Cloud Service Options

Quick note: If your eyes are glazing over at the very thought of reading this page, just go into the In-App purchases dialog under the "Imaginary Captions" menu and by credits as needed to do things like machine transcription and machine translation. That's by far the path of least resistance. The other option (BYOC) is aimed at power users who know what AWS API keys are.

Some functionality of Imaginary Captions needs to take place off your laptop and in the cloud. Current features that need to happen in the cloud are:

When you want us to automatically transcribe your video or translate your existing captions into other languages, we need to send your video or captions up the cloud where heavy-duty processing occurs. That functionality is where Imaginary Captions Cloud Service options come into play.

Whatever cloud service approach you take, our cloud services features are considered premium features that require an in-app purchase.

We provide two options depending on whether you have an existing account with a supported third-party cloud or whether you are wondering what we're talking about with all this "cloud" business.

  1. Imaginary Cloud Services
  2. Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC)

The advantage of Imaginary Captions "built-in" cloud services that it carries the least amount of friction and is a good option for "one-off" projects or the less technically inclined user. Under the covers, we're just routing your requests to one of our supported BYOC vendors. But we're incurring the cloud vendor costs and may route your requests to the best available option as vendor capabilities grow. Of course, that means we're charging you both for the costs of the underlying cloud vendor plus a margin for each transaction.

If, on the other hand, you have an account with a supported BYOC vendor (currently just Amazon Web Services, but Google is coming soon), then you have the option of having Imaginary Captions work directly with your cloud provider account. You will be charged by your cloud vendor for the translations in accordance with whatever their fee structure is AND you must pay for a BYOC subscription in Imaginary Captions.

So, now you're thinking, "I have to pay you even if I use my own cloud?"

Uh, yeah. Sorry. We actually envision that most people will want to just rely on Imaginary Captions to handle everything for them and that BYOC will be something only people operating at scale will want. The vast majority of users won't have AWS accounts, won't know how to manage AWS API keys, and won't require the scale to make it worthwhile. Plus, our business model is to make core features part of the main product and charge a premium for all cloud-based integrations.

And now, you're wondering, "OK, but I still don't understand the difference."

Imaginary Captions Option
You are charged credits inside Imaginary Captions that you acquire through standard in-app purchases for each transcription or translation you do. One credit == one character of translation or 5,000 credits for one minute of transcription. Thus, translating a typical webisode or short film is roughly 6,000 credits, or about US $1 (depending on which app store you are using). Similarly, 1 minute of video will cost you just under $1. You don't need any accounts anywhere else, but we will ask you to set up an account with us so we can track your credits. There are no costs from the cloud provider since you don't have an account with them.
BYOC
Today, this is just Amazon Web Services. Eventually, we will add support for Google and other cloud vendors. Note: Amazon Web Services is NOT your Amazon.com retail account.
Under BYOC, you purchase a subscription from us via an in-app purchase. There is currently only one subscription option and is around US $2/month (varies based on app store). This rate will increase in the future as the app becomes more popular, but we will add annual options before we do that so you can "grandfather" yourself in. So, you buy a subscription and enter in your API keys, and you can make any number of translation requests as long as the subscription is in good standing. The cloud vendor will charge you directly for any transactional costs.

In short, if you are a corporate user or a contractor working consistently on captioning and substitles, then the BYOC approach is your best option. Otherwise, it's probably best to stick with the Imaginary Captions ala carte option.

Setup

The version for short attention spans:

  1. (BYOC-only) Setup an account with a supported cloud vendor
  2. (BYOC-only) Figure out how to find your API keys
  3. (BYOC-only) Enter API keys in the Accounts Preferences of Imaginary Captions
  4. (Imaginary Captions-only) Create an Imaginary Captions account in the Accounts Preferences of Imaginary Captions
  5. In the Services Preferences of Imaginary Captions, pick your account in the dropdown for Translation Services
  6. In the In-App Purchases window of Imaginary Captions, purchase the proper option for your vendor choice

How you set things up depends on your vendor selection. Either way, the first step is to configure an account in the Preferences panel under Imaginary Captions | Preferences. First go to the Accounts tab and select either Imaginary Captions Cloud or Amazon Web Services (or, if this documentation is out of date, any other supported provider).

Imaginary Captions Cloud

You can sign up for your Imaginary Captions cloud directly in the Preferences dialog. Enter a valid email address (you will be required to verify this email address) and password, then click the "Register" button. At that point, you will be prompted to provide minimal registration info and click submit.

After you submit, you will be logged in with a temporary token. You will need to verify your email address before that token expires or you will not be able to create a permanent token. Your password is not stored locally, but instead in a server database using unrecoverable, salted encryption. The table in which these passwords are stored contains no user-identifying information.

Next, go to the Services tab of the Preferences screen. For each service you want to enable, select Imaginary Captions Cloud.

Finally, you need to fund your Imaginary Captions account with credits. Each character you translate costs 1 credit or each minute you transcribe 5,000 credits. So, you should have enough credits to cover all your captions in all target languages. There are a number of different credit purchasing packages that have greater value for the more you spend.

Amazon Web Services

Setting up an AWS account and configuring API keys is beyond the scope of this document. However, before you can use BYOC + AWS, you will need to have an account and know how to locate those API keys.

Once you have those keys, go into Imaginary Captions | Preferences to enter them in the Accounts tab. Select the Amazon Web Services dropdown, enter your keys, then hit the "Test" button (you cannot save your keys until you test them). Imaginary Captions then makes a connection to AWS to verify that the keys work. If you got the right keys from AWS, the test will pass and then you can save the keys.

After you have successfully saved the keys, you can select Amazon Web Services as your Transcription and/or Translation Service in the Services tab of the Preferences window. You can actually set up multiple cloud vendors over the Accounts panel and then switch between them in the Services panel depending on your mood.

The last step is to purchase a BYOC subscription. Open up Imaginary Captions | In-App Purchases and pick the "Subscribe" option at the bottom. Once you are subscribed, you can start using Imaginary Captions with Amazon Web Services.

If at any point you have to re-install Imaginary Captions or move to a new machine or whatever, you can restore an existing subscription by clicking on the "Restore" button in the In-App purchases screen.