future episodes would be captioned and then available for subtitling in any language using dotSUB technology. You can see this announcement at this link. Click here.

There are still some bugs being worked out, but you can watch the captioned episodes each day by clicking the ‘translate’ link which appears first under the control buttons on the video player, and then to the right of the screen shot which appears, click on the pull down menu next to "WATCH" - and choose ‘English-100%’

Michael L. Smolens
Founder & CEO
dotSUB llc - Any Film Any Language
360 East 72nd St. #C3104
New York, NY 10021 USA
1-917-742-0158 - tel
1-646-403-9944 - fax
mlsmolens - Skype