This post will be the first in a series that replaces my existing MAGpie 2 documentation. I’m talking about MAGpie, the Media Access Generator from the National Center for Accessible Media, not the RSS parser. Right now that documentation is outside my Wordpress domain. I’m working to bring it in with the rest of my articles.
Once done with this, the next part talks about creating your caption project; the third talks about the actual caption creation and exporting the finished work.
Media Access Generator (MAGpie) was developed by the CPB/WGBH National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM). It makes adding captions to audio and video content. MAGpie allows the captioning of web audio and video content for use in QuickTime, RealPlayer, and Windows Media Player. There are 2 versions of MAGpie available: MAGpie1 and MAGpie2. My work here focuses on MAGpie2.
System Requirements
- Requires Microsoft Windows 98, 2000, NT, or XP or Macintosh OSX.
- If using MAGpie to caption or describe RealMedia files, RealPlayer 7 or newer is required.
- 128 MB RAM (256 MB recommended)
- 32-40 MB free space on hard disk for installation of MAGpie
- QuickTime Player (required)
- Java Runtime Edition (required)
- Audio recording software and a microphone (if you want to create audio descriptions for SMIL presentations).
- Optional: Oratrix GRiNS Player (for generating RealPlayer-compatible files. Windows-only.)
- Optional: CCforFlash, used to create captioned FLV (Flash Video) files.
- Optional: a Flash Video encoder. FLV encoders that work on Windows XP can be found at download.com, for instance. For Macintosh users, ffmpegx is an easy-to-use encoder.
I installed and used MAGpie 2 on both Windows XP and Mac OS X 10.4.9. There has been a seeming reluctance among many people I’ve worked with to use MAGpie2 because of problems getting it to work on Windows. The problems people were having were centered on Java errors. MAGpie simply wouldn’t launch. Nobody I knew had used it on a Mac, which ships with a Java environment loaded. First the Mac setup.
I’m going to write this from the standpoint of being on a Mac running OS X 10.4.9, the current updated operating system. Your mileage may vary if you aren’t updated or are on OS X 10.3.x. Looking at the above list of requirements, the memory and hard drive requirements are pretty much the same. You already have a Java environment, you already have QuickTime, GriNS is Windows-only, so you have three things you need to get: MAGpie2 for Mac OS X, CCforFlash, and an FLV encoder.
To install MAGpie after downloading it, look for the file on your Desktop titled, “Mag2Inst-osx-202.zip.” If your browser didn’t already process it and extract the installer, double-click the zip file to extract the contents. You should now have a file on the Desktop that looks like an open cardboard box and with the name “Mag2Inst-osx-202.pkg.” Double-click this file to launch the installer. Follow all the directions in the install process and when finished, you should have a Magpie2 directory in your Applications directory. Look for and open that Magpie2 directory. You will see a help file and the Magpie2 app. Launch the application.
A splash screen will launch. If you see the splash screen, then the install appears to be working. Now let’s look at the Windows install process.
The “Quick and Dirty Setup for MAGpie2″ (on WindowsXP sp2) is this:
Install, in this order, the following:
- JDK6u1 - jdk-6u1-windows-i586-p.exe
- QuickTime 7 - QuickTimeInstaller.exe
- Optional: Oratrix GRiNS Player - GRINSmagpie-123c.exe (If you wish to caption RealPlayer media with MAGpie2.)
- MAGpie2.0.2 - Mag2Inst-win-202.exe
- CCforFlash - ccforflash-101.zip Extract the contents of ccforflash-101.zip into the folder you need to create as the destination for you completed MAGpie projects.
You may notice that earlier, the system requirements for MAGpie2 mentioned a Java Runtime Environment. There is a JRE available for download at Sun’s site. However, my testing showed that to not work. It was only after I installed the Java Development Kit, JDK, that MAGpie2 worked. That’s why that’s listed above in my Quick and Dirty Setup.
Once everything is installed, in the above order, you should be able to launch MAGpie2 from your Start Menu.
On both Macs and Windows PCs, MAGpie2 should be installed and ready to begin captioning your multimedia content. More on that in future postings.
