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Transcripts UI

Introduction

Transcripts UI provides a themeable interface for interacting with timecoded transcripts in Drupal. The module assumes a very simple data model for transcripts, which may work for you. A transcript is divided into a number of Time Code Units (TCUs). Each TCU has an optional speaker in one or more transliteration formats, a start time, and an end time. In addition, each TCU has any number of "tiers". Tiers can be anything, but by convention they are things like:

  • a transcription of what the speaker said
  • a translation of what the speaker said
  • a morpheme-by-morpheme gloss of what the speaker said

The acronym "TCU" was inspired by its use within the TalkBank system.

Installation & Configuration

Enable the transcript_ui module.

Go to admin/config/user-interface/transcripts, and define a list of tier identifiers and tier names. On that page you can also define a list of speaker display formats, also in key|label notation.

Transcripts UI generates 'Bootstrap' compatible markup, if you are using the Bootstrap theme with the Bootstrap framework. Disregard the Bootstrap classes if you are using another theme.

Creating a UI

  • To create a UI, pass your module's name along with a unique transcript identifier and some options to transcripts_ui_ui().
  • To render a UI, pass it to transcripts_ui_render().

UI Components

Transcripts UI renders an HTML element for each of its components. Each component element has a data-transcripts-id attribute set to the trid. Each component also has a data-transcripts-role attribute set to one of the following roles.

  • transcript: the element in which the transcript appears.
  • transcript-controls: controls that alter the appearance of the transcript, such as tier controls and display mode controls, as well as controls for AV playback, including buttons to play the previous, same, and next TCUs.

Your module is responsible for providing markup including an HTML 5 audio or video tag contained within an element that has the following data attributes, where TRID is a transcript id shared by other UI components. Without making this linkage, your transcript will not be synced with the media.

  • data-transcripts-id=TRID
  • data-transcripts-role=video

The default way of linking a transcript to its video is illustrated by this JavaScript file.

To override the default, implement hook_transcripts_ui_js_alter. For example, Shanti UVA's Mediabase implements the hook in order to grab a video tag from an iFrame introduced by the Kaltura player.

Your module is also responsible for retrieving transcripts for the UI; this is done by implementing hook_transcripts_ui_transcript().

Your module is then free to position and style the rendered components.

Scrolling Transcripts

A transcript will attempt to scroll within the container defined by the setContainer($container) method in transcripts-scroller.js. By default, the container is set to the transcript element itself, that is div.scroller; but this default setting can be overriden.

It is necessary to set styles on the container to support scrolling. To use the transcript itself as the scrolling container, apply the following CSS.

.scroller {
    height: 500px;
    overflow-x: auto;
    transition: all 100ms ease 0s;
}

Themeing Output

Components and sub-components can be differently themed by (a) overriding theme functions, or (b) altering render arrays. Render arrays can be altered in many ways, including adding or replacing css and js files. For more on the Scary Render Array, see Render Arrays in Drupal.

Transcript Search

Implementations of hook_transcripts_ui_transcript() may return highlights in addition to the full transcript, if a term search has occurred. A search box appears within the "transcript-controls" component. Clicking on the search button sends an AJAX request to the hook implementation, which refreshes the transcript with new search results.

Related Modules

transcripts_apachesolr is one module that makes use of transcripts_ui.

License

Like Drupal 7, Transcripts UI is licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later.

Acknowledgement

Pinedrop's work on Transcripts UI has been sponsored by:

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[4 December, 2016]