

Deaf and following the World Cup? We're streaming live captions - sunpazed
http://tveeder.tumblr.com/post/88658629118/deaf-and-into-the-world-cup-were-streaming

======
roberthahn
I wish I could upvote this a hundred times. This is exactly the kind of thing
I like to see more of. Is this your project, sunpazed? Nicely done!

EDIT: Wait, what? Did that guy really say:

"Yes. It's edgy stuff, this. It will ruffle a few ferts. Will say something
some people won't like. Hopefully they won't be watching the show. It wasn't
very difficult to give Tony Abbott a dick and balls. He was holding this at
the time."

I spotted some other weird bits, (I have nothing to compare it to) Is this is
computer-based voice recognition? I have to admit it's a lot better than
Youtube's terrible excuse for captioning - most of what I see on this page
looks pretty coherent and on topic.

~~~
sunpazed
Yes, it is. Myself, and a small group of enthusiasts developed the service.

We launched in 2011, with the idea that the hearing impaired could use the
service to access a great source of realtime information - television.

The hearing impaired could now objectively access and review online the
quality of captions delivered by broadcasters.

Since then, it has grown into a useful resource for everyone.

One of the biggest benefits, we believe, is that our service raises the
awareness of captioning to others who haven’t traditionally relied on it.

For those technically minded, it's a client-server model built with custom
client hardware. Currently, we're only streaming Australian channels, however,
there's scope to plug in any terrestrial broadcast, and feed it into TVeeder.

There's a REST API too.

~~~
llamataboot
Is there any documentation for the API, or at least a link to it?

~~~
sunpazed
Sure. It's a simple REST API. Here's the link:
[http://tveeder.tumblr.com/post/60208341417/oh-theres-an-
api-...](http://tveeder.tumblr.com/post/60208341417/oh-theres-an-api-hidden-
behind-the-covers-too)

~~~
mzs
I'm not sure it's working, I just tried the SBS of the GER POR game and after
some ads (which corresponded to the websocket data):

    
    
      ...
      "text": " Every second of every game ",
      "text": " live on the big screen at Crown. ",
    

All that ever came back was:

    
    
      {
        "range": []
      }
    

It's like there were no captions whatsoever. Failing under load?

~~~
sunpazed
Try this link:
[http://beta.tveeder.com/785/byrange?&from=1402972200&to=1402...](http://beta.tveeder.com/785/byrange?&from=1402972200&to=1402977600)

~~~
mzs
It worked from Safari but not FF on the proxies network. During the BELvALG
game there are lots of trouble again, seems to only get a small portion of the
captions and then stops updating. Here is the last of what I was able to get:

    
    
        {
          "id": 4399254,
          "channel": 785,
          "text": "But at BOQ you can talk to one person",
          "date": 1403023783.284,
          "cid": 7
        }

------
parfe
I don't understand the service. When watching tv with my hearing impaired
father I push the CC button.

For the world cup specifically the espn announcers perform so terribly we
likely won't even do that and have music playing instead.

~~~
carlob
I remember watching a match during a strike of announcers in Italy, where
announcers are supposedly very knowledgeable about soccer.

It was one of my best experiences in soccer ever, beat only by when I started
using my radio to listen to a group of comedians commentary.

------
vermontdevil
I'm deaf and many many thanks for this. I will share with others.

------
brassattax
Do you have a way for people around the world to provide additional content?
For example if I have a tuner card, and want to run some service to extract
screenshots and CC text to send to you via some sort of API

~~~
sunpazed
Yes. However, it does require custom hardware. We've prototyped a small
hardware platform to allow others to contribute to the live feed. However,
this remains at prototype stage - we've been running self funded since
inception.

------
GFischer
Very nice :) .

Are these captions taken from a live text commentary (like BBC's service), or
from a radio commentary?

I think the second would be more useful, since they tend to mention players
and plays more often.

