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Video Captioning

YouTube / Google Captioning Instructions

Go to your Channel on the YouTube website:

Sign in with the channel owner’s username and password.

  • Go to “My Videos”
  • Find the video you wish to caption.
  • Note the video date (you’ll need this later)
  • Below the link to the video click on the down arrow next to “Insight” and select Captions and Subtitles”

Auto Machine Transcription

If audio is good you may use the machine transcription tool:

Under Machine Transcription click on Request Processing (English only)

Once it is complete, you may download the file (save as Text file), and make corrections to the text and/or the timing, and then:

  • Click Add New Captions or Transcript
  • Browse to select the caption file
  • Click Open
  • Click Upload File

However, if the machine transcription fails, you will need to create one by transcribing the video and adding the time codes. This file must be saved as a text (.txt) file and have no formatting. Each line of text needs to be kept relatively short in order to fit in the space allowed in the video.

Example:

0:00:00.900,0:00:03.920

Hello, I’m Governor Martin O’Malley

and I want to share some good news with you.

0:00:03.920,0:00:06.980

Last month, across all sectors

of Maryland’s Economy

0:00:06.980,0:00:11.190

we added another 11,200 jobs

to Maryland payrolls.

If you have an existing transcript, but it does not have the time codes to tell it when to show each line of captions, you may upload the transcript and it will generate the time stamps for you.

  • Click Add New Captions or Transcript
  • Browse to select the caption file without time stamps
  • Select Transcript File (English only)
  • Click Open Click Upload File

The same as when you do any kind of auto transcription, you will need to make some modifications. This is also where you will upload a caption file you have created, containing the time codes.

  • Click Add New Captions or Transcript
  • Browse to select the caption file without time stamps
  • Click Open to select the file
  • Select Caption File (includes time codes)
  • Click Upload File

Sometimes you will get an error message. Go back to your My Videos list again and play the video to see if it took the file, and then watch it all the way through and check for errors. If there is an error in a specific line of the captioning it will often tell you the line number where the error is located.

Test

Whether you get an error message or not you should go back to My Videos to test it once you’ve uploaded the caption file. (Captions are turned on when the CC is red. Sometimes you have to click it a couple of times.)

You will need to return to the Captions and Subtitles screen and removed the old file, before uploading the revised caption file following the previous instructions.

To view a demo, you may go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTvHIDKLFqc.