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This was removed because the machine generated captions have reached near parity with crowdsourced captions. Machine captions can be scaled to caption the entir

This was removed because the machine generated captions have reached near parity with crowdsourced captions. Machine captions can be scaled to caption the entirety of YouTube, something crowdsourcing could never accomplish.

wruza 6y ago
As a non-english speaker (writer actually, since I cannot fluently speak) who routinely watches popsci/math/etc videos on youtube, I assure you that machine-generated subtitles are completely useless. It may "parse" the usual speech, but not specific terms, and when it fails often (it does), a text becomes a mess. By disabling user-generated content they basically pin everyone with hearing issues to funny cat videos and amazing pop star interviews. I don't think they can scale beyond that right now.
- frosted-flakes 6y ago
  also the machine generated captions are completely devoid of punctuation and proper capitalization so that all the words run together in an endless nonsense sentence also they're useless because each word pops up on the screen one a time very slowly in time with the audio with arbitrary line breaks sounds useful but it makes it impossible to read the captions and actually watch the video because you're forced to keep your eyes on the weirdly scrolling captions you can't just read one line at a time like proper captions and it never gets the hard to hear words right you know the ones that would benefit most from proper captions --- Also, the machine-generated captions are completely devoid of punctuation and proper capitalization, so that all the words run together in an endless, nonsense sentence. Also, they're useless because each word pops up on the screen one a time, very slowly (in time with the audio), with arbitrary line breaks. Sounds useful, but it makes it impossible to read the captions and actually watch the video because you're forced to keep your eyes on the weirdly scrolling captions--you can't just read one line at a time like proper captions. And it never gets the hard-to-hear words right. You know, the ones that would benefit most from proper captions.
  - Polylactic_acid 6y ago
    God your example is such a good demonstration. Captions are an art and not simply "correct is correct". They also have to be timed correctly to match what is being shown on the screen as well as pausing for the correct amount of time to match the effects that the speaker is giving.
  - henrikschroder 6y ago
    Fantastic example! Creating real subtitles is as much a combination of art and skill and judgement and balance as editing the video itself. A good subtitle allows you to quickly read ahead, and then move your eyes back to the video, back to the people speaking, so that you can watch them act out the line. A good subtitle doesn't transcribe everything said word for word, but reduces spoken language to written language, and focuses on the gist of what's said. A good subtitle for hearing-impaired viewers describe important sounds that happen off-screen, such as doors opening or closing, but skips non-important sounds, and sounds of things happening on-screen.
    - maven29 6y ago
      I feel like you're conflating captions and subtitles here, they're not the same thing.
      - jacoblambda 6y ago
        While they are technically different, they are very similar and much of the "art" is the same between them. Good subtitles and CCs both have to be structured carefully so that they do not negatively impact the delivery of lines in the content. The biggest offender of this is comedy series as an improperly structured and timed CC or subtitle will ruin many jokes. Another aspect of this is how they handle making it easy to digest multiple lines of dialogue. Good CCs and subtitles will either structure the dialogue such that a certain voice is always on top or bottom or alternatively will match colours to voices. Similarly, in content that is visually busy or rapidly changing, good subtitles and CCs will stay out of the "busy" section of the screen and avoid using a colour or outline that would interfere with the readability based on the background of the scene. They are different but with regards to what makes them good, they are basically the same. And to add on to this, on just about everything but live feeds, they are produced and added to video more or less the same way.
tmpz22 6y ago
Do they have parity across all languages or just English?
jk700 6y ago
I'm pretty sure crowdsourcing subtitles in different languages is the primary use of the feature precisely because machine generated translation of machine generated captions produces gibberish.
kelnos 6y ago
That's not even close to true. Maybe it is for bog-standard American English, but whenever I watch a British show where you have people with a variety of accents (UK English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh), the auto-generated captions are pretty bad. And in any language, the machine-generated captions don't have punctuation. You also miss out on non-speech cues that a manual captioner will often add, like a note that there's music playing in the background, or that a loud crash happened off-screen, or simply that a person laughed. > Machine captions can be scaled to caption the entirety of YouTube, something crowdsourcing could never accomplish. They certainly don't scale the same way, but one of the entire purposes of crowdsourcing is that it scales better than trying to employ what will inevitably be a smaller number of people. I still think there's value there, at least until machine-generated captions are actually on par with a human. We're not there yet.
heavyset_go 6y ago
The machine generated captions would be hilariously poor if people didn't depend on them, and as such, they're tragically poor.
maple3142 6y ago
I think it only applied to English. For example, autogenerated caption for Japanese videos usually fails miserably, even a Japanese learner can easily spot where the wrong is, and it is not uncommon.
- watwut 6y ago
  It does not apply to English. Maybe they are less horrible then Japanies ones, but they are not good either.
  - memsom 6y ago
    And some languages just don't get autogenerated captions at all. "No captions available" is pretty common on videos even from fairly large European countries. I think Russian, English, French, German and possibly Spanish and Italian frequently get autogenerated captions, but Polish, Swedish, Norwegian, Czech... (languages I deal with frequently) sorry, no captions.
memsom 6y ago
Machine captions in English. Not in non-English. Swedish and Norwegian, both fairly close to English, when compared to say, Chinese of Japanese, have no autogenerated captions - the system simply never offers that as an option. If you think the system is perfect, you are very wrong.

