Hi Timmy

I am enjoying the new captions (subtitles) feature enourmously. As
well as the
critical advantges for the deaf and hard of hearing, and the
internationalisation
effect...

I am a language teacher and I think that it will be a great help to
language
learners to see subtitles, both in the target language and their own.

Suggestions

1) Please put the subtitles in the black border around the
"letterbox"
When the uploaded video is letter boxing, because it is in HD format,
and there is
an area of black below the video then please put the subtitles in the
black
border below rather than put them over the video area.

2) VisualSubSync *Open Source* Freesoft
I tried Subtitle Workshop and it is very good but VisSubSync is even
better because
it shows a picture of the sound waveform which really helps with
timings. It is also
free software. This is the homepage
http://www.visualsubsync.org/
It also has the advantage of being Open Source Software, unlike
Software Workshop
which could become commercial software in subsequent versions. Anyway
to all subtitlers,
I really recommend it.

3) A Subtitling Forum
One of the advantages of Subtitle Workshop over VisSubSync is that the
former has
a forum, where I started a thread on Subtitling for Youtube
http://www.urusoft.net/forum/viewtopic.php?id=5648
Subtitling is quite technical and there is a lot of room for
cooperation so I would be
grateful of the creation of a caption/subtitling group here.

4) A text link and URL for subtitled videos
As rewboss points out the way to turn on captions with the up arrow
and "cc" is
far from apparent. So, could we have a text link to subtitles too,
perhaps in the
expanded details area with the names of the languages underneath a
heading?
That way we could send people a link to a subtitled video and not have
to tell
them how to turn subtitles on. I am thinking of something along the
lines of "&cc=1"
And as kasvayksin says, it is important to be able to set subtitles by
default.

5) Change subtitles without changing interface language (shugdenwss
says this too)
At the moment the subtitles follow the interface language. The Youtube
interface
laguage is notoriously difficult to set (it wanders). While language
learners may
want to see subtitles in another (the video) language, they may not
want to change
their Youtube GUI language. If text links were integrated or even if
not, it would
be nice to be able to set the subtitle language independent of the
quit language.
I am thinking of something along the lines of "&hl=en&cc=ja" for
Japanese subtitles
on an English language interface.

6) Two sets of subtitles.
This is something for the future but, for language learners it would
be nice to
be able to display two sets of subtitles at once. This would be
possible especially
if the ability to use the black border around letter boxed high vision
were possible
(see 1 above) with one set of subtitles above the video and another
set below.

7) Subtitle Horse online subtitling
As whizz4u has said on this thread, it would be nice to be able to
make subtitles online
This is possible at the web page
http://subtitle-horse.org/
Perhaps you could either buy this organisation! Or add similar
functionality to Youtube.

8) Subtitle new line a bit too frequent.
The Youtube subtitle line length is very short and goes onto two lines
too frequently,
more than both Subtitle Workshop and VisualSubSync. As someone else
says on this
thread, it would be nice if Youtube followed one of these two software
packages,
ideally the latter. But in any event, please make the subtitle line
length a bit longer.

9) Subtitling competion
To increase awareness of the feature how about a subtitling competion?

10) Subtitles from others
As Philoinfo and the DeafAlien say, if the video owner allows it, the
ability to upload
subtitles on other people's videos and to ask for subtitles to be
uploaded on one
own videos. Sure this can be abused but so can comments.

11) Text with autotiming
As RabdonFilms says, text would be cool. Subtitle Workshop offers the
ability to
load text and then set timings accordign to millisecond per word,
character or
perhaps line. Then people could just use textfiles for simple
subtitles, one line
per subtitle.

12) Translation!
Lathermiah's suggestion of google translations of subtitles is
excellent! Thank
you Lathermiah.

Subtitling chaning Youtube for the better. Thank you Youtube.

Tim
PS other than my top post, a lot of my more recent vids have subtitles
http://uk.youtube.com/user/timtak1