Video Upload Tutorial

Langolab allows users to post and caption videos from Youtube or straight from a webcam or video file. Once videos are captioned, foreign language learners can watch the video and click on words in the captions for instant dictionary lookup. Notes can also be added to the captions. Many of you have asked how to upload and caption videos on langolab. Here's How!

Uploading

To get started, go to the Video page and click on "Add New Video". This will open the upload dialog popup as shown below:




For the purposes of this demonstration, we'll use the youtube upload option, but you can also upload a video from your computer or record directly to langolab from your webcam. This last option may be especially useful for teachers wanting to give their students a video featuring the words from their next vocab test.

With my youtube url on hand, I enter a title, description and other info for the video (these can always be changed later, so don't worry too much about it).

After clicking "Youtube" on the right side of the upload dialog, a second popup appears. I enter the URL of the youtube video, and click "OK".



Now the video shows up on my video list page.

Captioning

I'll need to edit the video to provide the captions. I click "EDIT"...



...and the edit dialog opens. The edit dialog contains the tools to add captions to the video and the ability to edit the title, description, and so on. It looks something like this:


Captions flow through three parts: from the CAPTION ENTRY section at the top left, to the CAPTIONS ON DECK section at the lower left, and finally to the CAPTIONS section just below the video display.

Under CAPTION ENTRY, select the Import tab and then click "Upload":

You'll need to copy & paste the captions in now. Individual captions can be separated by a newline or just by a period. You'll see all the captions appear in the CAPTIONS ON DECK section. If you don't have the transcript for the video you can enter captions one-by-one under the Enter tab also, but be forewarned: this is a PITA.

Now play the video. As you play the video, add captions from the CAPTIONS ON DECK section to match what is being said in the video by clicking "Add".

I usually just hold my mouse over the Add button of the top caption and click it right before each caption comes up in the video. So long as you imported the captions and are not entering them one-by-one, it's easy to caption and should take only as much time as the length of the video.

Finishing touches

From the edit dialog, you can watch the video all the way through. Check that the CURRENT CAPTION matches what you are hearing in the video. If you were slightly off in assigning a caption, you can adjust the time using the time controls to the left of the captions in the CAPTIONS section. If you need to edit the caption itself, you can edit it directly. You can also remove captions, and add missing captions. You will always be able to go back and change the timing and content of captions through this same interface.


Finally...

Remember to publish your video!
Click "PUBLISH" at the upper right corner of the edit dialog when you are done.

Give it a try and please leave a comment if you have any questions or if we could do something better. Happy posting!