Back from CON.TXT; subtitles on vids

[franzeska]

CON.TXT was awesome. I wanted to try it out once since I'm leaving the area... Instead, I've found another event I cannot miss. Good thing it's only every two years.

I'll post some more detailed thoughts later, but at the most basic level, what I loved most was that it was a slash con that was also full of people who ship m/m/f and f/f and who probably read some het and gen, all in the same fandoms. Unlike at MediaWest, I could actually discuss what I like about fandoms like The Avengers. It's a much more LJ/DW vibe than at many cons. (My ideal, perfect con would be this but not explicitly a slash con and not medium-specific like VividCon. But it's close; very, very close. And I'll take a con that excludes het over one that excludes slash any day.)

Another really fun thing was how many OTW staff were there. Wait, did I say fun? I meant: Oh crap, why are all of the people I owe e-mail to at the same con? Cons are great because people set aside time for them. I rarely get around to seeing all the fans I know live in NYC, and I've never gone down to DC without a con motivating me even though it's an easy trip. And one effect of that is that a con can be worth it for someone coming from farther away since it allows them to see a whole bunch of people without the cat herding inherent in trying to organize a get together. It was fabulous to meet Cesy in person. (And case in point: Did I get it together to hang out in NYC before the con? No, of course I didn't.)

We finally found time for our little OTW meetup on Sunday at the end of the Dead Duck. It was great to see everyone, but I was a little sorry about the timing since it meant that I disappeared precipitously without saying goodbye to anyone else, and I missed the chance to ask a couple of people questions that I didn't want to waste the public discussion time with.

One thing was that I'd love to get a copy of all those photos used in the slide show during the dance party. Other people said this, but I'd also be happy to host them somewhere so we could all ID them. (There were a number from obscure fandoms that people wanted identified, but there are so many that the person who compiled them couldn't offhand.)

The other thing was subtitles on vids. Someone requested that these be made available. The concom said this would be extremely difficult, but they'd keep it in mind. They're right: adding text to videos can be a huge pain in the ass, and it's something that would be hard to require of vidders. But that wasn't my real question: my real question was why audience members wanted this. I don't get it. It sounded like people wanted subtitles of the song lyrics because they have trouble parsing song lyrics while watching a vid.

I'd love to see people elaborate on exactly what it is that they want and what effect they think the subtitles would have on their enjoyment. I could certainly add text to my videos, but plain subtitles are ugly, and I am not convinced they will have whatever effect it is people are looking for.

If this is just a desire to understand the lyrics better, I am also curious what effect people think that would have on their enjoyment.

I understand lyrics fine, and I think there were some vids in the show that, sadly, just didn't work all that well due to length or placement or the total show content; I'm wondering if people were picking up on this and thinking that understanding the lyrics would have fixed it. A successful vid needs to take into account an audience that knows the song perfectly and an audience that can't understand a single word at the same time. My own vid used a song in Spanish. Most vids go by so fast that the kind of subtitles you get on a movie would be extremely distracting (and movie subtitles/closed captioning are usually summaries, not full translations/transcripts anyway).

I could add more text to my vids, but I'd like to have a better idea of what the point is before I take the time. I guess I shouldn't have skipped the accessibility panel after all, huh? ;)

Comments

[bookshop]

did kat deliver my hug! *important questions*

[kinetikatrue]

Kat definitely gave Franzi hugs ...but forgot to say any of them were from you. Tired Kat was tired. 8(

[bookshop]

haha, no worries. HUGS WERE DELIVERED, this is the important piece. :D

[franzeska]

Hee!

[franzeska]

Ha ha ha. I was about to say.

[kinetikatrue]

I was just really focussed ...on other stuff. Like bugging you. XD

(I did totally think 'I am giving Franzi hugs as directed', though. I just didn't have an awful lot of words left at that point. So I was rationing them.)

[ultrapeach]

Hum well... with the subtitles thing. I like it when someone posts a vid online with a copy of the lyrics beneath because I am crap at hearing and watching at once (multitasking!?). In fact, I often feel like I missed out on a bunch of nuance because of this. Although... it's usually because visual things are my weakness so having subtitles beneath it would mean I'd miss out on even more than usual. xD
So I have no idea. But it could indeed be because of the lyrics thing.

