Re: [backstage] Video recordings of the House of Commons on TheyWorkForYou.com
Etienne Pollard wrote: You might be interested to learn about a new project that has just been launched by TheyWorkForYou.com - an online video archive of the House of Commons, with video clips posted in Flash video format alongside the text of speeches from Hansard. Just tried it out. I did notice the text from Hansard was not actually the same as what was said, is this common? For instance Hansard text says: I am a little worried by the example that the hon. Gentleman has just given But the video says: I am a little worried by the example that he's highlighted See: http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debate/?id=2008-06-06a.1050.2 All in all though an excellent service and let's hope this can get more people interested in politics. Keep up the good work! Andy - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Video recordings of the House of Commons on TheyWorkForYou.com
On Tue, 10 Jun 2008, Andy wrote: Just tried it out. I did notice the text from Hansard was not actually the same as what was said, is this common? As it says in the bullet points to the right of the video and text: Hansard is not a verbatim transcript, so spoken words might differ slightly from the printed version. Making things more formal or more followable than when the MPs are talking over each other seems to be very normal. --billy - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
RE: [backstage] Video recordings of the House of Commons on TheyWorkForYou.com
Now that you know what happens I bet you won't do that again... Cheers, jod From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Frank Wales Sent: Thu 6/5/2008 22:57 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Video recordings of the House of Commons on TheyWorkForYou.com John O'Donovan wrote: If you swear on this list for example, your trousers will fall down like a comedy clown. Huh. I did not know that. But how sensitive is this language-sensitive depant-o-tron? Let's find out... What word starts with 'f' and ends in 'uck'? Firetruck! Hey, look at that, my pants are still up. They're on fire, but they're still up. -- Frank Wales [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Video recordings of the House of Commons on TheyWorkForYou.com
John O'Donovan wrote: Now that you know what happens I bet you won't do that again... Actually, I think that behaviour is a bug, but as I'm now out of scratch pantaloons to test with, I'll leave it for others more versed in surprise linguo-tailoring incidents to investigate. -- Frank Wales [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Video recordings of the House of Commons on TheyWorkForYou.com
On Wed, Jun 4, 2008 at 7:17 PM, John O'Donovan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The way MySociety have approached this simplifies a difficult task and makes the video more accessible as a result. It is a great way to democratise the process of democratising democracy Glad to hear that you like it! -- etienne - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
RE: [backstage] Video recordings of the House of Commons on TheyWorkForYou.com
Well done Etienne, A fantastic piece of work... But I would have to take issue with your view John, of Hansard being an entirely representative view of what went on in the various chambers... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7187907.stm ;-) From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of John O'Donovan Sent: 04 June 2008 19:17 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: RE: [backstage] Video recordings of the House of Commons on TheyWorkForYou.com Hi - as part of the Digital Democracy project we will be looking at ways to improve the quantity and quality of coverage, as well as tagging and metadata developments, some of which will be automated and produce better metadata at source. One of the challenges here is that much of the metadata does not come from the BBC. Lining up transcripts and other metadata with video is a difficult to do reliably in an automated way as there is so much room for error. Also the captions available at source are not a replacement for the full transcript produced by Hansard. There is a very early overview of the principles for the DD project here... http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2008/02/digital_democracy.html The way MySociety have approached this simplifies a difficult task and makes the video more accessible as a result. It is a great way to democratise the process of democratising democracy Cheers, jod From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Brian Butterworth Sent: 04 June 2008 12:48 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Video recordings of the House of Commons on TheyWorkForYou.com Phil, 2008/6/4 Phil Wilson [EMAIL PROTECTED]: I'm sure one of the first computing acronyms I ever leant was GIGO... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIGO Yes, I know it. Take a look at Etienne's reply for one aspect of the details and why the captions may also count as garbage. Another important point is that the video captioner they've put together matches video to Hansard, rather than just the captions - that is, to the official record of what was said, rather than what was actually said, which is an important distinction. I still can't help thinking that this should be done at source. I thought Auntie was supposed to be give good tagging? Phil 2008/6/4 Phil Wilson [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]: However, a clear text feed of the data would keep the data pure, surely? Seriously, where would the fun in that be? Phil 'timestamp-tastic' Wilson - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk http://backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ -- Please email me back if you need any more help. Brian Butterworth http://www.ukfree.tv - independent digital television and switchover advice, since 2002 - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ -- Brian Butterworth http://www.ukfree.tv - independent digital television and switchover advice, since 2002
Re: [backstage] Video recordings of the House of Commons on TheyWorkForYou.com
On Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 10:34 AM, Thomas Leitch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Well done Etienne, A fantastic piece of work... Thank you for the compliment. It wasn't just me, by any means - there were also very significant amounts of work done by Matthew Somerville and other members of the mySociety team. And we stood on the shoulders of some giants, in particular the people who created the ffmpeg/mplayer suite, and the lighttpd crowd. But I would have to take issue with your view John, of Hansard being an entirely representative view of what went on in the various chambers... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7187907.stm ;-) -- etienne - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
RE: [backstage] Video recordings of the House of Commons on TheyWorkForYou.com
No comment. There are of course many ways to ensure unparliamentarily language is not used. The BBC has it's own. If you swear on this list for example, your trousers will fall down like a comedy clown. Cheers, jod From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Thomas Leitch Sent: 05 June 2008 10:35 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: RE: [backstage] Video recordings of the House of Commons on TheyWorkForYou.com Well done Etienne, A fantastic piece of work... But I would have to take issue with your view John, of Hansard being an entirely representative view of what went on in the various chambers... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7187907.stm ;-) From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of John O'Donovan Sent: 04 June 2008 19:17 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: RE: [backstage] Video recordings of the House of Commons on TheyWorkForYou.com Hi - as part of the Digital Democracy project we will be looking at ways to improve the quantity and quality of coverage, as well as tagging and metadata developments, some of which will be automated and produce better metadata at source. One of the challenges here is that much of the metadata does not come from the BBC. Lining up transcripts and other metadata with video is a difficult to do reliably in an automated way as there is so much room for error. Also the captions available at source are not a replacement for the full transcript produced by Hansard. There is a very early overview of the principles for the DD project here... http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2008/02/digital_democracy.html The way MySociety have approached this simplifies a difficult task and makes the video more accessible as a result. It is a great way to democratise the process of democratising democracy Cheers, jod From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Brian Butterworth Sent: 04 June 2008 12:48 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Video recordings of the House of Commons on TheyWorkForYou.com Phil, 2008/6/4 Phil Wilson [EMAIL PROTECTED]: I'm sure one of the first computing acronyms I ever leant was GIGO... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIGO Yes, I know it. Take a look at Etienne's reply for one aspect of the details and why the captions may also count as garbage. Another important point is that the video captioner they've put together matches video to Hansard, rather than just the captions - that is, to the official record of what was said, rather than what was actually said, which is an important distinction. I still can't help thinking that this should be done at source. I thought Auntie was supposed to be give good tagging? Phil 2008/6/4 Phil Wilson [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]: However, a clear text feed of the data would keep the data pure, surely? Seriously, where would the fun in that be? Phil 'timestamp-tastic' Wilson - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk http://backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ -- Please email me back if you need any more help. Brian Butterworth http://www.ukfree.tv - independent digital television and switchover advice, since 2002 - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ -- Brian Butterworth http://www.ukfree.tv - independent
Re: [backstage] Video recordings of the House of Commons on TheyWorkForYou.com
John O'Donovan wrote: If you swear on this list for example, your trousers will fall down like a comedy clown. Huh. I did not know that. But how sensitive is this language-sensitive depant-o-tron? Let's find out... What word starts with 'f' and ends in 'uck'? Firetruck! Hey, look at that, my pants are still up. They're on fire, but they're still up. -- Frank Wales [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Video recordings of the House of Commons on TheyWorkForYou.com
Generally a great idea. But why on earth is this being done this way? The Astons on the channel carry the information anyway, and we know that this can be fed into another computer system, as the MHEG5 version of BBC Parliament. I can't be that hard for BBC Parliament to provide the feed of information that is used to generate the Astons (and the former MHEG5 service) as a live text file (or something). 2008/6/3 Etienne Pollard [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Hello, You might be interested to learn about a new project that has just been launched by TheyWorkForYou.com - an online video archive of the House of Commons, with video clips posted in Flash video format alongside the text of speeches from Hansard. You can view them on the website, or you can embed clips of the individual speeches on your blog or personal website by copying and pasting a bit of HTML that is listed below each clip on theyworkforyou.com. See the blog posting at http://www.mysociety.org/2008/06/01/video-recordings-of-the-house-of-commons-on-theyworkforyoucom/ for the full announcement. The key thing now is that we need your help to match up ~28,000 speeches with the video footage (we've already got about 4,300 done). We've built a really simple, hyper-addictive website for people to use, complete with league tables and prizes (the rare and coveted mySociety hoodies). You can find it right now at http://www.theyworkforyou.com/video/ - if you want to appear on the league table then take 30 seconds and register a username. It's crowd sourcing applied to video timestamping - using our simple and remarkably addictive online game (with league tables, and did I mention the prizes?). Matching up individual speeches to video cuepoints is actually done in two stages - firstly, the CaptionerBot makes an