GalaPro
| Category | Price | Seller | Device |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entertainment | Free | The Shubert Organization, Inc. | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
GalaPro has created a digital solution for live shows providing subtitles, dubbing and amplification to the user's own mobile device. Our multilingual app provides access all over the world to theaters, opera, cinemas, conferences and live shows.
GalaPro allows you to easily connect with the cultural world by providing subtitles on your mobile device. Designed for live shows, this easy-to-use app synchronizes live with the show you are attending. Choose from participating venues to receive subtitles to your own mobile device during the show.
The GalaPro app is designed to to be used during the shows without disturbance to the rest of the audience.
GalaPro app is for everyone - people who need translation or just feel more comfortable to watch the show with English subtitles. It is for people with disabilities who want to enjoy subtitles in their preferred language and also for tourists and travelers who want to connect to theater, opera cinema and culture anywhere in the world.
Reviews
No movies, and theater— but no Hamilton?
Don't recommend it!
this app is not ready for prime time at all. big disappointment
Cumbersome and restrictive
IDontWantAStupidNicknameDamnIt
Airplane mode required Registration required WiFi binding required All so hearing impaired and other people may be accommodated. Sad. Wrong. Pathetic. Airplane mode restrictions aren’t required. Registration isn’t required - I’m already in the theatre. WiFi binding is unnecessary, particularly with a password requirement. Use a code in the theatre or geolocation while running if necessary. Many silence their phones without wanting to lose life safety functions. And they don’t deserve a complicated process to understand the show. Worst of all, once the app is configured and running it often falls out of sync with the performance, drifting up to 25 seconds before or after the dialog. Suddenly it will return to sync, but the drift, along with completely missed lines, makes it even more frustrating. I realize that this may seem like complaining and over-criticism, but when it is easier to follow along with a PDF copy of the script there isn’t much value. Sync, completeness and ease of use are the only things the app needs to do.
School of Rock
Fortunate RTX Attendee
Wow! What an awesome concept. I really enjoyed using this at School of Rock. The text was 95% accurate, minus some ad libs from the cast. I liked that it was dark so I don’t think it disturbed other people. It moves really fast but that is more due to the speed of musical. Can’t wait to see how this app does! Only problem I can see happening: there will be confusion why people have phones out. Ushers, security, cast, and crew will not be able to tell if person is using app or filming.
Life saver for Hard-of-Hearing Theatre Lover!
gracieeyoung
I can’t thank you enough for creating this app. It’s been so helpful at shows as I am hard of hearing. The best part of the app is that the captions are always accurate and the screen is never distracting for other theatre goers. Additionally, connecting to the wifi in the theatre makes it so that you won’t get notifications from any other app. My only complaint is that I wish there were more shows available with this feature! Keep expanding! And thank you so much!
Life changing app
Skieangel
Outstanding application. Extremely helpful to have the audio description and a life Broadway show. I enjoyed this immensely. Easy to use and easy to set up. Also, the theater workers are very helpful if you need assistance.
Ineffective Communication
MatthewBivins
Let me start this review by being transparent: I am both a software developer and someone that provides consulting to theaters that are looking for open or closed captioning options. While I am not hard of hearing, my wife has been profoundly deaf since birth and I have entered this field in order to try to help make theater more inclusive to her. I have also built my own software to caption theater, but this software focuses on the actual building of the captions, not the running of them, and is not for sale. I use it mainly to provide small theaters with the means to build their own captions. In other words, I would love to recommend GalaPro to theaters that I work with (and can afford the system), as it would make my job easier. Finally, I'd like to say that I did not use the audio description service that is also a part of the GalaPro app. GalaPro made a big splash at a conference I went to about two years ago that focuses on arts and accessibility. Their goal was to make all of Broadway accessible to the d/Deaf/hard of hearing by mid-2018. Apparently this app takes cues from lighting, sound and even uses a little machine learning that tries to listen to the play or musical and automatically scroll through captions pre-built for the play. Automation is an important feature of GalaPro, they want to be able to provide captions without a human manually running them. I went to a demo of Gala Pro in Chicago and was impressed with how well the captions synced with the actors' performance until I discovered that for the demo they do have someone manually advancing the script. So I was excited the other week at Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (Lyric Theatre) to finally see (automated) GalaPro in action. At the Lyric I was directed to the Coat Check when I mentioned wanting to use GalaPro. The first problem: my phone apparently had to connect to the internet first in order