Creating Segmented Captions
MAGpie 2.0 allows you to segment captions for a karaoke-style effect. You may segment captions by sentence, line, word or, for custom effects, manually.
- Place the cursor on the first caption you wish to segment. From the menu, choose a segmentation method.
- MAGpie will open a new window in the editor at the bottom of the screen showing the segmented caption.
- Apply stylistic changes to each segment as appropriate. This can be accomplished in two ways:
- Modify the setting in the dialog to change the segment foreground, background, or to underline the segment.
- Manually change the segment style. For example, to add color to a segment's text (or foreground), highlight that segment and choose a text color from the text-color drop-down list near the top of the editor. To change the segment's background color, highlight the text and choose a color from the background-color drop-down list.
- Place the cursor on caption or segment that needs to be timed. Play the media and time each segment by pressing the key at the appropriate intervals. The cursor will move to the lower portion of the caption grid when it reaches a caption with segments. Be aware that the smaller the caption segments are, the more rapidly the user will need to press to time the segments. After you have timed the segment, MAGpie will automatically return the cursor to the main editing window. If you have segmented more than one consecutive caption, MAGpie will continue to move the cursor from caption segment to caption segment with each successive press of , and then return the cursor to the main window when the segments have all been timed.
The image above shows that not all formatting that can be applied to segments will appear in the media player. In the image, the QuickTime player is being used and the text background format is not displayed. In the image to the right, the media player used in the project was changed to GRiNS, demonstrating the difference in the output that RealPlayer would display.
- If the segmented captions are not needed they can be removed by selecting caption cells with segments and selecting from the menu.
Captioning Long Movies
When captioning movies that are long (20 minutes or more), users may want to uncheck in the menu. This option prevents MAGpie from rewriting the MAGpie project file each time the movie is started. Rewriting the project file allows changes made to the caption grid to be viewed in the media player. Selecting from the menu forces MAGpie to rewrite the project file.
Creating Captions for SVG and Other Formats
Additional export formats will be available in a future release of MAGpie. Until that time, XML stylesheet transformations (XSLT) can be performed on the .magpie project file. Instructions and stylesheets will be posted at the MAGpie Web site when they become available.
© 2007 Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media. All rights reserved.