[elynross]

Yeah, I'd rather have a copy of the lyrics provided -- but that's a lot to ask of a concom, not to mention expense. I find subtitles distracting, because I focus on the text, not the visuals. I guess I figure I can always look up the lyrics later.

[franzeska]

Would that be helpful at the vidshow itself (i.e. as a handout)? It does seem like a pain for the concom, but I don't think it would be all that difficult for the vidders ourselves.

[elynross]

Well, I'm generally good without, because as I said, I can always look them up later (and hopefully watch again, later). I have to say, now that I'm actually thinking about it, providing lyrics would seem wasteful of paper/money, and you can't generally see them very well in a vidshow, and it might seem odd to have them just for some, not for all -- in which case, someone would have to collate them, and... yeah. *g* I do appreciate it when vidders provide the lyrics when they post online, but I think in general I'm good without, at cons.

It is nice to have lyrics provided for DVD sets, though.

[franzeska]

That had never occurred to me before, but yeah: that would be a cool thing to have on DVD sets. If and when I eventually get around to sticking my stuff on a proper DVD, I'm going to have to remember that.

[pocketmouse]

I haven't been to Con.txt in a while, but they do provide a list of the vids, don't they? I can't remember if that has song info on it, but the song title and band name ought to be enough to enable most people to look up the lyrics later if they wanted them.

[cesy]

It had the vid title but not the song title or band name.

[pocketmouse]

OK! Yeah, adding title & artist would be useful there.

[the_shoshanna]

Ditto; having subtitles on the vid as I was watching it would significantly reduce my ability to enjoy the vid.

[franzeska]

What about vids that incorporate a lot of text? Are those distracting, or does it just depend on how well the vidder did it?

[the_shoshanna]

If the text constitutes the image -- that is, if the picture we're supposed to be looking at happens to be composed of text; does that make sense? -- then no, it's not distracting, because it is itself the thing that a distraction would be distracting me from, you know?

But if there are regular old scenes from TV/movies/anime/whatever playing on the screen, and then a line or two of text at the bottom or top that do nothing but reproduce the lyrics track, my ability to see and parse the imagery (which is not always high to begin with) is significantly reduced. Actual experiment, i.e., the supertitled vids at Vividcon's Karaoke show, has proved this.

If there's incidental text among the imagery, I'm very likely to pick it out. When I watched obsessive24's vid Climbing Up the Walls, the signs that are briefly visible reading "Haven" and "Dead End" weighed greatly in my understanding of it.

[franzeska]

That makes a lot of sense. :)

[franzeska]

Yeah, I feel like I have a better intuitive understanding of why you'd want lyrics in the vid post online. (And I should probably post a translation of that last one I did--I always appreciate that when the song isn't in a language I understand.) It's more possible to read and then go back to the vid, rewatch, etc. in that format too. I just find the idea of doing subtitles at a con showing kind of weird, but multiple people were requesting it, so it's at least worth thinking about...

[melannen]

I enjoy vids a lot more if I'm not sitting there trying to figure out what the singer is saying at the same time I'm trying to parse the video - and since I'm really, really bad at understanding lyrics in unfamiliar songs (especially certain genres, such as 90% of rock music) that means any vid where I don't already know the song or have the lyrics in front of me is a vid I'm not enjoying as much as I could be. If there was a subtitled room, I would probably watch there.

On the other hand, I have learned to treat vids to songs like that as if they're vids to instrumental songs with incidental wailing, and there's something to be said for the experience. (How well it works depends on the individual vid, and I think unfortunately several of the vids at that show did kind of depend on me understanding lyrics that I had no clue about. Also I agree that several of the vids in the show would have been approved by substantial cuts, but that is a different issue.) So I'm not strongly in favor, but it would be something I'd use.

Saying that a successful vid should work for people who can't understand the lyrics is a little strong, I think. There's a vidding style that's been in vogue lately that de-emphasizes relying directly on lyrics, but there are some things that are really cool that depend on that, and some vidding styles I love that use it heavily.

