How to caption a YouTube video

YouTube is an extremely popular way to share videos online, with anyone able to upload a video once they have a free YouTube account. You can easily caption your YouTube videos to make them accessible to a wider audience, particularly the Deaf and hearing impaired, and increase your video’s search engine optimisation.

You can also add captions to an online video that is not your own on the Overstream website.

Adding captions to any YouTube video

If you want to add captions to an online video that is not your own, you can do so on the Overstream website. It is then stored on the Overstream server and can be watched with captions by anyone on the website. View basic and advanced tutorials on video captioning, or watch the demo of using Overstream.

Adding captions to your own YouTube video

There are a few ways of captioning a YouTube video that you are uploading. You can:

YouTube allows you to upload a file to generate captions for your video which can either be a caption or transcript file. A caption file contains both the text and timing information for the video and can be created using free online captioning services. A transcript file contains just the text for the video and YouTube uses speech processing algorithms to determine the timing of captions.

Using a transcript file is not the ideal method for captioning YouTube videos as captions are not as precise and are currently only available in English. Creating a caption file using an online editor means that you can easily add, edit and preview captions on a video and create captions in multiple languages.

YouTube’s auto-captions use speech recognition software to generate captions. This means that they may show errors in wording, spelling and timing. Auto-captions can be useful, however, as you can use the script as a starter to captioning your video, and then go in and edit the transcript.

Adding a caption file to a YouTube video

Captioning YouTube videos with a caption file can be done in three steps:

  1. Upload your video to YouTube
  2. Create a caption file of your video
  3. Add the caption file to your YouTube video

How to upload your video to YouTube

To upload a video to YouTube, you first need to create an account with Google, the owners of YouTube. YouTube provides instructions on how to upload a video.

How to create a caption file for a video

Once you have uploaded a video to YouTube you need to create a caption file. YouTube supports a simple caption format that is compatible with SubViewer (.SUB) and SubRip (.SRT) formats. While you can upload captions in any format, only these formats are displayed properly on the playback page.

There are many online services that allow you to create the caption file for videos for YouTube. The easiest to use is CaptionTube, requiring you to register for a free account to be able to create caption files.

CaptionTube is an online editor created by YouTube for captioning YouTube videos. Captions created with CaptionTube can be exported and saved as SUB files and either imported into YouTube or used with another media player that supports the SUB caption format.

Visit the CaptionTube Frequently Asked Questions for instructions on how to use CaptionTube to create a caption file. It also provides instructions and video tutorials on how CaptionTube works and how to import videos, how to create and edit YouTube captions and how to download, email and copy and paste captions as text.

How to add a caption file to your YouTube video

YouTube provides simple instructions on how to add a caption file to your YouTube video once you have created it.

When uploading the caption file created in CaptionTube, make sure you select ‘Caption file’ instead of ‘Transcript file’ (which does not include timing).

Auto-captioning a YouTube video

YouTube can caption your video for you using Google’s speech recognition software. This is an automated caption service that is not accurate and requires clear sound.

To request auto-captions on your video:

  1. Sign in to your YouTube account
  2. Under the ‘Captions and subtitles’ tab at the top of your video page, click ‘Request processing’
  3. In the list of available caption tracks, you will see ‘Machine Transcription (processing)’
  4. The auto-captioned track can take a few days to become available on your video and for download

Adding a transcript file to a YouTube video

An easy way to create a transcript file is to use YouTube’s auto-captioning service to create a transcript for you. However, as auto-captions and timing are machine generated and are not completely accurate, it is important to check the accuracy of auto-captions.

You can do this by downloading the caption script, correcting any errors in wording, timing and spelling, and uploading the edited file (which must still be in .SBV format) to your video.

To download your video’s auto-caption transcript:

  1. Sign in to your YouTube account
  2. Under the ‘Captions and subtitles’ tab, click ‘English: Machine Transcription’ and click the ‘Download’ button next to the track
  3. A copy of the transcript will be saved to your desktop called captions.sbv. This is an .SBV file which is a text file with timing information.
  4. Check the file for timing, word accuracy and spelling and edit in a caption tool or text editor
  5. Upload file to YouTube
  6. Captions will automatically be generated from this file instead of the auto-caption file, unless selected otherwise from the viewer

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