to start the process of connection to the captions specific to the Harry Potter performance. I get this, but I've found that wifi/LTE doesn't consistently work in theaters, so if I was someone that wanted to use my phone but couldn't connect to the internet first, I wouldn't know what to do. And neither did the person at Coat Check, apparently: the Lyric had an iPod on hand that was already set up and after we failed to get my phone to connect, she handed me this instead. I didn't mind this, if it worked. The Lyric did not provide a holder to hold and position this device. I know that an iPod touch barely weighs anything. But just try holding your empty arm up for an hour and you'll see how incredibly ridiculous this is. I understand that every theater has a different seat situation; theater seat styles vary. While GalaPro could put this responsibility on the theater, of course, it still bothers me; I know that GalaPro has a hardware component and the theaters are paying a good bit for the entire system. I wish that I could say that even though I had to hold this iPod throughout the show the software worked well. About fifteen minutes into the first act of the play, the captions froze completely, and I got a blindingly bright error screen that said something to the effect of "Uh oh! You've lost connection with the Internet!" and a "Continue" button. After fiddling with it for many minutes (hitting the "Continue" button to no effect), I finally gave up. My phone was in Airplane mode as the app requested…why was it telling me that I had lost internet connection? I could have left my seat and found someone to help troubleshoot the issues I was having, but the attendant in charge was obviously not a GalaPro support team member. This was an expensive evening, and personally I don’t think that I should have to troubleshoot an issue. If I actually needed the captions, I would have missed the entire first hour and a half of the play. Returning a few hours later to see Part Two of Harry Potter, I finally got my own phone to connect to the app before I entered the theater, and got the captions running. On my more powerful phone, things ran a little more smoothly…I experienced fewer (but the same) error messages and dropouts. I did not find the actual captioning experience to be any better. When it was periodically working, the captions were either far behind the dialogue or often ahead of what was being said. Sometimes there were more than 4 lines of text per screen and you couldn't read them fast enough before the screen advanced. The automation would hiccup and skip a number of slides, rendering the context of the dialogue unintelligible. I checked in on the app periodically throughout the entire 3 hour play, hoping that things would eventually right themselves, but the problems continued through to the very end. I know from experience that you can have the lines of the play sync with the lines spoken on stage. The goal with providing this access is to give the patron an experience that approximates what a hearing patron would: "effective communication". My fear is that a d/Deaf/HOH patron will excitedly come to a Broadway show and have an experience similar to mine and not want to attend any more theater. They will leave having had to hold their phone in front of their eyes for 2-6 hours straight, and will have endured error prone, confusing, out-of-sync captioning after paying full price for a ticket. They deserve better. It is difficult to provide support for an app that has to meet the many different needs of every theater space. Some issues you run into would have to be taken up with the individual theater using this app, like the holder situation. I wanted to give them that credit. But I know that this system is being sold to theaters as a "one and done!" solution for captioning and audio description and on top of that, it is an expensive solution that many smaller theaters cannot afford. If it works this poorly in even one theater, there is more work to do before it's “done”.
Very useful, subtle, and effective
Pugworthy
I downloaded this just before a play when I heard it was available. Very easy to get connected, very easy to use. My concern at first is that it would look like I had my phone out during the play, but the choice of colors and such made it very subtle yet very effective in the dim light of the theater. Looking forward to the next time I can use the app, and will recommend it to theaters that don’t use it.
The Ferryman
HungyBunks
While I was excited to use GalaPro for the first time, I could not listen to the Description. The Describer spoke over the cast, focused on unimportant details, and kept repeating himself. Act 1 was a bust and Act 2 was no better. I had to turn it off I have been an Audio Describer for 20 years and I could have done a better job without even have seen the performance.
My life has changed!!
PrettyDarkEyes
I’ve always had to spend beaucoup bucks to sit in the front row to hear at least 75% of dialogue in a production. The audio devices offered at theatres did me no good because I wear hearing aids. The bulky little hand held screens were good but not always available due to their popularity. This app is an absolute Godsend! There is a decent selection of shows for NYC, my first using this app was “Come from Away”. I’m looking forward to seeing more shows added. Great app!!
Theater mode help needed
Lakhmajun
3 stars only because I had to put something and I have not used GalaPro yet. I am going to use GalaPro in two days. Your video says that my phone needs to be in Theater Mode. I do not see that option on my iPhone 8S. Where do I find it? Thanks in advance.