wruza 6y ago

As a non-english speaker (writer actually, since I cannot fluently speak) who routinely watches popsci/math/etc videos on youtube, I assure you that machine-generated subtitles are completely useless. It may "parse" the usual speech, but not specific terms, and when it fails often (it does), a text becomes a mess. By disabling user-generated content they basically pin everyone with hearing issues to funny cat videos and amazing pop star interviews. I don't think they can scale beyond that right now.

frosted-flakes 6y ago
also the machine generated captions are completely devoid of punctuation and proper capitalization so that all the words run together in an endless nonsense sentence also they're useless because each word pops up on the screen one a time very slowly in time with the audio with arbitrary line breaks sounds useful but it makes it impossible to read the captions and actually watch the video because you're forced to keep your eyes on the weirdly scrolling captions you can't just read one line at a time like proper captions and it never gets the hard to hear words right you know the ones that would benefit most from proper captions --- Also, the machine-generated captions are completely devoid of punctuation and proper capitalization, so that all the words run together in an endless, nonsense sentence. Also, they're useless because each word pops up on the screen one a time, very slowly (in time with the audio), with arbitrary line breaks. Sounds useful, but it makes it impossible to read the captions and actually watch the video because you're forced to keep your eyes on the weirdly scrolling captions--you can't just read one line at a time like proper captions. And it never gets the hard-to-hear words right. You know, the ones that would benefit most from proper captions.
- Polylactic_acid 6y ago
  God your example is such a good demonstration. Captions are an art and not simply "correct is correct". They also have to be timed correctly to match what is being shown on the screen as well as pausing for the correct amount of time to match the effects that the speaker is giving.
- henrikschroder 6y ago
  Fantastic example! Creating real subtitles is as much a combination of art and skill and judgement and balance as editing the video itself. A good subtitle allows you to quickly read ahead, and then move your eyes back to the video, back to the people speaking, so that you can watch them act out the line. A good subtitle doesn't transcribe everything said word for word, but reduces spoken language to written language, and focuses on the gist of what's said. A good subtitle for hearing-impaired viewers describe important sounds that happen off-screen, such as doors opening or closing, but skips non-important sounds, and sounds of things happening on-screen.
  - maven29 6y ago
    I feel like you're conflating captions and subtitles here, they're not the same thing.
    - jacoblambda 6y ago
      While they are technically different, they are very similar and much of the "art" is the same between them. Good subtitles and CCs both have to be structured carefully so that they do not negatively impact the delivery of lines in the content. The biggest offender of this is comedy series as an improperly structured and timed CC or subtitle will ruin many jokes. Another aspect of this is how they handle making it easy to digest multiple lines of dialogue. Good CCs and subtitles will either structure the dialogue such that a certain voice is always on top or bottom or alternatively will match colours to voices. Similarly, in content that is visually busy or rapidly changing, good subtitles and CCs will stay out of the "busy" section of the screen and avoid using a colour or outline that would interfere with the readability based on the background of the scene. They are different but with regards to what makes them good, they are basically the same. And to add on to this, on just about everything but live feeds, they are produced and added to video more or less the same way.

tmpz22 6y ago

Do they have parity across all languages or just English?

jk700 6y ago

I'm pretty sure crowdsourcing subtitles in different languages is the primary use of the feature precisely because machine generated translation of machine generated captions produces gibberish.

kelnos 6y ago

That's not even close to true. Maybe it is for bog-standard American English, but whenever I watch a British show where you have people with a variety of accents (UK English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh), the auto-generated captions are pretty bad. And in any language, the machine-generated captions don't have punctuation. You also miss out on non-speech cues that a manual captioner will often add, like a note that there's music playing in the background, or that a loud crash happened off-screen, or simply that a person laughed. > Machine captions can be scaled to caption the entirety of YouTube, something crowdsourcing could never accomplish. They certainly don't scale the same way, but one of the entire purposes of crowdsourcing is that it scales better than trying to employ what will inevitably be a smaller number of people. I still think there's value there, at least until machine-generated captions are actually on par with a human. We're not there yet.

heavyset_go 6y ago

The machine generated captions would be hilariously poor if people didn't depend on them, and as such, they're tragically poor.

maple3142 6y ago

I think it only applied to English. For example, autogenerated caption for Japanese videos usually fails miserably, even a Japanese learner can easily spot where the wrong is, and it is not uncommon.

watwut 6y ago
It does not apply to English. Maybe they are less horrible then Japanies ones, but they are not good either.
- memsom 6y ago
  And some languages just don't get autogenerated captions at all. "No captions available" is pretty common on videos even from fairly large European countries. I think Russian, English, French, German and possibly Spanish and Italian frequently get autogenerated captions, but Polish, Swedish, Norwegian, Czech... (languages I deal with frequently) sorry, no captions.

memsom 6y ago

Machine captions in English. Not in non-English. Swedish and Norwegian, both fairly close to English, when compared to say, Chinese of Japanese, have no autogenerated captions - the system simply never offers that as an option. If you think the system is perfect, you are very wrong.