approximate match for some of the speeches in Hansard using the raw BBC captions, and then we ask the general public to improve on the work of CaptionerBot using our simple and addictive online game (league table, prizes, etc). The video is taken from BBC Parliament, chopped up and transcoded into Flash video format (generic Flash 6, iirc), and served up to the general public using lighttpd and mod_flv_streaming. This lets us give you direct access to any point in the video file just by specifying a parameter in the URL that indicates seconds elapsed since the start of the file. The backend processing system uses lots of open source software to download and process live footage of the House of Commons from BBC Parliament (ffmpeg, mplayer, mencoder, yamdi, and quite a lot of perl), and the BBC web api to get the schedule information it needs to extract the live coverage. Now, please help us out by timestamping some video! http://www.theyworkforyou.com/video/ is the place to be... All the best, Etienne -- Etienne Pollard [EMAIL PROTECTED] +44 (0) 7946 415 996 - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ -- Please email me back if you need any more help. Brian Butterworth http://www.ukfree.tv - independent digital television and switchover advice, since 2002
Re: [backstage] Video recordings of the House of Commons on TheyWorkForYou.com
Brian Butterworth wrote: But why on earth is this being done this way? If by Astons you mean the superimposed captions, then if you had read the text below (and the blog posting linked to), you would see that we did try exactly that and it sadly just wasn't good enough. ATB, Matthew The Astons on the channel carry the information anyway, and we know that this can be fed into another computer system, as the MHEG5 version of BBC Parliament. I can't be that hard for BBC Parliament to provide the feed of information that is used to generate the Astons (and the former MHEG5 service) as a live text file (or something). 2008/6/3 Etienne Pollard [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]: See the blog posting at http://www.mysociety.org/2008/06/01/video-recordings-of-the-house-of-commons-on-theyworkforyoucom/ for the full announcement. Matching up individual speeches to video cuepoints is actually done in two stages - firstly, the CaptionerBot makes an approximate match for some of the speeches in Hansard using the raw BBC captions, and then we ask the general public to improve on the work of CaptionerBot using our simple and addictive online game (league table, prizes, etc). - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Video recordings of the House of Commons on TheyWorkForYou.com
However, a clear text feed of the data would keep the data pure, surely? Seriously, where would the fun in that be? Phil 'timestamp-tastic' Wilson - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Video recordings of the House of Commons on TheyWorkForYou.com
Phil, I'm sure one of the first computing acronyms I ever leant was GIGO... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIGO 2008/6/4 Phil Wilson [EMAIL PROTECTED]: However, a clear text feed of the data would keep the data pure, surely? Seriously, where would the fun in that be? Phil 'timestamp-tastic' Wilson - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ -- Please email me back if you need any more help. Brian Butterworth http://www.ukfree.tv - independent digital television and switchover advice, since 2002
Re: [backstage] Video recordings of the House of Commons on TheyWorkForYou.com
Phil Wilson wrote: Phil 'timestamp-tastic' Wilson People are catching up on you, Phil, better get back to it! ;-) ATB, Matthew - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
RE: [backstage] Video recordings of the House of Commons on TheyWorkForYou.com
Forgive my ignorance, but what is an Aston? Aston is a company who provide systems for generating on-screen graphics for live programmes - however it's also used as a generic term for those same graphics. So the kind of graphics like you get on the News where they'll say Nick Higham reporting, the name of an interviewee or similar. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Video recordings of the House of Commons on TheyWorkForYou.com
I'm sure one of the first computing acronyms I ever leant was GIGO... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIGO Yes, I know it. Take a look at Etienne's reply for one aspect of the details and why the captions may also count as garbage. Another important point is that the video captioner they've put together matches video to Hansard, rather than just the captions - that is, to the official record of what was said, rather than what was actually said, which is an important distinction. Phil 2008/6/4 Phil Wilson [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]: However, a clear text feed of the data would keep the data pure, surely? Seriously, where would the fun in that be? Phil 'timestamp-tastic' Wilson - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk http://backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ -- Please email me back if you need any more help. Brian Butterworth http://www.ukfree.tv - independent digital television and switchover advice, since 2002 - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Video recordings of the House of Commons on TheyWorkForYou.com
Brian Butterworth wrote: I thought they were trying to do OCR on the captions from the DVB-T stream. No, we have clear text. As it says in the blog post :-) However, a clear text feed of the data would keep the data pure, surely? Sadly not (trust me, I've spent some time on this!) - even ignoring some missing data (so we'd have to do this for then anyway), when there's a long debate sometimes the captioning simply shows a summary of what's going on rather than someone's name (especially if they're a minister so we know who they are); captions don't cover quick interruptions, which can really mess things up if there's a lot of going back and forth between two people; etc. etc. :) ATB, Matthew - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Video recordings of the House of Commons on TheyWorkForYou.com
