Media Access Generator (MAGpie)

To caption video, some kind of video editing software is needed. There are several video editing software packages with captioning capabilities that offer varying benefits and drawbacks in their features, requirements, and installation. For those who need a tool that can work across multiple operating systems or who have budgetary constraints, the video editing software, Media Access Generator (MAGpie), may be the solution.

Features

Media Access Generator (MAGpie) is a free tool developed by the National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) for providing captions of audio and video. The features of MAGpie include:

Capable of working with several different media types including RealMedia files (RM), QuickTime movies (MOV), MPEG and AVI .
Support for Windows 98/NT/2000/XP and MacIntosh OSX (MAGpie 2.0 only).
Captioning and audio description playback support in the RealPlayer or the RealOne player.
Write, time, and record audio descriptions for digital media.
Support for Flash captioning, and collated text transcripts.
Spell check.
Segmented captioning (captions with karaoke-like effects).

Version Information

There are several versions available for the software, Media Access Generator (MAGpie). This module focuses on working specifically with MAGpie version 2.01.

MAGpie Version 1.0 was targeted to work for most Microsoft operating systems, including Windows 95/98, Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

Note: Windows ME is not mentioned.
MAGpie Version 2.01 was written in Java to enable it to work across multiple operating systems including the Mac OSX operating system.

Requirements

Before starting to use MAGpie software, you will need:

Windows 98, 2000, NT, or XP or Macintosh OSX.

Note: Macintosh OSX only works with MAGpie 2.01.
Digitized video file with audio.
Version 4.1.2 or higher of QuickTime, with the QuickTime Java component installed.
MAGpie 2.01 software.
128 MB RAM (256 MB recommended).
32-40 MB free space on the computer hard disk.

Note: The space is needed for installation of MAGpie, Quicktime, and the Java Runtime Edition.
Microphone for audio description recording (if desired).
Recent version of the Java Runtime Edition.
Oratrix GRiNS Player for MAGpie (Windows only).

Note: Oratrix is required if you wish to caption or describe media types supported by RealPlayer (which in turn requires you to also have RealPlayer 7 or newer).

You should also have:

Transcript of the video,
Web server, and
Idea of the connection speeds of the audience.

Note: When publishing video to the Internet, most likely you will be connecting to a web server; be certain to talk with the network administrator about availability of and access to a web server that can stream video files. If you are working on the web server itself, publishing the video can occur with only a few minor changes.

Installation

The installation of MAGpie 2.01 requires downloading the MAGpie software as well as three other applications. It is critical that you download and install the applications in the order indicated below because they depend upon one another.

Java Runtime Edition (JRE).
QuickTime player.
Oratrix GRiNS Player for MAGpie.

Note: Only needed if you want to caption or describe media types supported by RealPlayer.
MAGpie 2.01.

Some other important considerations on installing MAGpie 2.01 include:

Check to see if your system already has a Java Software Development Kit (JDK) or Java Runtime Environment (JRE). Because if you have multiple JREs installed on your machine, the correct execution of MAGpie will be disrupted and the the GRiNs interface will specifically be affected.

Note: If you have installed any JDK or JRE, it is suggested that you uninstall them and then re-install them later, after you have installed the necessary components for MAGpie.
Be certain that you read the installation instructions carefully.

Note: Some applications such as the QuickTime player and the GRiNs player do not follow the standard installation routine.

To install Media Access Generator (MAGpie):

Please refer to the MAGpie website for detailed documentation as well as links to download the relevant files when Installing MAGpie 2.O (browse to website) .

The next page will overview the interface of a video editing software that can be used for captioning video, Media Access Generator (MAGpie).

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Interface of MAGpie