You're welcome! I also hadn't thought much about this topic before, which is one of the reasons why I shared this video. I did hear about the Minecraft subtitle/closed caption initiative back when development of it was active, but sooner or later forgot about it again.
> The irony (hoping I’m not doing an Alanis here) of he being an audio only video is excruciating.
The video has accurate subtitles. The content is also fairly well matched to the narration; it shows lots of great examples of what to do and what not to do.
The video takes 13 minutes, so the subtitles also take 13 minutes (that’s why I explicitly mentioned time).
So even if I did read it at the extraordinarily slow rate of spoken word, it would not contain information that could have been conveyed in an article that took 13 minutes to read.
As for “lots of great examples”: I have literally no problem with videos in an article, that’s one of the big advantages articles on the web have over printed pages. I suspect that with a textual summary on each clip and the detailed body article the actual value of the example would be much better.
I think a good way of assessing the time/value of a video like this would be to copy out the transcript, and then put the appropriate clip at each point in the article. If you do that you’ll find there is way less information than warrants a 13 minute video.
[edit: it’s 13 minutes, not 20. Who knows how my brain got there, but that will teach me for not verifying numbers before posting them :)]
It's a 13 minute video and at 2x, I watched and read it in less than 7 minutes. This was a comfortable reading pace for me and I'm not sure I could have read it any faster had it been an article with pictures or embedded video (probably slower, since I'd have to interrupt my reading to play the videos separately).
Even at 1x speed, I'm not sure where the other 7 minutes to make this a 20 minute video are coming from.
When I originally read your comment, I assumed the "irony" was that it was all audio about being deaf/HOH-friendly -- especially since you said "I'm not somewhere I can listen" -- but since it had subtitles, I just wanted to add that information to ensure that other people weren't similarly misled.
Haha, my bad for not checking the time - I’d swear I read 20, but I’m also fairly certain no one edited and reposted the video in the intervening time :D
The irony was that the value proposition benefited people with hearing over those with limited or none.
I’m going to try and just list very simple issues with your “read the subtitles” vs my “write an article” desire:
* reading a subtitles is slower than reading block text, both due to implicit blocking that most people use while reading (vs explicit blocking of trained speed readers).
* reading is outright harder due to the text being on moving backgrounds (this is probably limiting your comfortable reading speed).
* the video is meant to be providing relevant examples, but this means you are forcing the reader to try and do two visually demanding tasks at once: reading the text, and watching the video, and by default the text is overlaid on top of the video. This also further contributes to the slower than normal reading speed.
* bandwidth: to read the subtitles I need to be watching, and therefore downloading, the video, and the audio. Also it means I’m downloading video content that I have literally no need for: the graphics that fill in the time between examples.
Note I’m not attacking the content, but rather than presentation of that content.
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 55.8 ms ] threadAgain: I am super done with 5+ minute videos that would be faster to read and more universally available as an article or slideshow.
I can’t comment on the content because I’m not somewhere I can listen, and I don’t want to spend 20 minutes listening.
The video has accurate subtitles. The content is also fairly well matched to the narration; it shows lots of great examples of what to do and what not to do.
So even if I did read it at the extraordinarily slow rate of spoken word, it would not contain information that could have been conveyed in an article that took 13 minutes to read.
As for “lots of great examples”: I have literally no problem with videos in an article, that’s one of the big advantages articles on the web have over printed pages. I suspect that with a textual summary on each clip and the detailed body article the actual value of the example would be much better.
I think a good way of assessing the time/value of a video like this would be to copy out the transcript, and then put the appropriate clip at each point in the article. If you do that you’ll find there is way less information than warrants a 13 minute video.
[edit: it’s 13 minutes, not 20. Who knows how my brain got there, but that will teach me for not verifying numbers before posting them :)]
It's a 13 minute video and at 2x, I watched and read it in less than 7 minutes. This was a comfortable reading pace for me and I'm not sure I could have read it any faster had it been an article with pictures or embedded video (probably slower, since I'd have to interrupt my reading to play the videos separately).
Even at 1x speed, I'm not sure where the other 7 minutes to make this a 20 minute video are coming from.
When I originally read your comment, I assumed the "irony" was that it was all audio about being deaf/HOH-friendly -- especially since you said "I'm not somewhere I can listen" -- but since it had subtitles, I just wanted to add that information to ensure that other people weren't similarly misled.
The irony was that the value proposition benefited people with hearing over those with limited or none.
I’m going to try and just list very simple issues with your “read the subtitles” vs my “write an article” desire:
* reading a subtitles is slower than reading block text, both due to implicit blocking that most people use while reading (vs explicit blocking of trained speed readers). * reading is outright harder due to the text being on moving backgrounds (this is probably limiting your comfortable reading speed). * the video is meant to be providing relevant examples, but this means you are forcing the reader to try and do two visually demanding tasks at once: reading the text, and watching the video, and by default the text is overlaid on top of the video. This also further contributes to the slower than normal reading speed. * bandwidth: to read the subtitles I need to be watching, and therefore downloading, the video, and the audio. Also it means I’m downloading video content that I have literally no need for: the graphics that fill in the time between examples.
Note I’m not attacking the content, but rather than presentation of that content.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrK-yfRlrZE