YouTube gets automatic subtitling tool

BANGALORE, INDIA: YouTube, the social networking platform of Google has announced that it would roll out automatic captions across the site.

Google software engineer Ken Harrenstien said in a blog that captions not only help the deaf and hearing impaired, but with machine translation, they also enable people around the world to access video content in any of 51 languages.

The machine-generated captions will initially be generated in English. At first they will only be found on 13 channels, said a BBC report. These include National Geographic, Columbia, as well as most Google and YouTube channels.

Interestingly the brain behind the the technology, Harrenstien, is deaf.

“Since we first announced captions in Google Video and YouTube, we've introduced multiple caption tracks, improved search functionality and even automatic translation. Each of these features has had great personal significance to me, not only because I helped to design them, but also because I'm deaf,” he wrote.

“Today, I'm in Washington, D.C. to announce what I consider the most important and exciting milestone yet: machine-generated automatic captions.”

His solution combines automatic speech recognition with the current caption system that YouTube has.

“Every minute, 20 hours of video are uploaded. How can we expect every video owner to spend the time and effort necessary to add captions to their videos? Even with all of the captioning support already available on YouTube, the majority of user-generated video content online is still inaccessible to people like me,” said Harrenstien.

To help address this challenge, we've combined Google's automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology with the YouTube caption system to offer automatic captions, or auto-caps for short.

Earlier in this week YouTube had announced the launch of YouTube Direct, a feed of uploaded amateur videos of newsworthy events such as protests and extreme weather conditions.