Participatory Culture Foundation

[What follows is a copy of a message I am sending to the participants of the Music Captioning team, posted here for the reason indicated in it]

Hi, Music Captioners,

On July 3rd, the Amara software was updated: see the full description by Darren Bridenbeck in http://support.universalsubtitles.org/categories/6573/forums/27539/topics/5197 .

Two changes are particularly relevant for the Music Captioning team:

I) Amara is "no longer mistakenly moderating subtitles in workflow-free teams."
This is stupendous news. It means that we'll again be able to collaborate normally, without the various moderation-caused hindrances we had to work around in June, and that in general, people who need subtitles will be able to use them without moderation blocks.
However, in at least 15 subtitle sets of videos added to Music Captioning, previously imposed moderation blocks remain. I have mentioned this on the help forum in a comment to Darren's post about the update, so hopefully, Amara will soon free these subs too.

II) Amara "restored the ability to upload unsynced TXT transcripts."
Or more precisely: after having removed the ability to simply copy paste unsyncedd transcripts on June 20 (1), Amara has replaced it now by the obligation to upload such transcripts as a .txt file.
However, as Verone Black pointed out repeatedly on the help forum, including in the comments to the announcement of the July 3 update, sometimes the accents in the uploaded .txt file get deleted in the process that transform it into unsync'd subtitles.
This change and the connected accented letters issue obtain for all Amara videos, whether added to a team or not, but they are particularly relevant for this team, where we often use existing transcripts to caption music videos, also in languages where accented letters are essential.
So hopefully, Amara will restore the former ability to add a transcript by copypaste.
Meanwhile, there is one possibility to have Amara correctly process an uploaded .txt file, keeping its accents: encode it in UTF-8. So if you can, do that.
If you can't, paste your transcript, indicating the URL of the page where you want it uploaded, in a help ticket - using http://support.universalsubtitles.org/support/tickets/new - and ask Amara to upload it as .txt for you.

In case you have questions, I am also posting a copy of this message in the help forum in http://support.universalsubtitles.org/categories/6573/forums/27539/topics/5233, where it will be easier to discuss them together in comments, than via Amara messaging.

All the best,

Claude

(1) See "Can't upload subtitles directly today" by Richard Gresswell, June 20, 2012 http://support.universalsubtitles.org/categories/6573/forums/28027/topics/5012.

Unfortunately not, Richard: I tried again just now.