2008/6/4 Etienne Pollard [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Wed, Jun 4, 2008 at 10:55 AM, Brian Butterworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I thought they were trying to do OCR on the captions from the DVB-T stream. What I was saying was that the old Freeview version of BBC Parliament used to have a quarter-screen picture and the information that is now in the Astons was provided using MHEG5. This was clear text (to keep the bandwidth down) not bitmap graphics. Forgive my ignorance, but what is an Aston? Sorry, it's a genericized trademark for captions overlaid on TV output.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aston_Broadcast_Systems OCRing is never going to be brilliant, given the semi-transparent nature of the captions on BBC Parliament. However, a clear text feed of the data would keep the data pure, surely? The machines that put the captions up on the screen have internal text-based logs, to which we have access. However, since this is basically just pulling logfiles off a set of operational machines this access isn't 100% reliable. The MHEG5 service was 100% reliable, I would conjecture that it is possible to get them reliably. The data in the log files is of variable quality, since there are some speeches that are not captioned, and other times captions aren't actually speeches (e.g. reaction shot of previous speaker during a long speech can prompt a back and forth of captions, even though the same person is speaking throughout the changeover in captions). So although we use the logfiles to get an approximate fix, we had to resort to the timestamping game for accuracy. IMHO this is a just a clear case of GIGO. The best thing is whoever is operating the captions for BBC Parliament to be provided with the ability to correctly tag the content in the first place. The taxpayer (not Licence Fee payer) is paying for this to be done already, it seems just crazy that they can't do it, ahem, properly. I'm not attacking the idea of the workaround, I'm just saying that it would be best for the data to be prepared correctly at source and then distributed. Hope that helps, -- etienne - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ -- Brian Butterworth http://www.ukfree.tv - independent digital television and switchover advice, since 2002
Re: [backstage] Video recordings of the House of Commons on TheyWorkForYou.com
Phil, 2008/6/4 Phil Wilson [EMAIL PROTECTED]: I'm sure one of the first computing acronyms I ever leant was GIGO... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIGO Yes, I know it. Take a look at Etienne's reply for one aspect of the details and why the captions may also count as garbage. Another important point is that the video captioner they've put together matches video to Hansard, rather than just the captions - that is, to the official record of what was said, rather than what was actually said, which is an important distinction. I still can't help thinking that this should be done at source. I thought Auntie was supposed to be give good tagging? Phil 2008/6/4 Phil Wilson [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]: However, a clear text feed of the data would keep the data pure, surely? Seriously, where would the fun in that be? Phil 'timestamp-tastic' Wilson - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk http://backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ -- Please email me back if you need any more help. Brian Butterworth http://www.ukfree.tv - independent digital television and switchover advice, since 2002 - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ -- Brian Butterworth http://www.ukfree.tv - independent digital television and switchover advice, since 2002
RE: [backstage] Video recordings of the House of Commons on TheyWorkForYou.com
Aston is a company who provide systems for generating on-screen graphics for live programmes - however it's also used as a generic term for those same graphics. So the kind of graphics like you get on the News where they'll say Nick Higham reporting, the name of an interviewee or similar. It's amazing how manual the whole process is, still... And amusing for me (not for them, I'm sure) when little mistakes creep into live broadcasts :D When I was lucky enough to get a tour round the Mailbox studios (an unexpected one-off perk from one of my uni course's lecturers), I was quite surprised when we got to go into the control room during a new broadcast and suddenly had Natasha Kaplinsky's disembodied voice shouting ASTON ON ASTON... ...ASTON OFF at the vision mixer! Personally I think Brian Blessed's voice would been a better motivator ;) - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Video recordings of the House of Commons on TheyWorkForYou.com
On 6/4/08, Etienne Pollard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Jun 4, 2008 at 10:55 AM, Brian Butterworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What I was saying was that the old Freeview version of BBC Parliament used to have a quarter-screen picture and the information that is now in the Astons was provided using MHEG5. This was clear text (to keep the bandwidth down) not bitmap graphics. Forgive my ignorance, but what is an Aston? Aston Broadcast Systems made a rather popular line of TV caption generating equipment - what are sometimes known as 'lower third graphics' are frequently referred to in the UK generically as Astons. OCRing is never going to be brilliant, given the semi-transparent nature of the captions on BBC Parliament. However, a clear text feed of the data would keep the data pure, surely? The machines that put the captions up on the screen have internal text-based logs, to which we have access. However, since this is basically just pulling logfiles off a set of operational machines this access isn't 100% reliable. The data in the log files is of variable quality, since there are some speeches that are not captioned, and other times captions aren't actually speeches (e.g. reaction shot of previous speaker during a long speech can prompt a back and forth of captions, even though the same person is speaking throughout the changeover in captions). So although we use the logfiles to get an approximate fix, we had to resort to the timestamping game for accuracy. Likewise, the caption may not appear as soon as the speaker does - a friend of mine spent a most of a summer in a BBC Parliament transmission gallery, captioning House of Lords coverage in real time. It took while, but she got quite good at recognising peers by their beards. - martin - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
