Comments on memoQ comments and YouTube playlists

I recently produced a small video tutorial on what I feel are the useful aspects of the comment feature in memoQ 2013. Although quite a few new things have been introduced to commenting in the current version of the software, the real significance of these changes for ordinary users of the software is limited. Now that what was broken in the memoQ 2013 release is largely fixed, those who care about comments for offline use can continue to use this great feature without much inconvenience.

Here is an idiosyncratic overview of how I use comments in my projects (HINT: these embedded videos are easier to watch if you do that in full screen mode by clicking the icon at the lower right of the play window):

Time  Description
0:28  Opening the comment dialog
1:01  Commenting highlighted text
1:48  Adding "codes" to comments for later filtering
2:44  Selecting all files, creating a view with all comments
3:35  Comments shown in speech bubble tooltips
3:57  Creating a filtered list of comments (code = '@PM')
4:50  Creating a filtered list of comments (code = '@CST')
5:20  Exporting commented segments in a bilingual RTF file
6:15  Check segments for extraneous comments before sharing the exported list

What I didn't show here is my usual way of accessing and exiting the comment dialog: keyboard control, opening with Ctrl+M and exiting with a quick tab to the OK button and hitting the Enter key. Having multiple comments makes editing slightly less convenient if one has to click on an icon, but the ease of deleting an entire comment in a series, and the separation of comments by a new paragraph in an exported RTF bilingual file are compensating conveniences.

That six-and-a-half minute video really has more information than someone generally familiar with the old way of using comments in memoQ would care about. The only part which might really interest someone who already knows how to create an exportable view with commented segments is how the procedure for creating views of selected comments differs from creating a view with all comments. So I decided to use the excerpting feature of YouTube playlists to create a special "view" of the tutorial video which shows only that little bit from which I believe many experienced users may benefit.

(Use the link above to look at the trimmed playlist on YouTube - I removed the embedded video code here, because its behavior in the Google Blogger environment seems to be quirkier than links on a Moodle web page or Facebook page. This technique is useful but may still require careful testing of the environment in which it will be used.)

No index needed here - the video is barely over a minute long in its two parts. This technique of playlist excerpting on YouTube could be used to "mine" longer teaching videos for specific bits of information needed to understand a specific issue. One can combine separate video clips, "in whole or in part" as contract lawyers like to say, or individual segments of a single video as I have done here. This is a useful technique which, along with time index lists such as that shown above, I hope to see applied more often for the education and support of translators.

How does Kilgray present the state of commenting in memoQ? The video clip below is from Kilgray's YouTube channel - interesting, but really another world. The video shows the commenting feature as it was at the end of May, with "innovations" which sparked the Commentgate controversy.


This presentation is really very focused on users of the memoQ server, because all that lovely highlighting is only visible in the memoQ environment itself, and these comments with highlighting do not currently export in the usual medium for sharing feedback (comments) with clients offline: RTF bilingual files. In fact, it's really a shame that in all the years that memoQ has offered exportable comments, this very helpful feature has hardly been part of the official teaching, because in the real world of client relationships, it is often a great asset.