YouTube Captions

Hello and welcome to module 5 of our accessibility training. This video will demonstrate how to auto-generate captions using YouTube, as well as captioning best practices.

There are two general starting points for creating captions, depending on whether or not you already have a video script or transcript. For example, these training videos start off as scripts before being filmed as videos.

Luckily, though, YouTube’s auto-generated captions greatly simplify the process of creating captions for videos without scripts. However, these captions are not always completely correct, especially when captioning videos with specialized language. So, while auto-generated captions make a great starting point if you do not have a script, we highly recommend editing these captions to correct language and timing errors.

We’ll start with a tutorial on how to create auto-generated captions. If you are starting with a script, feel free to skip ahead to that section of the video

Starting from the YouTube homepage, upload your video to YouTube. Click the create icon and select Upload Video.

Click Select Files and choose your video file. Once the file is uploaded, you can edit details like the title, description, thumbnail, and more. We’re going to skip these details for this tutorial and simply click next until we reach the publish button. We’re just going to switch this sample video to unlisted, and click Save. These next steps will also work if you publish the video, but we recommend filling out the previous details and finalizing your captions before publishing.

Close this pop-up, and you’ll find yourself in the YouTube Studio. From here, select Subtitles from the left-hand menu. Next to your video, there will be a languages column, with a list of numbers underneath. If the number next to your video is 1, the video has likely not auto-generated captions yet. Just return to this page later and refresh it. 

Once the number has changed to 2, click the dropdown arrow. Find the row that has (Automatic) at the end of its name and click the Duplicate and Edit option to the right.

Here, you will be able to edit the captions. By clicking the “Edit Timings” button you can simultaneously edit the text of the captions and when they appear.

Later in this video, we’ll go over some captioning best practices to help you with the process of editing your captions in this screen.

If you are starting with a transcript, you can either upload it during the process of uploading your video, or, like with the auto generated captions, go in after uploading to add the captions.

If your video has not already been uploaded, start by uploading it to YouTube. Follow the same steps as before: hovering over the create icon, clicking upload video, and selecting your file. Again, you can edit the details of your video here, but once you’re done, click the “Next” button only once. From here, click “Add” next to Add Subtitles. There are a few options here, but the easiest is to click auto-sync and paste in your text. Once you’ve done this, click “Edit Timings”. If you have quite a lot of text, you’ll likely encounter a pop-up informing you that synching the captions to the timeline is taking longer than expected. Simply click “Save and Close” and then return to edit when the transcript is done synching with the audio.

However, if you’ve already uploaded your video and want to add captions, you can do this by going to the YouTube Studio. 

On the YouTube homepage, click your icon in the top right and select YouTube Studio. Click content in the menu on the left and find the video you want to add subtitles to. When you hover over the video, these icons will pop up. Click the “Details” one on the left.

You’ll be taken to the Video details page. Scroll down to “Subtitles” in the right-hand column and click on it. From here, choose the Auto-sync option and paste in your transcript. Again, it might take some time for YouTube to match up your transcript to the audio timings so you can select “Save Draft” and check back in to see if the “Edit Timings” option is available.

When you can click the “Edit Timings” option, use that screen to fix mistakes like synching errors, misspellings, or strange sentence breaks and spacings.

Whether you’re auto-generating captions or using a transcript, you will need to check over your captions for errors. We’ll go over a few of the most common things to check for when editing captions, but be sure to make any other changes that would make the captions as correct and easy to follow as possible.

• When auto-generating captions, YouTube is not always perfect at identifying the words that are spoken, especially when working with specialized language. Correct any misidentified words to what is actually being said.
• Homonyms are words that sound the same but have different spellings and meanings. Similarly to the previous point, sometimes auto-generated captions will pick the wrong homonym when translating speech to text. Correct these mistakes by substituting in the right spelling.
• Use punctuation to indicate breaks and pauses in speech, but be sure to still follow standard rules of punctuation.
• The choice of writing out a number or using a numeral is yours, but stay consistent and do what is easiest to understand. For example, reading 53,412 as a numeral is much easier than reading fifty-three-thousand, four hundred and twelve written out.
• Break up captions in the most complete and natural way possible. For example, the best places to end one caption and start another are generally where commas and periods occur. Another cue that signals where a break might be necessary is where the speaker pauses. 

In our further resources section and above this video, there are links to more comprehensive captioning resources from The Described and Captioned Media Program. These resources should help you create quality captions regardless of whether you’re starting with auto-generated ones or a transcript.