I'm not sure how much a lyric sheet would help, though, because it wouldn't really work well to read a sheet in the dark while also watching the vids. Offering one well ahead of the vid show - like you offered the warning sheet - only to people who request one and are okay with spoilers - might actually be the best compromise for me. If I can familiarize myself with the lyrics before watching it, I can understand them better.

[franzeska]

Yeah, that's fair. I usually vid assuming people won't understand the lyrics, even if I'm doing something that depends on them. My experience is that most people don't know most songs I'm going to use, and that, at a con show, most people who are "good" at deciphering lyrics are only going to reliably catch a repeated chorus, never mind anyone who has trouble with lyrics.

Was that Thor vid to I Just Had Sex one of the ones you're thinking of that required the lyrics?

[melannen]

Yes! And the Soccer Practice one. Both of those were songs with fairly intelligible lyrics (and vids I'd seen before), at least for a hearing person, though. Comedy does tend to be more likely to depend on lyrics - but comedy songs are more likely to have intelligible lyrics, too. It's possible some of the others might have been just as clever if I'd had any idea what they were saying.

When I'm watching vids online, I usually end up watching it once, going "hmm, has potential," googling the lyrics, and then watching again with the lyrics up beside it. I usually enjoy it a lot more the second time.

[franzeska]

Heh. Yeah, I've done that too, and I'm usually pretty good with lyrics. A lot of singers are just really freakin' hard to understand.

[akacat]

I actually had a fair bit of trouble making out the lyrics in both of those songs -- though I got enough of them to enjoy the vids overall.

Having a lyric sheet, or links to the lyrics on the con website, available ahead of time would be a nice extra, I think.

[duskpeterson]

Hey, I'm sorry I didn't have more of a chance to chat with you at the con - thanks for saying hi. I looked for you after the panel, but my mind forgets faces roughly thirty seconds after seeing them, and I didn't sight your badge after that. (Bad eyesight. That's also why I couldn't read your badge when you said hello to me.) Maybe we could get together to talk at the next Con.txt?

"I'd love to see people elaborate on exactly what it is that they want"

I know that a deaf participant at the con mentioned afterwards at their journal that they'd like subtitles added, and who knows how many deaf folks aren't attending the con because the con isn't fully accessible to them.

I don't particularly like subtitles, because they strain my partially sighted eyes (yeah, I know I should simply not look at them, but they're text - I can't resist text), but maybe there's some way to offer accessibility while not distracting participants who dislike subtitles.

[franzeska]

Hi! It was nice to see you, if only for a minute. :) I think we actually weren't in the same spot all that much after I introduced myself.

That's interesting to hear. The way I usually think about vidding, I'd have assumed my vids were unavoidably inaccessible to a deaf viewer since I tend to vid to the overall sound and vocal quality more than the lyrics.

[duskpeterson]

"I'd have assumed my vids were unavoidably inaccessible to a deaf viewer since I tend to vid to the overall sound and vocal quality more than the lyrics."

I wonder what the visual way would be of indicating that? Because I watched a couple of your vids with the sound off, and without any additional material to indicate the music, the vids could have been trailers, for all I could tell.

if the song says 'my heart I'd on fire' I'd better see flames

[morgandawn]

I think what makes vids truely transformative is the combination of music and clips. Without the other, it is just a song or random clips.

the focus on lyrics is only one type of vid style - even disregarding instrumental and foreign language vids, many vidders ignore - or at least minimize - what the lyrics are saying. And sometimes for that l am grateful.

Re: if the song says 'my heart I'd on fire' I'd better see flames

[duskpeterson]

"Without the other, it is just a song or random clips."

With the necessary disclaimer that I have far less experience in vid-viewing than most of the people here: Certainly many vids depend heavily on the interaction between images and lyrics - or, as in Franzeska's case, images and music. But again, this depends on the particular vid; I think that would have been able to follow the storyline of TJonesy and Killa's "Closer," even with the sound off. In that case, the interaction of song and images is ideal, but not absolutely necessary - the biggest transformation comes with the ordering and alteration of the visuals.

Back at the beginning of the last decade, my eyesight was poor enough that I had to listen to television without looking at the screen. Eventually, out of frustration, I switched over to radio drama, but the TV listening was certainly an interesting exercise in learning how different television programs place different degrees of importance on the visual element of the script.

