Closed Captioning Video

Help from Community
1

Hello Community and IF staff,
I have a question - has anyone found a way to do closed captioning for videos in IF?

We have a client that is going to use a captioning service, and would like provide us with the caption file to play along with the video.

To my knowledge, the video player or Youtube player are not capable of this. I suggested the client to embed the captions directly into the video itself, but they prefer not to since it will cost more through their captioning service.

(By the way, I’d prefer not to create an excel file with all the text of the video, and try to time it. I don’t think they’ll be happy with that solution, and it’s not within our scope to design this)

Hopefully there’s some other ideas out there to accomplish this. Thanks for any suggestions!
(Tagging @tosolini, @Promultis, @Frank.Yoder, @Seb)

2

My suggestion would be have all your text in an asset grid and then trigger the next action as and when the transcript changes for the next piece of text. Although that will be a lot of when video reaches [time in video] then next asset.

But here is my example i just thought of the top of my head.

But it would be easier to create an excel because it would be easier for your clients to update the video and update the captions as and when they need to.

https://we.tl/t-cSK8to0gQ7

Let me know your thoughts.

Kind Regards

3 Likes
3

Hi @AlexB,

If your customer gives you the video and subtitle files (srt format), I’d recommend you to “burn” the subtitles in the video yourself. That’ll be the easiest / cheapest (free) way to handle subtitles in IF.

Here’s a fast & free way of doing it: How to Add Caption Files to Videos in Handbrake (Subtitles and Captions) | Rev (use “burned-in” option)

5 Likes
4

Here is a mash-up option:

Youtube uses AI to automatically generate transcripts. Just click the CC button on the player and you get the captions.

Youtube
Youtube434Ă—523 23.5 KB

These transcripts seem to be well formatted to feed into an XLS (@Promultis solution). Or you could download the transcript file and use a utility like @Seb suggested. For Windows, you can use Aimersoft Video Converter Ultimate which will burn the captions into the video.

5 Likes
5

Thanks very much everyone for your reply!

I agree that embedding the captions seems like the best option. I appreciate the links to the free tools, and I’ve passed them onto my client for review.

The power of this community is awesome. Hoping to see you all at Interactive Amsterdam 2020!

4 Likes
6

YouTube does have the option to enable captioning, but it’s auto-generated and not always accurate, so the results depend on the video’s audio quality and clarity. If it doesn’t make any mistakes when you preview it, you can then record an on-screen video of it playing with the auto-generated captions using Camtasia. Not as cool as handbrake burning, but it may take less time perhaps.

2 Likes
7

Coincidentally, I just had a client ask me to add captions using a provided .SRT file late yesterday afternoon. I imported the .MP4 and .SRT into Camtasia on a whim, and I was very surprised at how easy it was to integrate and control. I have attached a screenshot showing how the .SRT looks in TextEdit along with the Camtasia interface showing the captioning tool. Hope this helps!

Screenshot
Screenshot.jpg2073Ă—1425 1.05 MB

4 Likes
8

Ha! For some reason I never though to try it in Camtasia. I use it all the time, but only for simple screen recordings, nothing too fancy.

I’ll see if they can supply me the SRT and give it a try. Thanks again @cullenb!

9

I didn’t think of it, and after Composer & Outlook, Camtasia is probably the 3rd tool I use the most…
Thanks @cullenb !

10

If I may… YouTube will allow you to put your own captions in, so all you have to do is have a text doc that you can copy and then paste the captions in on YouTube (this way is more accurate than the auto-generated) and then you have the option to turn captions on/off through YouTube.

3 Likes