Changing AST-Link to a Different Username (Login ID)

Closed Captioning with CaptionSync allows you to upload batches of files using AST-Link. This article shows how to make requests under a different username, using AST-Link 1.x for Windows or AST-Link AppleScript for the Mac.

Important Notes:

• For AST-Link 2.x for Windows, check out Configuring settings and adding new user profiles on AST-Link 2.x for Windows instead.
• For AST-Link G2.x on the Mac, check out Configuring settings and adding new user profiles on AST-Link G2.x for Mac instead.

Tutorial

This article assumes you have AST-Link set up and working with an initial account, and that you would now like to switch to a new user AST ID (for example, because you have a new AST username associated with the DETC grant). For this to happen, you need to ensure:

1. The second AST username is enabled for AST-Link.
2. The existing public key on your computer is registered on the CaptionSync website for the second AST username.
3. The AST username you use with AST-Link changes from the existing one to the second one.

So first off, please make sure your second AST username is enabled for AST-Link.

AST-Link 1.x on Windows:

First time you make the switch:

The following should be done only once, and involves basically two steps:

• Get a printout of your existing public key so you can enroll it on the second CaptionSync account.
• Switch the AST-Link user ID (locally).

There are two possible cases:

(A) If you know you saved the public key on your Windows computer and you know where it is (it was not called out to specifically save the public key when setting up AST-Link originally), you can simply open it up in Notepad, copy the contents into your clipboard, and register it on the CaptionSync website for the second AST username. Then when you start up AST-Link go to Configure Server Login under the Server menu and enter the second AST username.

(B) If you aren't sure, the easiest thing to do is to generate a new public/private key pair. Go under the Start → Programs → AutomaticSync and launch PuTTY Gen. Choose SSH-2 RSA 2048 bits as the key type and click Generate as you did when you originally set up AST-Link. When it completes, click the Save public key followed by Save private key (it's probably best to save them in the same directory for future reference). Then copy the public key at the top of the window into your clipboard and register this with on the CaptionSync website. This needs to be done for the both the existing AST username and the second AST username if you still intend to use the old AST login from time to time. Then when you start up AST-Link go to Configure Server Login under the Server menu and put in the second AST username and specify where the new private key is located.

Switching to a different user on Windows -- onward:

This part assumes you already have the existing SSH key enrolled in your second account. This means you just need to change the AST-Link user locally, when using a different AST ID. So start up AST-Link and go to Configure Server Login under the Server menu, and change the AST username.

AST-Link AppleScript for the Mac:

Unless you're comfortable editing bash shell scripts, the easiest way to use your existing keys on the Mac is to run the install script, which essentially sets the second AST username and displays the public key.

First time you make the switch:

The following should be done only once, and involves basically two steps:

• Get a printout of your existing public key so you can enroll it on the second CaptionSync account.
• Switch the AST-Link user ID (locally).

So open the ast_cs_install.sh file with Terminal (right-click and choose Open With…, then Other at the bottom of the pop-up menu, select All Applications, then choose Terminal which is in the Utilities folder under Applications). When prompted, enter the second AST username and follow these instructions:

Finally, you can start using the droplet for the second AST user.

Switching to a different user on the Mac -- onward:

This part assumes you already have the existing SSH key enrolled in your second account. This means you just need to change the AST-Link user locally, when using a different AST ID. So you'll need to do the following every time you want to switch to a different user:

Open the ast_cs_install.sh file with Terminal (right-click and choose Open With…, then Other at the bottom of the pop-up menu, select All Applications, then choose Terminal which is in the Utilities folder under Applications). When prompted, enter the second AST username and follow these instructions:

Finally, you can start using the droplet for the second AST user.

Additional Notes:

• You can only have one AST-Link.exe running per user on a given computer; you can change which AST login it is associated with, but you can't run two instances at the same time for the same user on a given computer.

• If there is more than one user, you can have a separate AST-Link running for each user (this is always true for the Mac).