A nice case of tech helping people with disabilities, great job and good luck
!

~~~
goatforce5
The linked posting (now?) says the captions are coming from SBS Australia.

~~~
GFischer
Yes, it did when I read the posting, but is that live audio commentary
transcribed or live text commentary?

I think realtime-transcribed live audio commentary would be more timely and
lively :) though also harder to do I guess. In either case it's a great
service.

Edit: it apparently IS computer-generated live audio! Amazing :)

There are some syncing services between radio and streaming - for example here
in Uruguay we like the local radio commentary, and so do the Brazilians and
Argentineans, we might watch a match on tv with the sound turned off and radio
turned on.

~~~
newscasta
Probably too late now that the conversation has moved on, but if you happen to
see this could you point me to one of these syncing services? A very quick
google search didn't turn up anything. Thanks.

------
robinhowlett
Very well done. I experimented once with Sports broadcast captioning (not
real-time though; using YouTube videos) by using Amazon Mechanical Turk for
crowdsourced closed-captioning.

An example is here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCgc1jAXGSk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCgc1jAXGSk)

------
bhandziuk
Isn't being deaf and watching soccer more like being there in person? Whenever
I go see live matches there is no announcer. The ref has no mic and makes no
hand gestures and there are no jumbo-tron close ups on anything important.
Very difficult but apparently genuine. Part of the barrier to entry for
football fans I suppose.

~~~
dragonwriter
> The ref has no mic and makes no hand gestures

While, from the stands, they may be difficult to see, soccer referees
definitely make standardized hand signals.

~~~
bhandziuk
Is it only done the instant they make the call or is it repeated after the fat
like in american football/hockey? I'll have to take your word for it because
from where I've sat I could see nothing :)

~~~
gamegoblin
Main ones off the top of my head:

Arm straight up: offside

Arm towards goal line: goal kick

Arm towards corner: corner kick

Arm in one direction or the other indicates throw in direction (if it was a
close call -- often there isn't any chance for dispute and the team knows
what's what and throws it in within a second or two if there is a hurry).

There is a "play on" type arm wave (usually accompanied by a verbal "play on"
or something) to indicate "yes I saw him fall, no I don't think it's a foul,
keep playing".

The line referees have flags and have similar signals. The only real
difference is for a foul they hold the flag straight up and wave it a little.
For offside they hold it straight up and stand still to mark where the offside
occurred. The line referee should _always_ be located at the exact line that
marks offside. Of course pro players are faster than referees, but to get past
level 7 refereeing (starts at level 9, kids games, level 7 is probably high
school games, state level, etc) you must pass fitness exams as well as paper
exams. Level 2 is FIFA assistant referee, so they must all be in quite good
shape.

------
eliben
This is a very nice service - well done.

Tangentially, most soccer commentary (esp. in the US) is so horrible it's not
a big loss not being able to hear. Just watch the game ;-)

------
jcfrei
Hmm, the stream doesnt load for me at the moment. Is it location restricted or
are there too many users right now? The other streams work.

------
rblatz
Yesterday when I brought up ESPN's streaming feed they had an option to stream
a video with closed captioning. Is this your source?

------
joeyspn
Well done sir! There's so much talk about UX lately and still just few really
think about real problems like Accessibility

------
vomitcuddle
Not a big fan of soccer, but this is really cool!

~~~
zetx
They have other TV programs being streamed as well. Looks like 6 channels.
(Ex: [http://beta.tveeder.com/560/live](http://beta.tveeder.com/560/live) )

~~~
sunpazed
Yes - there's 6 streaming, see:
[http://tveeder.tumblr.com/post/60161190670/weve-just-
graduat...](http://tveeder.tumblr.com/post/60161190670/weve-just-graduated-
from-alpha-to-beta-with-the)

The architecture allows for additional channels as needed.

~~~
sebastianavina
This could be the next big thing on the hipster world...

\- What are you doing?

\- Just here, reading TV

------
nolite
would be interested in the tech behind this... voice recognition?

