2018-04-09 10:09:44

Hi.

I have for a long while wanted to show my lady some of the better tng episodes.
I know that a few were available on jef retcowski's site, but they're generally posted piecemeal, one at a time where as I'd like the lot so that I can at least pick favourites.

Blindmice mall unfortunately is weird to access since for some odd reason I can't login without having to go through the "lost pasword" Business, and last I checked I couldn't even do that (why they can't just give access to their sendspace folder I don't know).

either way if anyone  where I can get tng audio described that would be awesome!

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-04-09 13:52:32

Hi Orko.

That would be appreciated, though I'm sorry so little is available, indeed it seems odd that some episodes have been described and yet not the hole series.

I actually do have all seven seasons on dvd, along with ds9 and indeed voyager (though I admit buying voyager was probably a miner mistake since I don't know if I'll ever rewath it), however since Mrs. Dark has no vision at all doing them without any description could be slightly problematic.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-04-09 15:57:58

One thing about blindmice movie vault is that you have to buy a subscription to sendspace to use it because the downloads are so ridiculously slow its not feasible to download an entire season of something from there. Even just a movie takes a long time, and if the WiFi drops even just for a second, that's your download gone ,and you have to start all over. I wish they would put it on a service that gave you faster downloads, even if I had to subscribe, as I know that would be costly. I have no wish to subscribe to sendspace, I don't like it. 80 KB/s would be a decent download speed like 15 years ago. Yes, your cable could go faster, but that wouldn't be a bad compromise as a download limit. Now, you can't do anything on 80KB/s. They should consider raising their limit to 1MB/s. While that's still slow, its not near as bad. I am also skeptical whenever a place allows you to use a wizard to download stuff. Oh, they have a download accelerator in it, sure, but what the hell else is it doing in the background? installing toolbars onto your computer, installing Avast!. I guess if you wanted to milk sendspace, you could get a download manager, if they even still make those, and put stuff in it. Sendspace probably won't let you download in parallel, but maybe you could queue stuff up. That way you could just let it run. It would take a couple of days to get everything, especially if it downloaded one after another, but you'd get it, and the download manager would compensate for connection drops, etc.

Facts with Tom MacDonald, Adam Calhoun, and Dax
End racism
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Become united

2018-04-09 18:53:25

My theory for why there isn't a lot of described Star Trek is that the only time they were broadcast with description (which must have been years ago on Sky in the UK judging by what the description track says) whoever was recording didn't do a consistent job or lost the files. We did eventually get the original Series described because it got broadcast on SCI-Fi in the UK, and Discovery thanks to the fact Netflix got worldwide distribution rights as an original series and they do a good job describing originals. So I'm sure that someone somewhere (Sky or the company who did the description to begin with) probably still has all the episodes described. But they may not even have rights to air them anymore so maybe someone like Netflix could obtain the described episode audio tracks. I have no idea how much this would cost or what copyright messing about this would require, though.

Anyway, the way I filled in visual gaps while watching Star Trek is by looking at the scripts. This site has most of them. Sometimes, a script posted here is an earlier draft of what actually got shot so it may not be as helpful but 90% of the time this will answer any questions, at least for DS9 and TNG. There are sadly not too many Voyager scripts and nothing for Enterprise so your best bet there is to look up episode summaries on wikipedia or Memory Alpha

<Insert passage from "The Book Of Chrome" here>

2018-04-09 20:41:04

God I hate copywrite, I remember once going to  talk by the audio description service over here who explained all the hoops and the fact that descriptions had to be licensed by each redistributor. When you consider subtitles are on pretty much everything these days its quite ridiculous!

Still having a few described  episodes would be fine.

@Ironcross, in terms of the sendspace wizard, it doesn't do anything else in the background. I believe there is an option on install to install the google toolbar, but you just don't check that box and your fine.
I've been using sendspace and the wizard myself for years with no problems.

My issue with blindmice is the fact that its really difficult to get on their site and actually check their stuff, since their password system doesn't work.
I used to be able to get on by doing the "forgot password" bit each and every time I logged in, but the last couple of times I tried this didn't work either.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-04-09 20:51:33

Yeah they don't have a remember me option, which is kind of a standard for websites these days.

Ask yourself why they would offer a wizard. There aren't many non-suspicious responses I can think of. Also, and correct me if I'm wrong, but the wizard is only supposed to help you download at non-restricted speeds if you're a premium member, so the fact that it asks to install a toolbar under those conditions, if those conditions are accurate, is quite unacceptable. If I pay for premium, that means remove ads, stop nagging me, don't install auxiliary stuff.

A download manager would do all the things this wizard does, but allow you the same features on any site. That said, unless you live in a developing country, there is no need for such these days. The largest files I download off the web take only at max a minute. Things like games on steam, the largest of which are somewhere near 60GB take me about 2 hours, but Steam will do the same thing as a download manger, in that it will restart if you get disconnected or shut down Steam, etc.

Facts with Tom MacDonald, Adam Calhoun, and Dax
End racism
End division
Become united

2018-04-09 21:06:32

@Orko, I was able to get on there today using the forgot password link, but again the silly website won't remember that I have a password so I need to go through the forgot password thing each and every time.
I believe this is something to do with being in the Uk, but its pretty stupid when all I want to do is view the movie vault.

I'm really not sure what you mean by a toolbar with the sendspace wizard ironcross, its just the standard google toolbar that comes with many install packages as a standard and is more a matter of the redistributable system than the software, its easy enough to just not check the box when you install as I said, ---- hell its easy enough to uninstall the google toolbar if you don't want it anyway.

The wizard is useful for handling multiple uploads and downloads, and for being able to check and organise your files on sendspace in a very easy to use way, indeed last I checked the wizard lets you use a lot of functions which aren't accessible on the website itself such as making your downloadable files into folders, as well as have a lot of handy keyboard shortcuts for things, indeed the wizard basically is a file manager for sendspace.

Obviously the price of a subscription may or may not be worth it in terms  of how much you use sendspace, but just in terms of a piece of software the wizard doesn't cause any issues, or at least I've had it on my computer since 2010 and never had any myself.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-04-09 21:52:55

Moderation!

@Orko again calling someone a troll and saying "if you don't have something to contribute to this thread go away" is getting beyond the bounds of decency here and into the realm of personal attacks, no need to escalate the situation into flame territory especially given the altercations you and Ironcross have had recently.

Whether or not you agree with someone you can still remain civil;

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-04-09 22:28:55

Well, I've seen worse than google toolbar, and while google does mine your data, everyone does, and that's whether you're using their toolbar or whether you're using their site, or their services. At least that one's not hard to get rid of if you inadvertently install it. I guess it would be worth using it if it will let you queue up stuff, even if it lets you download one at a time, and at the slow rate, because you can just let it run until everything is done. And 80KB/s has no appreciable affect on your bandwidth, so its as if you were doing nothing at all.

A lot of things are shady these days, like sites that will use some form of javascript to mine for cryptocurrencies while you visit them. Usually kept to the more disreputable torrent sites, etc. Still, one needs to be cautious.

Facts with Tom MacDonald, Adam Calhoun, and Dax
End racism
End division
Become united

2018-04-10 00:42:36

This site has episode transcripts. They're not as detailed as scripts, but they're more accurate in terms of what was said. It also includes Enterprise and Voyager.

2018-04-10 06:34:44

You can kew uploads or downloads with the sendsspace wizard, it'll resume broken downloads too, though I am not sure how many of its functions are available without a premium ss account.

@Drak thanks for the site link, though I was more looking for actual episodes in this case complete with the acting since my lady would appreciate hearing the likes of data and Worf I think.

I've been using memory alpha for quite a while, indeed it amuses me that many of the detailed episode the plot summaries on memory alpha actually used to be on wikipedia before they started being controlling over how long plot summaries posted on their site could be.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-04-10 08:42:02

Hmmmm, I live in the UK and I have no issues logging on to blindmice at all, and it's a shame that can't get hold of TNG or DS9 with audio description, I'd also like Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis to have audio description, or if it does, does anyone know where I can get it from?

2018-04-10 08:51:53

That is odd zk.
Everytime I go to login to the site it doesn'tnot emy password and I have to go through the forgot password process, which is a pain, I assumed it was something to do with the region I was in.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-04-10 16:24:32

strange as I've never had any issues with logging in, well apart from miss typing lolI'ts

2018-04-10 18:48:15

I think its more an issue of forgotten password, rather than an issue with their site if I'm interpreting it correctly. I cannot figure why they don't have the remember me option though, its pretty standard stuff nowadays.

