Creating YouTube Captioningumanitoba.ca/.../accessibility/media/Creating-Captioning-using-YouT… · Version of Youtube accessed 06.21.17 Creating YouTube Captioning ... go to “Videos”

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.


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.


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.


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”)


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.


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.


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.


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:

<Shift> + <Left>: Seek back 1 second <Shift> + <Right>: Seek forward 1 second <Shift> + <Space>: Pause or play the video <Shift> + <Enter>: Add a new line <Shift> + <Down>: Edit next caption/subtitle <Shift> + <Up>: Edit previous caption/subtitle <Enter>: Add the caption/subtitle

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.


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.


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.


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.


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


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”


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”


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Creating YouTube Captioningumanitoba.ca/.../accessibility/media/Creating-Captioning-using-YouT… · Version of Youtube accessed 06.21.17 Creating YouTube Captioning ... go to “Videos”