In case you ever uploaded a video to Google Video and didn’t get the memo that they’re shutting down, here’s a copy of the email from Google yesterday:

Dear Google Video User,

Later this month, hosted video content on Google Video will no longer be available for playback. Google Video stopped taking uploads in May 2009 and now we’re removing the remaining hosted content. We’ve always maintained that the strength of Google Video is its ability to let people search videos from across the web, regardless of where those videos are hosted. And this move will enable us to focus on developing these technologies further to the benefit of searchers worldwide. [*Google Video is shutting down as a content host but will continue as a video search.]

On April 29, 2011, videos that have been uploaded to Google Video will no longer be available for playback. We’ve added a Download button to the video status page, so you can download any video content you want to save. If you don’t want to download your content, you don’t need to do anything. (The Download feature will be disabled after May 13, 2011.)

We encourage you to move to your content to YouTube if you haven’t done so already. YouTube offers many video hosting options including the ability to share your videos privately or in an unlisted manner. To learn more go here.

Here’s how to download your videos:

Go to the Video Status page.
To download a video to your computer, click the Download Video link located on the right side of each of your videos in the Actions column.

Once a video has been downloaded, “Already Downloaded” will appear next to the Download Video link.

If you have many videos on Google Video, you may need to use the paging controls located on the bottom right of the page to access them all.

Please note: This download option will be available through May 13, 2011.

Thank you for being a Google Video user.

Sincerely,

The Google Video Team

Google Video was the pioneer in closed-captioning Internet videos. They first introduced closed-captioning for Google Video on September 19, 2006. I was one of the first people in the world to use the technology when I publish my closed-captioned Google Video on October 4, 2006. Google then bought YouTube on October 9, 2006. They later introduced YouTube Captions and Subtitles on September 22, 2008, and I didn’t find out about it until May 7, 2009, when I uploaded my first closed-captioned video on  YouTube.

Since then, I went back and closed-captioned all my spoken videos on YouTube and I continue to closed-caption the videos I upload to my YouTube channel.

I was criticized by a deaf person for posting a one-minute long closed-captioned spoken video on YouTube the other day. The deaf person said that they were disappointed that I didn’t sign my video and that, being a sign language interpreter, I “represent the deaf community.” This is my response, signed and closed-captioned.

I created this video on October 3, 2006, and at the time, I was one of the first handful of people in the world to publish a video using Google Video’s new closed-captioning implementation. I just found out that YouTube now supports the same method (which makes sense, since they were bought by Google a couple of years ago). Apparently, though, YouTube has been supporting this closed-captioning method since Fall 2008. Who knew? Anyway, since this method of closed-captioning is now supported here, I’m uploading my old Google Video movie with its accompanying closed-caption file so people can view it via the more popular and extensible YouTube.

This is me singing Cole Porter’s song “I Concentrate on You.” I used YouTube’s “Captions and Subtitles” feature to upload a subtitle file. I hand-coded the subtitle file in BBEdit using the subtitle (.sub) format. To view the video with captions, click the up-arrow button on the bottom-right corner of the screen and choose CC, English: English captions.

When I signed on to YouTube this morning, I noticed a new feature called Annotations that allows you to add Speech Bubbles, Notes, and Spotlights to your videos. I realized right away that the first two of these types of annotations gave me a way to caption my videos. They don’t allow for “closed” captioning; everyone who views the video sees them by default. There is a mechanism people can use, though, to turn them off while viewing them by clicking on the Menu button at the bottom of the player.

This morning, I captioned a video that I recorded on Mother’s Day. At the time of this writing, it seems that you can only see the captions if you view the video on YouTube. YouTube says that, once they get this feature out of beta, they will support embeds, meaning that the annotations will show up when videos are shared in blogs, on Facebook, and the like.

Although it was time-consuming (it took me about 45 minutes to an hour to caption a one-minute-forty-five-second [1:45] video), the graphical user interface (GUI) was rather intuitive. From my first experience using YouTube’s Annotations, I am certainly willing to use them again. Hooray for an easier way to caption videos!

One of the first people I saw when I got to the CIT conference on Wednesday was Jared Evans of DeafRead. We went out to lunch together and discussed blogging, vlogs, captioned videos, and voice acting (voiceover) for ASL videos. He’s just as nice and smart a guy as I felt he was from his blogs and vlogs.

I must say I’m a bit frustrated by the fact that there’s no sound in the video even though I uploaded the video with sound. I uploaded it as a QuickTime movie (.MOV). I don’t know if that made the difference or not. If anyone can help me make sure the videos I upload retain their audio track, please leave a comment. It was also a bit frustrating that the captioning did not appear as soon as Google said it was finished “processing” my video. I waited about 15-20 minutes for the captions to appear when I played the video (I kept refreshing), but it was after midnight and I really had to go to bed. In the morning, at about 6:30 AM, I watched my video again, and the captions were there.

