cc goodness: Buffy vs. Edward (Twilight Remixed)

[elisem]

I'm somewhat deaf. Moderate hearing impairment, confirmed in my mid-twenties; I used to wear hearing aids, but they made my life more difficult instead of less, which is a whole 'nother story I should tell sometime. Anyhow, I can't hear the dialogue in most television shows or movies, so I wind up not seeing a lot of things that other people are discussing on-line.

This can be very frustrating. However, the advent of closed captioning for television and videos has been a fine and helpful thing. (Well, mostly. When it's there, anyway. Though there are enough screwups that there are some shows I just won't watch, as a five second lag time between mouth movements and captions is enough to drive a lip-reader right up a tree. And you should see my collection of cc typoes.*) However, when reading through various people's blogs and journals, I often followed links to videos, and almost none were captioned.

That's changing. I think I'm going to start listing some of the ones I find that I like. Sometimes counting the good stuff is a way to improve one's mood, and it also offers recognition to the people doing things that make it possible for the rest of us to take part in the art, culture, and discussions on-line.

Today's goodie: Buffy vs. Edward (Twilight Remixed) from Jonathan McIntosh.


Do you use cc when you watch things?



*Favorite cc typo so far: on the History Channel, a show about WWII was talking about Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Joseph Gerbils. I suddenly desperately wanted Stu Shiffman in the room with a sketchbook.

Comments

[onyxlynx]

I've noticed (Joseph Gerbils? Twitching his little nose? "When I hear the word 'culture' I reach for my--other body which has a revolver!" OK, back to the comment) that it is easier for me to understand the dialogue on DVDs when I bring up the subtitles; in at least one case there was a plot point I was missing because I couldn't quite hear it. (I am not hearing impaired by anyone's definition, but 'audible' has gotten rather fuzzy around the edges.)

I wish YouTube had more captioned videos (sometimes if the sound is blurred I check). (I thought I had a source of vids for you, but the post I was hunting was more than 6 pages back and my right wrist is already annoyed with me.)

[firecat]

I use cc or subtitles for most everything that has them, not only when I watch with the OH, but also when I watch myself. I might be a bit hearing impaired but not much, and they help tremendously for things on DVD. On TV, the cc lag can be pretty annoying.

[jesse_the_k]

Like firecat, I use 'em when I have 'em when they're popups. There's no live captioning that's accurate enough to not distract me: without the caps, I miss maybe 10%. Live (scroll-up) captioning in the US is simply awful. The worst part is when the captioner skips over names and fails to identify shifts in speakers—given the lag time, it makes a bad situation untenable.