Also, just as an aside, I freaking hate sites that give you these ridiculous criteria for password creation. Must be at least 8 chars, contain one special symbol, one uppercase, non-repeating sequences, etc. I get that it stops people from doing stuff like "password123" and such things, but what you're doing is not helping anyone else. Now, a lot of people use password managers, and this virtually eliminates the problem, however, a lot of people also don't know about them. A lot of older people who might not have wanted to have anything to do with computers are now using them. Whether it be for ork, or whatever, they start using computers, then they might continue to use them in the home. It's at this point where they might go online and see they can buy things from Amazon, etc. Now, seeing as how they didn't really have anything to do with technology most of their lives, it follows that they aren't going to know much about security and safety online. So, what do they do when they get a website that makes them do this? They come up with something and they write... it... down! This is a big no no, writing down passwords is bad. Think of it this way, if you write down your passwords in a little booklet, you need these for your job, etc., so you are now carrying this booklet with you, or leaving it in your desk at work. Now you have a situation where someone has the opportunity to gain access to your accounts via this booklet you use to write your passwords in. The chance of such an occurrence is less if you only use the booklet in your home, but it is not nil.

People like me, who are old enough to have lived without the internet, but started using it at a fairly young age, like, in my case, around 12 years of age, and people who are millennials who have never known life without the internet will know these things. Or, well, should know them at any rate. I do technically fall into the millennial bucket as my birth year is '86, but I don't act like one, so I don't consider myself one.
So, this ridiculous password criteria, well, I see it as causing problems. Then, you forget this long, annoying password, and have to recover your account anyway. Also, consider if you grew up locked away, you were institutionalized, or somehow kept from the wider world. You may have grown up in a compound or something, but never had access to the wide world. This is what it is like wen people who don't know anything about technology suddenly are forced to use it. It isn't their fault that they don't know, because it had not been a significant part of their life up until whatever event triggered them to start using it. If you think about it, there is a certain amount of knowledge that you need to have to navigate the web safely. Having this knowledge isn't a guarantee that nothing will happen, this is true, but you can reduce the chances.

Facts with Tom MacDonald, Adam Calhoun, and Dax
End racism
End division
Become united

2018-04-10 21:22:12

This is an argument you can't win. If the site didn't enforce strong password creation, and somebody's account gets hacked, the site will be blamed for not enforcing strong passwords, the user won't get any blame for creating weak ones. So site owners are damned if they do, and damned if they don't, so they err on the side of caution and enforce strong passwords.

2018-04-11 10:54:17

In terms of Blind mice I can say that its not a forgotten password, since I go through the password recovery process, change my password and am able to view the site and movie vault, but then if I close chrome or navigate to another page and have to instantly log back in, even with the password I just wrote the site won't accept it at all.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-04-20 07:32:16

Blind Mice doesn't have TNG anyway, they just have the original series and the movies, which I find irritating by the way. It gets me so angry that there are subtitles for literally everything, but only audio descriptions when they feel like it. It's one of the biggest cases of discrimination that I can think of. However, it seems that the UK does a much better job with descriptions than the US.

Stevie-3

2018-04-20 08:23:52

Thumbs up to post 18, now that you can read subtitles in iOS 11, there is no reason why we can't have what I like to call descriptive subtitles.

Sure it's a synthesizer doing the discribing, but I'm not all that picky like most of the blind comunity.

If you think about it, you would have discribed content out a lot quicker than getting a narrator to record the discription, then mixing it in.

I think I must be the only one who likes this idea because when ever I bring it up, no one likes the idea.

Oh and you could switch to braille to read subtitles, if you're fast enough to keep up.

Not to mention, you can read along while watching with sighted people who can't stand an audio described track.

2018-04-20 08:52:50

unfortunately like everything  for some silly reason audio description involves copywrite.
the Uk description service do indeed do a good job, but for some utterly weird circumstance, the audio tracks need different licenses for different distributors, so frequently something will have one audio description track at the cinema, another completely different one on tv and another on dvd, ---- that of course when the respective tv or dvd distributors actually choose to bother.

I do agree that it is discrimination in terms of comparrison with subtitles, since as far as I am aware one set of subtitles is produced and added directly as an extra visual element then used for every iteration independent of licensing.

While I do like to only read books for pleasure with a human narrator, I probably would be willing to bend a bit in terms of synths reading audio description, assuming it could be timed with the action since manifestly the film's dialogue would still be done by actual human actors.
Heck, when I sit down with a dvd open in vlc media player and a script in the background so I can check what's happening in fast action sequences i'm pretty much doing that anyhow.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-04-20 12:18:40

The difference between closed captioning and audio description is that closed captioning is simply making the already written dialog accessible to the hearing impaired, so the studio that produced the movie owns the copyright. Audio description, however, has to be written by a writer and read by a voice actor and is usually not done by the movie studio so there could be up to three additional copyrights that have to be satisfied.

It's a mess, and I agree, it's also a form of discrimination against the visually impaired.