Captioning Videos with YouTube

Text Instructions

Overview

Closed captions help ensure that visual/auditory content is accessible to everyone. You should edit closed captions after automatic transcription. Automatic captions utilize computer-generated speech-to-text and the results are usually prone to misspellings and typos.

Uploading Videos

  1. Log into https://www.youtube.com using your Smith College Google account.

  2. Select the Create button (camera icon) in the upper-right corner, and select Upload Video.

  3. Drag-and-drop your video file or use Select Files to add your video.

  4. Once your video begins uploading, you will be taken to a page to enter your video details. Scroll down the page and select More Options.

  1. Scroll down to the section labeled Language, subtitles and closed captions (CC) and set your Video Language to the appropriate language.

  1. In the bottom-right corner, select Next, and then select Next again to access the Visibility options.

  2. In the Visibility options, set the video to be Unlisted. This will ensure only people who have the link to the video can view it.

  3. Select Save.

  4. On the next screen, copy the video URL and save it somewhere to access later, then select Close.

  5. Your video will be processed and, after 1 to 2 hours, automatically generated captions will be added to the video. (Longer videos may require more time.)

Editing Captions

  1. Navigate to your video’s URL and select the Edit Video button at the bottom of the video.

  2. Select Subtitles from the menu to the left.

  3. If the auto-captions have been successfully created, there will be a listing with the video language and the label Automatic. Select the link labeled Duplicate and Edit.

  4. The subtitle/caption editing interface will open. It may be easier to edit captions by selecting the Assign Timing option, which allows you to edit by caption blocks. This will also allow you to adjust the timings for each caption, which can be done using the timeline at the bottom of the window.

  5. When finished, select Publish in the upper-right corner.

Downloading Caption Files

  1. In the main Subtitles list, hover your cursor over the subtitles you just created. On the far right, Select the Options menu (three dots).

  1. Select Download, then select the caption format of your choice.

Various platforms support different caption file types, so it may be important to have all three on hand when preparing to publish the video. For example, a video uploaded to a page created on Moodle using the Insert Media function will require a .VTT file, while a video uploaded to VoiceThread will require either an .SRT or .SBV file.

PDF Instructions