Flash captions.xml Activity - Assemble Files

  1. Use the files in the "activities" folder that you've dragged from your CD to your desktop. This activity will take place in the "flash" folder.
  2. Make a copy of the QuickTime caption text file ("ahg2007.en_US.qt.txt") from the "quicktime" folder. Copy this file to the "flash" folder. Make sure the "ahg2007.swf" file is present in the Flash folder.
  3. Open the "captions.xml.txt" file by double clicking on it. It should open in Notepad.
  4. You will be typing the red, bolded text as shown below:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
     
    <flashcaptioning>
     
       <ccconfig>

          <CaptionLocation>ahg2007.en_US.qt.txt</CaptionLocation>
          <VideoLocation>ahg2007.flv</VideoLocation>
          <VideoSizeWidth>320</VideoSizeWidth>
          <VideoSizeHeight>240</VideoSizeHeight>
          <VideoTotalTime>63.71</VideoTotalTime>
          <XMLFileUsed></XMLFileUsed>

       </ccconfig>
     
    </flashcaptioning>


    Type Configuration Information

  5. In the "captions.xml" file, type the caption file name inside <CaptionLocation> tags as shown above ("ahg2007.en_US.qt.txt"), or whatever name you used to export the QuickTime caption file from MAGpie. Avoid spaces before and after the file name.
  6. Type the video file name inside <VideoLocation> tags as shown above ("ahg2007.flv"). Avoid spaces before and after the file name.
  7. Check that the video width ("320") and height ("240") values are correct inside the <VideoSizeWidth> and <VideoSizeHeight> tags as shown above. Avoid spaces.
  8. Type the video runtime in seconds ("63.71"). Hint: Video runtime in milliseconds is available in the last SYNC entry of your SAMI file (i.e., put a decimal place three digits from the right). Avoid spaces.

    9. Test Your Configuration

  9. Choose the menu item File->Save As to save the file as "captions.xml" by deleting the ".txt" file extension in the file name. This file MUST be named "captions.xml." Note: All four files ("ahg2007.flv," "captions.xml," "ahg2007.swf," and "ahg2007.en_US.qt.txt") should be in the same folder.
  10. Open your browser (i.e., Internet Explorer, Firefox), select File->Open, navigate to your "ahg2007.swf" file, and open it. This should play the video with captions in the Flash player using the full size of the browser window (resizable). Note: In Internet Explorer
    1. Select File->Open,
    2. Click the "Browse" button,
    3. Navigate to the "magpie" folder you've been working from,
    4. Select "All Files" in the Files of Type menu to see the "ahg2007.swf" file in the Open dialog box
    5. Select "ahg2007.swf" file,
    6. Click the Open button.
    7. You may also need to click on the yellow bar at the top of the window and select "Allow blocked content" so that IE will play the video.
  11. If you have time, try experimenting with different values for the metadata you edited above to see what happens. Save, repeat step 10, and see how the player reacts.

Troubleshooting

If the video doesn't work, try one or more the following modifications:

  1. Open the XML file ("captions.xml") in a text editor (Notepad, not WordPad) and use Save As to save the file in UTF-8.
  2. If you edited the XML file ("captions.xml") and saved it using Save As, check to see if Notepad appended the file extension ".txt" to the end of the file name. Delete ".txt" so that the file name contains only the characters "captions.xml".
  3. Try uploading the files to a server and run the Flash video from there.
  4. Make sure all files are in the same folder.

Notes

  1. The video compression used for this type of Flash application is the FLV type (using the ".flv" file extension). If you have a QuickTime version (a ".mov" file extension) of the video, as long as it is compressed using basically the same compression settings, you can check the video size by running the QuickTime version, selecting Window->Show Movie Inspector (Window->Show Movie Info in older versions of QuickTime), and looking at the numbers that appear after Normal Size. Otherwise, you can look at the compression settings in your compression software for the correct video size.
  2. With Flash video in particular, you will have save yourself a lot of grief if you have all your video files (.flv video file, Flash .swf file, captions, captions.xml file) in one folder.

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