Created June, 2017 Version of Youtube accessed 06.21.17
Creating YouTube Captioning
Upload your video to YouTube
Access Video Manager
Go to “Creator Studio” by clicking the option from your account icon located in the top- right corner of the screen Click “Video Manager”, go to “Videos” Next to the Video you want to add captions, click on the drop-down menu and click “Edit”
Go to “Subtitles and CC” tab
You will be taken to a screen entitled “Manage subtitles and close captions”
There are a few methods you can use to create video captions. Below are outlined steps of how to accomplish this.
Methods to Get Captions:
By default, you will be taken to the “Manage subtitles and closed caption” screen.
Created June, 2017 Version of Youtube accessed 06.21.17
Click “Add new subtitles or CC” (the blue button on the right side of the video) A menu of language options will appear. Select the language you want the captions to be displayed in.
You will be prompted to select a method of how you want to add subtitles or close captioning to your video. You can choose one of four methods.
1. YouTube automatically generates Select “Use automatic captioning” Once at the “View published subtitles and CC: English (Automatic)” you will see the captions (text and timestamps) YouTube generated and they can be edited by clicking on them and inputting text. o The video can be played by clicking the play icon on the bottom-left side to preview how the captions will display. On this screen you will see two buttons above the video, in the top-right corner. They are “Delete draft” and “Save changes”. o Click “Save changes” and the captions will be published. They will now show up under PUBLISHED caption set option on the “Manage subtitles and closed caption” screen and be the caption set displayed for viewers. Created June, 2017 Version of Youtube accessed 06.21.17
An alternative way that captions may be automatically generated is when you click on the “Create new subtitles or CC” and are taken to the “View published subtitles and CC” screen. You will notice there is text and timestamps already inserted to the left of the video. There will be a notice above this in a blue box saying “This content has been auto- generated.” Beside that text, it gives you the option to “Remove auto-generated content” (this text is clickable) if preferred.
. Note: This option is the quickest solution, but not the best if you want accuracy. It’s recommended to read over the generated captions to ensure accuracy of language and timestamps. It is not a reliable option for videos with lots of heavily accented speakers, or hard-to-pronounce place names.
Created June, 2017 Version of Youtube accessed 06.21.17
Editing Captions To Edit the unpublished and published captions:
On the right side of the video under PUBLISHED “English (Automatic)” will show up with a radio button beside it, click this to go to the caption editing screen entitled “View published subtitles and CC: English (Automatic)”
Now that the captions are published, if you go back to the “View published subtitles and CC: English (Automatic)” screen the “Delete draft” and “Save changes” buttons will be replaced with “Edit” and “Unpublish” Click “Edit” to access the generated captions (the text to the left of the video) o Allows you to edit, add, remove the text and timestamps of captions o Hover over the caption, it will turn blue and ‘x’ and ‘+’ buttons will appear. These allow you to delete or add a new caption below the current one o Can “publish” or “unpublish” captions (button to the right of “edit”)
Created June, 2017 Version of Youtube accessed 06.21.17
2. Upload transcript file Select the “Upload a file” button. A window will appear asking if you want to upload a transcript of subtitle file. Here you can select the radio button beside the appropriate option. The button below, “Browse…” take you to your file viewer where you can locate and select the file you want to upload. Once this has been done, you can click the “Upload” at the bottom-right portion of the window.
Terms Clarified:
o Subtitles file will have timestamps, transcripts do not have timestamps o Subtitles do not include action descriptions, close captioning does. Ex.Subtitles: 1 00:00:02, 000 00:00:05, 620 Speaker: It’s like this
Ex. Close captioning: 1 00:00:02, 000 00:00:05, 620 Speaker: It’s like this [snaps fingers]
If a subtitles file (.srt or .sbv) is uploaded, then text and timestamps should be accurately aligned with the video but it is best to double check. o To check, you can play the video by clicking the play button on the left side of the video and edit accordingly. If a transcript (with no timestamps) is uploaded, then you will have to hit “set timings” (bottom right side of video) for timestamps to be generated (this may take a minute for YouTube to process so be patient). If after previewing the captioned video the speech and text do not align, the time can be adjusted and the caption text corrected by making edits on the left side of the video (refer to “Editing Captions”) “save changes” and the captions will be published. They will now show up as a PUBLISHED caption set option that can be applied to the video.
o Note: This option is best for ensuring transcription accuracy of videos, especially lengthy ones. Created June, 2017 Version of Youtube accessed 06.21.17
3. Manually type in A) “Transcribe and auto-sync”: This option allows you to type or paste in a full transcript of the video, subtitle timings will automatically be set. Select the “Transcribe and auto-sync” button.
In the text box to the right of the video you can copy and paste a pre-prepared video transcript OR you could listen to the video and manually type what you hear in here. You can paste or type-in the text as paragraphs in this option but you will have to separate the paragraphs where you want a new caption to appear on the screen. There is a checkbox below the video that if checked pauses the video while you type. If the video doesn’t automatically continue after you’ve finished typing, you may find it more helpful to not have the video constantly pausing. To stop this pausing feature, uncheck the box. Click “Set timings” to automatically align the text with the video’s speech and generate timestamps. o Notice the text on the right side of the video will now show a section called “PENDING PUBLISH” with your caption file below and the words “(publishing…click to update). The time bar on the video will display progress, indicating your captions and timestamps are loading. o Depending on the length of your video, this process may take a moment so be patient. o Once the time bar hits the furthest right point, the captions and timestamps loading is complete. The text on the right side of the video will now show “MY DRAFTS” with you caption set and the words “setting timings…)” beside it. Created June, 2017 Version of Youtube accessed 06.21.17
o Once complete, you can click on the draft and you will be taken to the “Transcribe and set timings:[your chosen caption language]”, where you can play the video, preview how the captions will be displayed and edit text and timestamps if needed.