Anyway, this was a successful experiment from the standpoint of captioning. The one mistake I made was typing one of my time codes with a period, rather than a colon, between the minutes and seconds. This made the time code show up in the captions. I corrected the captioning text and re-uploaded it.

For those interested in captioning, what I did was open a new file in BBEdit, and typed in my captions using the SubViewer format described in this Google Video Help Center Topic: How do I enter captions or subtitles? This entailed watching the video for a few seconds, pausing it, and then typing the time code showing the beginning time and ending time of that section with a line underneath the time code transcribing what I said during that section. (My QuickTime video shows the hours, minutes, and seconds wherever the playhead is at the moment.)

I saved the file with “Unicode UTF-8, No BOM” encoding. Here are the contents of the captioning text:

0:00:00.000,0:00:04.000
Hi! I’m Daniel Greene. I’m a sign language interpreter,

0:00:04.500,0:00:08.000
and I’m excited about a new feature on Google Video

0:00:08.500,0:00:11.000
that allows you to add closed captioning to your videos.

0:00:11.500,0:00:16.000
Now, I can sign, so deaf people can watch my videos and know what I’m saying

0:00:16.500,0:00:19.000
— if they know ASL —

0:00:19.500,0:00:24.000
but, if you don’t sign, and you want to share with deaf people what you’re saying,

0:00:24.500,0:00:27.000
then you’ll have to caption your videos.

0:00:27.500,0:00:30.000
Now, if you caption them with open captioning,

0:00:30.500,0:00:33.000
then anybody can see the captions, and some people find that distracting.

0:00:33.500,0:00:37.000
But if you add closed captions,

0:00:37.500,0:00:40.000
then no one will see the captions unless they click on a special icon that says

0:00:40.000,0:00:43.00
“CC” for “Closed Captioning.”

0:00:44.000,0:00:47.000
That way, deaf people can understand what you’re saying,

0:00:47.500,0:00:50.000
they can follow your videos,

0:00:50.000,0:00:54.000
and deaf people that don’t know sign language can follow your videos—

0:00:54.500,0:00:58.000
let’s say if you’re doing a sign language video or a video in ASL.

0:00:58.500,0:01:00.000
So, I made this brief video

0:01:00.500,0:01:04.000
so that I could get some practice in closed-captioning my videos

0:01:04.500,0:01:09.000
and so that I could join my deaf colleagues in supporting the captioning of videos on the Internet.

0:01:09.500,0:01:16.000
You see, there have been closed captions on television programs since…

0:01:16.500,0:01:17.000
…the early ’70s,

0:01:17.500,0:01:20.000
and that allowed a lot of deaf audience members

0:01:20.500,0:01:24.000
to participate in the television viewing audience.

0:01:25.000,0:01:28.000
But, now that there’s a lot of video on the Internet,

0:01:28.500,0:01:32.500
suddenly deaf people are feeling like they’re back in the old ages

0:01:33.000,0:01:36.000
before the ’70s before closed captioning came out,

0:01:36.500,0:01:41.000
because now a lot of video’s out there on the Internet with out any captioning at all.

0:01:41.500,0:01:47.000
So, I’m creating this video in support of this closed captioning,

0:01:47.500,0:01:50.000
and also so that I can, uh, learn how to do it!

0:01:51.000,0:01:53.000
Hope you enjoy.

This is what happens when you have the slightest error in your captioning text. The numbers at the bottom are not supposed to show up — they are time codes — but they showed up because I accidentally typed “0:01.28.500″ instead of “0:01:28.500.”

And what about for yourself, when you’re sitting at your cubicle at work and you want to watch some Internet video but can’t turn up the volume lest you disturb your neighbor? Yes, I bet my fellow “hearing” people would like captioning on Internet videos, too!

Just think about how closed captioning — something originally created for deaf people — has changed your life. You now can watch multiple televisions in airports, bars, at the gym– all by reading the captions that were put there ostensibly for “the hearing impaired”! Think about all the words you’ve learned to spell, all the late nights you’ve been able to sit up and watch TV without disturbing your roommates or family. And what would life be like if we didn’t learn what the words were for all those sounds we took for granted, like the “mewling” of kittens, or the “tittering” of swallows?

I joined Google Video this evening, and made my first video. It took me about 45 minutes to caption a two-minute video; granted, it was my first attempt. I uploaded my video to Google, and I added the captions. After Google finishes processing my video, I will blog it here.

Thanks to Jared Evans for posting the entry Google Video Has Captions Now!!!