Prince, if there is already a program that does this same thing, then that's actually good to know. If this program doesn't work well for people, K M player might be worth a look as well. I'm certainly not setting out to compete with other programs that do this same thing, I just tossed this one together to fill a specific need someone had. Ideally we would have a list of sub title reading programs, so that people could find out which one they prefer. Nin mentioned V player also.
Sebby, I'm just pulling the sub title information from the included SRT file. Most movie files that you download come with a separate file that contains the sub title data. Other movies embed the text into the actual picture of the movie, and I'm completely avoiding those types. You are correct though, some form of OCR would be required to turn the picture of text into something the computer could speak. I've done such things in the past, but they are always a fair amount of work, and it would be buggy since each movie that does that probably used different font sizes and styles.
I'm not big into watching downloaded movies, so I only have 2 SRT files to experiment with for this. Some of you may know more about this so I'll post the questions here. Some of the entries will have special markings, and I am not sure how (or if) they should change how the screen reader reads them. Here are 3 examples:
{\a6}Please do not stream this episode
I've found a few entries that begin with this weird {\a6} mark.
- There's an extra player.
Some lines begin with a dash, and I haven't figured out what makes them different from ones that don't.
<i>Sorry, I'm late.</i>
These are the italicized tags for web pages so I get the idea that this text should be italicized visually on the screen for sighted viewers. How should I handle this with screen readers? Should it begin by just saying "Italicized"? Or should I just ignore the tags?
Kook_turk, I once had the same idea years ago, and I had wanted to do that with the Stargate TV series. The usual SRT subtitle files are pretty much meant for sighted people who are only needing a little help understanding what is being said. There is nothing stopping us from developing our own format that is actually designed with the blind in mind. It rhymes, Yay! My plan was still going to just use screen reader text, but the same thing could be done using MP3s recorded by other people that would replace the text.
I don't know how much of this is what you were already thinking, but for the Stargate thing I was thinking of having these categories of data:
- The scene
- The crowd
- History
- Fun facts
I didn't have any plans for actual subtitles as the people spoke, because I assumed viewers would be watching the show in their native language. Stargate has a rich storyline, so the last 2 categories might not fit as well into some shows and movies.
Before I continue, this was just an idea I had so it probably has some major holes in it. This also isn't a planned project or anything, it is just me sharing since we are on the topic. If this helps inspire others to jump in and polish up the idea then that's great, and if it inspires someone (even me I suppose) to build this once the idea is finished, then that's even more excellent!
Imagine as you watched the show (or listened to an MP3 version of it) you would hear the screen reader chime in to tell you the scene as it changed during the show. That would be a short summary such as "Control room of ancient ship". Press a key and it reads off a description (assuming of course that one exists). The description could be as vague or as detailed as the author wanted it to be, because the viewer could pause the show to hear it if they wished. Also those short summaries could be disabled with a key in case they were distracting from the show itself.
At any time during the show you could press a key to hear the history. Once again this would only show up if an entry existed for this portion of the show, but it would explain any history related to the current situation. In Stargate, if the main characters were just talking about Replicators boarding the ship, the history entry could explain a summary of what they are and any major events that they have played a role in, in previous episodes. Think of that as a wiki page, and it could probably just be fed a web address and have the program read the web page's contents when you want to hear the history.
Fun facts would work very much the same way. Now that I'm typing it out I realize it is so similar to history that it could probably be combined. I'm also feeling like something is missing with the current idea, so perhaps others can fix it.
This was planned out especially for Stargate, but the same idea would have worked well in most series and large-scale movies. StarTrek, Doctor Who, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and those types of stories could probably benefit from having history and facts at the viewer's fingertips to help catch them up to speed in case they are forgetting something from the past that's important now.
Back on topic with the actual Wade Machine... The current version is giving him a runtime error when he opens his MP3, but I can't get mine to error even when I use the same file he is opening. Is anyone else getting any errors, or is anyone else having it work perfectly? I'm going to add in extra debug commands to help narrow down the source of the bug.
- Aprone
Please try out my games and programs:
Aprone's software