Closed Captioning - what happened?

Hello fellow Mythical Beasts,

I hope it's alright to make this topic.

I'm deaf and I'm from Europe. I've been enjoying GMM for over a year since I discovered that they're captioning their videos. But now since June I can't really enjoy their videos anymore because... the videos aren't being captioned anymore.

I did some research and found vague rumors on Twitter that the captioning team has apparently quit although I read some people wanted to apply for captioning but didn't get accepted. I think that's very sad, especially for those with hearing disabilites as well for those whose native language isn't English.

For now I can only enjoy the old videos which are already captioned but it makes me really sad not being able to watch the new content anymore.

I wished Rhett and Link and their production team were aware of this problem.

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K-ModPermalink Reply by Kevin (UniSeal) on October 17, 2016 at 8:17pm

GMM captions are done through http://amara.org, which restricts editing to a group of approved members. If you really want to jump in, all you would need to do is create an Amara account and get added to the GMM Captioning Team there.

I believe new crew member John, who we recently met in a GMMore episode, is going to be in charge of the caption team now. He joined Amara recently as a team admin, so I'd suggest sending him a message here: http://amara.org/en/profiles/profile/john.warder/

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Permalink Reply by Link_McAllanFX (Seaghánaggarty) on October 17, 2016 at 8:21pm

Awesome! Let's see if we can get this back on track! :)

It's an invitation only group, but I was able to send off a message.

*fingers crossed*

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Permalink Reply by Link_McAllanFX (Seaghánaggarty) on October 17, 2016 at 10:58pm

That didn't take long. I've been accepted to the group and John just has to get coordinated with the previous person and get everything back on track.

Cautiously optimistic! :)

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K-ModPermalink Reply by Kevin (UniSeal) on December 30, 2016 at 9:54pm

The captioning team received this message today announcing that Mythical Entertainment will no longer be supporting the GMM Captioning Team on Amara. Their reason is that they want to focus their efforts on other aspects of the show. It seems to me that they never could justify having an employee manage captions as a main duty, so it always was tacked onto someone's existing workload and was the first thing to be ignored when pressed for time.

Sorry to report with disappointing and what appears to be permanent news, but at least we have some closure now.

(Thanks to Carol for the below image.)

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Permalink Reply by Katie (The Crochet Sheep) on December 30, 2016 at 10:11pm

That's so sad. I understand that they want to improve other part of GMM, but without captioning, so many fans won't be able to enjoy those new improvements at all. :(

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Permalink Reply by Link_McAllanFX (Seaghánaggarty) on December 30, 2016 at 10:13pm

Yeah, saw this earlier today. Based on how long everything would take, it makes sense, but it is still a little disappointing. Oh well!

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Permalink Reply by Link_McAllanFX (Seaghánaggarty) on January 6, 2017 at 1:33am

Hey guys!

Got a little more info on all this. Apparently they're looking into alternative methods for closed captioning so they're not having to rely on fans with lives who are unable to commit to getting the captions done.

So this could actually be a good thing for GMM in terms of having subtitles available quicker...if it works out.

Not getting my hopes up too much, but there is a chance something can be worked out to have better consistency and faster turnaround time for captions.

*fingers crossed*

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Permalink Reply by Katie (The Crochet Sheep) on January 6, 2017 at 2:39pm

I sure hope you're right!

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K-ModPermalink Reply by Victoria (Centauromadoose) on January 8, 2017 at 12:59am

Here is another update about GMM's captioning that comes from YouTuber Rikki Poynter, who is a deaf community and closed captioning advocate; I believe she spurred Rhett and Link to originally start their volunteer captioning program: https://youtu.be/5m99XgfVK1g

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K-ModPermalink Reply by Victoria (Centauromadoose) on January 18, 2017 at 9:35pm

For anyone wondering, here is the latest on GMM captioning laid out in a post on the Kommunity Tumblr: http://rhettandlinkommunity.tumblr.com/post/156019167202/do-you-kno...

The summary is that GMM seems to now be using a professional captioning service called Rev, which provides captions within 24 hours. Based on what I've observed, they have been getting Rev to caption the GMM episodes in Season 11 so far, but not GMMore episodes.