If you are unhappy with the captions you are working on and want to trash what you have done, click “Delete Draft” (the white button to the left of the blue “Save changes” button)
Once the captions are edited and you are satisfied with the final result, click “Save changes” and the captions will be published. They will now show up under “PUBLISHED” on the “Manage subtitles and closed caption” screen. o If you have two versions of published captions, click the radio button beside the captions you want displayed with your video. The caption set in use will be highlighted green. Created June, 2017 Version of Youtube accessed 06.21.17
After captions are published you always have the option to edit them. Refer to the “Editing Captions” section of this document for instructions on how to do this.
B) “Create new subtitles or CC”: This option allows you to create subtitles and closed captions by typing them in as you watch the video.
To the left side of the video, there is a box to input text. Here type what you hear in the video and press enter (or press the blue “+” button) to create a caption You can start/pause the video by clicking the video button controls and rewinding the video as needed by clicking the video’s time bar. o You can also control the video with computer shortcuts:
There is a checkbox below the video that if checked pauses the video while you type. If the video doesn’t automatically continue after you’ve finished typing, you may find it more helpful to not have the video constantly pausing. To stop this pausing feature, uncheck the box.
Created June, 2017 Version of Youtube accessed 06.21.17
Once you are happy with the captions you’ve created, click “Save changes” (blue button top-right of video) and the captions will be published. They will now show up as a PUBLISHED caption set option that can be applied to the video. If you are unhappy with the captions and want to trash them, click “Discard Draft” (the white button to the left of the blue “Save changes” button)
. Note: This option is best suited for short videos as it is the most laborious option of the all. Get a transcript with timestamps from your video:
- Once you are finished editing the captions/timestamps and happy with the close captioning, you have the option to generate a transcript. To do this, you go to the Captioning editor screen, click on “Actions” drop-down list button (located left-side, above the box where you enter captions). Depending on how the captions were created (auto generation, uploaded, or manually typed in) a menu list with various options appears.
If you chose “Actions” from Automatically generated captions you will see a list with the option to download either a .vtt, .srt, or .sbv file. Click on the file type you want the transcript to be saved as. Created June, 2017 Version of Youtube accessed 06.21.17
If you chose “Actions” captions that were created by manually typing and setting timetags, you will see a list with the options to “Delete draft”, “Upload a file” or “Download”. To download the YouTube captions as a transcript file, click “Download” from the drop-down menu.
. A window appears that offers the choice of downloading the transcript as a .srt or .sbv or .vtt file. Click on the file type you want the transcript to be saved as. If you choose “Actions” from captions created from an uploaded file, you will see a drop-down menu with the options to “Rename”, “Delete” the original file, followed by download options that allow you to download the transcript in its original format, or in a .srt., .sbv, or .vtt file. Click on the file type you wish to download.
Created June, 2017 Version of Youtube accessed 06.21.17
Note: If the captions were created by uploading a file, and you just click the “Download” option, this window (refer to image below) will generate. It does not give you the choice to select a file format (it will default to an .svb file). The screen and following window that appears will look like this:
Note: If there is already an existing published set of captions, you will be prompted to “Discard published subtitles” when trying to add a new set of captioning. To add new subtitles you have to discard the published subtitles first. You are permitted to have two versions listed under “PUBLISHED” if one of them is the automatically generated caption version.
Created June, 2017 Version of Youtube accessed 06.21.17
Get a transcript with (or without) timestamps from a video posted by someone else:
To do this you will have to extract the captions and timestamps from the online video into Microsoft Excel.1
The steps to do this are as follows:
1. Open the video webpage and pause the video
2. Right click anywhere in the browser window, a menu will generate, click “Inspect Element”
3. A window will appear at the base of your screen that has the html coding in the main display box, along with menu bar options. Click on “Network” tab in this menu bar
1 This guide was based on information provided at https://www.quora.com/Is-there-a-way-to-extract-the-automatically-generated-subtitles-in- YouTube Created June, 2017 Version of Youtube accessed 06.21.17
4. Turn the video captioning on. To do this, click on the “CC” icon (located in the bottom-right corner of the video)
5. Now that the captioning is turned on a new item should popup in the Network tab under the “file” called timedtext. Right click on it, a menu box will pop up, select “Open in new tab”
Created June, 2017 Version of Youtube accessed 06.21.17
6. Now you have the automatically generated subtitles with their timestamps (the stuff inside of <>).
7. You can now edit the code in word to make the timestamps and captions more reader-friendly.
8. If you want to get rid of the timestamps and just have the plain transcript without the code, you need to:
- Open Microsoft Excel - Copy paste the subtitles inside one cell (or into the textbox beside fx in the top toolbar) - Press “Ctrl+ F” to bring up the “Find and Replace” Window - Click on replace tab and type <*> in the “Find What” section and leave the “Replace With” blank, click “Replace All”
Created June, 2017 Version of Youtube accessed 06.21.17