Hello. This is a short video on setting up AST-Link on your Windows PC. You'll only need to do this setup process once; afterwards, you can follow the usage instructions outlined in a separate tutorial.

The first step to installing AST-Link is to have your account enabled for it.  First, login to your CaptionSync account, then click the "Help" link.  Here, you will find a link to submit a support ticket.  On the support ticket, choose "Enable my account for AST-Link" and click submit.  You will get an email back from AST Support as soon as your account is enabled.  Once you get that email, log back into your CaptionSync account and click the Help link again.  Now you will see a new section titled "AST-Link Downloads".  Click on the Windows installer and download it to your disk.   

Open the AST-Link install zip folder and run the setup.exe. Follow the installation instructions to review and accept the license agreement and set the folder names.  After the installation is successful you will see a new AutomaticSync folder under your Programs menu.

AST-Link uses secure file transfer based on public-private key encryption. Therefore, our first step after installing AST-Link is to create a public-private key pair. And then we will place the public key up on the AST server.  Then your private key, and only your private key, can encrypt messages between these two computers. In the Start menu, select the AutomaticSync folder, then select the program called "PuTTY Gen".  This will generate the public-private key pair. So let's make sure that SSH-2 RSA is selected. And let's set the number of bits to 2,048.  Next, click Generate.  It will then generate the key pair. 

Now, save the private part of your key in a secure folder on your disk.  Do not add a passphrase to your key - just save it as is.  You may also save the public portion of the key too if you wish, although we do not really need to do so. 

The public portion of the key appears in the upper pane of the Putty Gen window.  Let's select it all, and copy it with Control-C.  Let's leave that up there. Next log back into your CaptionSync account. Click on the "Settings" tab, and then on the "SSH Keys" link.  This is where we keep track of your enrolled public keys. Each key pair is unique, so you will need to have a separate key enrolled for each computer you want to use AST-Link from.  You can add as many SSH keys as you need to. 

Let's click "Add another key" to add our new key.  Paste the public key we copied from the Putty Gen application in here.  Add a note so you can later identify which computer this key belongs to.  Then click "Add Key".  You will see that the key appears in your key list with a status of "Pending".  If at some point in time your private key becomes compromised, you can then log into your CaptionSync account and disable this key so that compromised key can no longer connect to the CaptionSync service. 

Refresh this page until you see the status change to Ready -- it should take about 5 minutes. When the status is Ready we will be able to connect via AST-Link. 

While we're waiting for the status to change to Ready, let's take a look at the default settings for your CaptionSync account.  The User Interface for AST-Link provides access to only a limited subset of the captioning options available to you with CaptionSync.  For many of the captioning settings, CaptionSync will use the default settings for your account for jobs submitted via AST-Link.  So it is important to ensure you visit the default settings and set them appropriately.  To view and change your default settings, click the "Caption" tab, which will bring you to the job submission page.  Now, click the "Advanced Settings" button, which will launch a separate window to view and change your settings.  Click through each tab on the Settings window to view or change the output types selected, the caption formatting, the window sizes for web players (if applicable), the Broadcast caption settings (if applicable), and the naming conventions to use.  Once you are done, check the "Save as default" checkbox and click "Apply Changes".  Now all the submissions that we do via AST-Link will use the settings you just saved. You'll be able to see what the settings are in AST-Link, but you'll only able to change them via the Web Interface.  

So let's go back to our Keys screen to see if it is ready yet. Ah, it is. So we notice that the status is now Ready, and therefore we can do the last configuration step.

Start AST-Link from your Start menu. All we need to do now is configure AST-Link to use your new key.  Under the "Server" menu, choose "Configure Server Login".  Enter you CaptionSync user ID in the first field -- this is the user ID you use to log into your CaptionSync account.  Then select your private key file in the second field -- this is the key file we saved from Putty Gen earlier.  Click Ok.  You will experience a slight delay while AST-Link connects, then you should see the status line change to "Server Ready".  The first time you connect you will see a warning message telling you that you are connecting to a new server for the first time; it's asking us to verify that the server's "fingerprint", is in fact the CaptionSync server fingerprint. If you wish, you can check the manual to verify that the fingerprint is correct and then accept the connection -- this warning will only occur the first time you connect. 

All right then. We were now ready to begin up loading batches. Using AST-Link is covered in a separate tutorial.