[cesy]

One of the complications is that there are many more people who are hard of hearing but not totally deaf. So, for example, they may be able to hear enough of the music to get the genre and mood, but can't make out the lyrics or any details. In those cases, the vids like "I Just Had Sex" and "Soccer Practice" become baffling - you can't tell why everyone else is laughing. There is a genre of comic vids that do rely on clear lyrics to a funny song, or where the transformative element relies on at least understanding more of the chorus than the title on the vid sheet, and there are a fair number of people who aren't deaf but who would miss half the jokes. And in at least some of those cases, the benefit of getting the joke because there's a subtitle there outweighs the visual ugliness. So it would make sense as a per-vid choice by the vidder. Another example is thingswithwings' Finite Simple Group (of Order Two) - it works a lot better if you can hear the lyrics, or have a copy in front of you in some form when you watch it, or have heard the song before.

[antimony]

There is very little that subtitles don't make better for me.

Then again, my audio comprehension is laughably bad, especially for music while shiny things move on-screen. I once whined at an anime showing after we'd been through at least a dozen episodes that it was too bad the opening credit song didn't have subtitles, because it would be nice to know what it was saying. Evidently it was, um, in English. Granted, Japanese-singer-English, but still, I hadn't even noticed.

I tend to watch vids either of songs I know well or canons I know really well, where I can focus on trying to hear the lyrics. Sometimes the basic plot of the song is important, and I'm quite honestly not going to always get that from just audio.

ETA: also, while a good vid may be one that is awesome without hearing the lyrics, I'm going to try and audially-squint (seriously there needs to be a word for that!) and hear them, and then just get frustrated as everything blurs. Foreign-language vids bother me less, because I can give up understanding.

[franzeska]

Man, there really should be a word for that.

[cinco]

Hi! Just coming in to say that I am delighted I met you at the con (and helped create the BESTEST VID EVAR) and hope you don't mind if I friend you at light speed.

As for subtitled lyrics, my feelings are pretty much what melannen said in her first paragraph. I am bad at understanding song lyrics, and having them on the screen for me really improves my vid experience. I don't find that they affect my visual appreciation of the vid. Some vidders offer both subtitled and unsubtitled versions, and given that option I'll choose subtitled every time. That said, I am happy to watch vids with or without subtitles--the ones with are just a little easier for me on the first watching. I wouldn't be very interested in a lyrics page, as it would be too hard to read it while watching the vid, although I do occasionally go look up the lyrics after watching one.

[franzeska]

Truly, it is the bestest EVAR! :D :D

[morgandawn]

I know age and poor sound quality at convention vid shows may be partially behind the desire for subtitles. I think in the demand driven world, many fans wish they could attend live events and hit a button that would allow a customized vid show - only slash vids, subtitles, no country western and no spiders. But that is the difference between a live performance and sitting at home in front of the tv or computer.

at home we use subtitles constantly because I am starting to experience hearing loss. But since vids are - to me - more like poetry than prose, subtitles would change the live viewing experience into live reading experience.

[franzeska]

One suggestion I saw was to have the vidshow available on DVD for viewing in the con suite the next day (CON.TXT doesn't do a con DVD at the moment). That seems like a good place to include subtitles and the most elegant solution to the problem to me, but who knows.

I guess being a much, much less lyrics-focused vidder than some, I--like you--am having a hard time believing subtitles won't just change the experience without giving the desired effect (which is to replicate the experience had by someone who can catch the lyrics better).

I did find that for that one vid I did to 'Jack U Off' by Prince, credits were a huge help in making it funny. You really don't need to know what 90% of the lyrics are as long as you can catch the song title/main repeated line. The sound at MWC wasn't vastly better than at BASCon (though I did turn the sound on that song way, way up relative to the other vids on my DVD and it was still awfully quiet), but having a cheesy moving title at the beginning where each of the words slid into place primed everyone, and it got a way better reaction.

[cesy]

Yeah, it makes a big difference whether the vid is lyrics-focused or not - there are some vids where the lyrics are barely relevant and subtitles aren't needed.