What happened to the video transcripts? Why were they removed?
I found them incredibly helpful when quickly reviewing the videos for a quick study hit. Much easier to see everything at once instead of forwarding and rewinding the videos to find the exact topic that I want to brush up on.
I was just using the transcripts last night and now they’re gone.
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Yes, the lost of video transcripts is very disappointing. I like to read through them ahead of time to complete the provided the notes. And then I listen to and watch the videos to get information further into my brain.
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Welcome to the ARE Community, @mhardeman and @jan.c.concepcion! We are happy to have you here and thank you for writing in.
Our team is currently making some adjustments to our website, so the video transcripts are turned off at the moment. We apologize for any inconveniences this has caused.
If you experience further issues during your studying, please don’t hesitate to reach out to support@blackspectacles.com or use the chat box in the lower right corner of your dashboard.
Have a great weekend, and happy studying!
Kiara Galicinao, AIA, NCARB
Black Spectacles
That’s really disappointing. When will be the video transcripts turned on? I am expecting this function can be used again.
Please, people have deadlines! How is this just turned off all of a sudden for days? Could the team at least make the transcripts available in a temporary format?
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Unbelievable! Please bring them back on quickly. We’re all wanting to pass our next exam and not having it really disrupts the way we’ve been studying. Please!
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Hi everyone!
Thanks for writing in. At this time, the lecture video transcripts have been removed from the platform, not specifically due to a website update. This change is site-wide and affects all users, regardless of their subscription plan.
However, closed captioning is available on all videos to support your learning experience. You can activate these captions using the ‘CC’ button located in the bottom right corner of the videos.
We appreciate you all sharing your thoughts regarding the video transcripts. We are glad to hear that they have aided your studying, as this feedback will help us make decisions moving forward.
As always, don’t hesitate to reach out to support@blackspectacles.com or use the chat box in the lower right corner of your dashboard if you have any further questions or concerns.
Best,
Kiara Galicinao, AIA, NCARB
Black Spectacles
Closed captioning isn’t the same as the transcripts. It does not serve the same purpose or functionality, and as many of us have pointed out, the loss of the transcripts is a significant loss of functionality. If you are trying to lose clients, deleting useful functions is a great way to do it. Please stop beating around the bush and tell us when the technical team will turn the transcripts back on! Technical teams have road maps - can you please reference it and tell us?
Some of us have exams scheduled and would very much like to use the content and associated transcripts we have paid for.
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Missing the transcripts is a big change. Please bring them back. Transcripts were a major accessibility feature and the loss of them is not going unnoticed. Closed captions don’t provide the same level of accessibility.
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I agree with my peers above, the closed captions function extremely different from the transcripts and don’t provide the same level of accessibility. Please bring back the transcripts!
Hello everyone-
First, video transcripts are back as of today.
Second, thanks for your feedback relating to their usefulness. I was the person behind this change, and to be honest, I had no idea how valuable they were to you. We introduced transcripts back in 2014, somewhat unintentionally, and just kept doing it. It seemed to me that the closed captioning would suffice, but indeed I was wrong. I apologize to those of you who were affected by this change.
As we’re growing as a company sometimes we make mistakes, and when we do we always try to learn from them. I learned that I should have asked our Product Collective members to give us feedback on making this change, before we made it, and going forward we’ll make sure that we do that.
Thanks to all of you for your support, apologies again for this mistake, and I wish you all of the best with your studies!
With warm regards,
Marc
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Marc,
Thank you so much for your attention to this and for taking the time to respond.
It’s refreshing to see a company, and the company’s founder at that, actually read feedback posted and react to it. The return of the transcripts is much appreciated.
Thanks for all that you and Black Spectacles have done, and continue to do, for the architecture community.
Now, back to studying!
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Thank you for returning the texts, but we also hope you will return the ability to copy and paste again, as this helps me copy the words and translate them to understand the content. You can also add a translation to the video in several languages, which allows many people to understand the video faster.
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I like that idea relating to languages, what language(s) should we add?
Arabic is my language
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