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YouTube goes the Google Maps route to fix captioning errors
The latest test welcomes user participation
YouTube is one of our favorite entertainment apps on TV and on mobile, and it's unsurprising that changes need to be tested thoroughly before they are released for the convenience of users worldwide. Before a public release, YouTube runs experiments to test upcoming changes with a small group of viewers. The newest such experiment focuses on correcting incorrect captions under videos with input coming straight from viewers, à la Google Maps.
How to add image captions to Google Docs
Google Docs doesn't have caption support, but there are tricks you could use
A picture is worth a thousand words, but captions provide context. It's not every time you grasp or relate to what you see immediately. When you create content in Google Docs from your personal computers or phones, provide enough details so that people understand what you're saying. You commonly see captions underneath or beside images acting as short descriptions.
How to enable closed captions and Live Captions on your Samsung devices
Is your video sound not clear enough? Closed captions can help with that
Whether you have difficulty hearing sounds or are in a loud place, closed captions help you listen through text. These texts describe background and non-verbal cues to give you the whole experience of watching videos, whereas subtitles only let you know that someone is saying something and in what language.
Google Meet's captions are starting to get their promised live translation support
It's almost like being bilingual
Google Meet is among the biggest video conferencing apps at the moment. One of its most useful features, at least for me, is automatic call transcriptions. Up until now, though, the feature didn't support live translations, unlike captions in apps like YouTube and Translate. Google is finally changing that, as previously announced during Google I/O 2021.
Google Meet gets live captions in North America and Latin America
US Americans had to wait for a Google feature, for once
As an international website with a mostly-US staff, covering a US company, we get a lot of commenters telling us how much it sucks that Google's stuff isn't available everywhere immediately. Well today all of you international readers get to thumb your noses at us! Assuming you live in Europe or Asia. And also that you really care about a very specific feature of the Meet video conferencing tool.
Google's ads for this year's Oscars had more emotion than half the nominees
I'm not crying, you're crying
After a string of increasingly weird videos promoting the Pixel phone line, it's almost comforting to see Google return to plucking at your heartstrings. Such is the case with two new Google Search commercials posted to Google's official YouTube channel this weekend, both made for the recent Oscars, and at least one of which aired during the event.
YouTube introduces smart suggestions for dumb people who can't hold their phone good
Plus streamlined player controls with more accessible captions
YouTube is one of the most widely used apps in the world, so whenever the company makes even a slight change, people notice. The announcement that four playlist-centric features were being killed last month was a bit disheartening, but YouTube's latest move doesn't kill off old features — instead it brings a variety of useful new ones to life, including streamlined player controls and a more accessible captions button.
Google Duo's captions for audio and video messages are rolling out
The day when everyone gets real-time call captioning will be a good one
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We aren't at the point yet where every Android phone is able to transcribe voice calls in real time, but what Google is doing with its video chat service Duo is a good first step: the app is now enabling captions for recorded voice and video messages.
YouTube is doing away with community-driven captions and translations
The system had become a target for spam and abuse
It's easy to forget YouTube's early days, before the professional productions and multi-million dollar brands, but things used to be very different. There weren't any high tech algorithms or automated features. Google hadn't yet implemented the impressive speech recognition algorithms that now power many of its products, which meant you also wouldn't have captions or translations unless the video creator added them manually. However, YouTube introduced a Community Contributions system to allow viewers to do some of this work for the creators. After many years of diminishing usage and a rising tide of complaints about abuse and spam, YouTube has decided to shut off Community Contributions.
Back in May, at Google I/O 2019, the company showed off a nifty new feature called Live Caption that would be able to transcribe content from media playback in near-real-time. We initially expected that it could land with Android 10, especially given the official Android site shows off the feature, but it's still missing as of today. However, based on some leaked APKs the folks at XDA Developers were able to get their hands on, it might debut on the upcoming Pixel 4. In fact, they even got it working on a Pixel 2 XL, and here's what it looks like in action:
One of the most useful features of YouTube are the auto-generated subtitles. Say you're watching a video in Spanish and you can barely recognize your "como" from your "cama," the captions can help you put words in perspective and better understand what's being said. However, it's usually difficult to know which video has these subtitles before you start playing and try to turn them on. Today we learned of a neat trick that can help with that issue.
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Google continues the day's deluge of announcements. Next up with a pile of new features is Google Images, with changes including Lens integration, image ranking tweaks, and expanded captions for context. A new "featured videos" card for automatically played results will also appear for some queries.
Google Photos version 3.23 just started making the rounds, but there doesn't appear to be anything immediately changing with the update. However, the traditional clues about upcoming features are certainly there to be seen. We can look forward to applying some of those smooth bokeh effects of portrait mode, and this time, we'll control the intensity of the blur. There will also be a new option to downgrade your already backed-up photos to high quality so you can get back some of that cloud storage. I've also included a couple of other teardown sections for earlier versions that were slated to appear in the next Update Notes post, but this is the better place for them.