Using YouTube’s Caption Editor
Many of us use video in our classes, but sometimes we forget that video is a media format that is not as equally accessible to all viewers. Viewers who are hearing impaired will not be able to hear the voices, music, or background audio we include in our video. It is our responsibility to take steps to ensure that we make video content accessible for as many of our viewers as possible. Video captions assist viewers in comprehending video information more effectively by providing a secondary way to access video content.
This is helpful not only in the case of our hearing impaired audience, but also in cases where audio levels in our video are too quiet or low-quality.
What is Involved in Captioning Video?
Captioning video is a simple process if you host your video on YouTube. YouTube has a built-in auto-cap- tion service that attempts to create captions for your video soon after it is uploaded. Unfortunately, the software YouTube uses to caption your video doesn’t always transcribe your words perfectly. Not to worry: it is very easy to refine the auto-caption transcript of your video using the caption editor.
Review Your Auto-Captions
If you are curious about the accuracy of your video’s auto-captions, log into your YouTube account and re- view them. Locate your video and turn on the Closed Captions feature, located at the bottom right of the video player. Watch your video. The captions will appear at the bottom of the screen as the video plays.
Edit Your Auto-Captions
- If you need to edit the auto-caption track, select the “CC” button from the Edit toolbar, below your video.
- Next, select the language of your video in the drop down to the right of your video (1). A light gray but- ton will appear titled with the language you selected. Select that button (2).
- You are now able to review the text of your auto-caption track.
- Clicking on any of the text in captions will make them editable (3). Make your changes. Note that you are able to play the video as you review the caption text. Playing the video while you edit the caption text will help you catch errors. When you are finished, publish your changes. Your video now has an accurate closed caption transcript to accompany the audio.
