Adding Captions: Captioning Resources

Below is just a small sample of some of the most popular captioning services.

DIY Resources

YouTube – https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2734796?hl=en

You can upload transcripts to your YouTube videos or use YouTube’s automatic captions to create captions for videos. YouTube’s automatic captioning is getting better everyday. These automatic captions are generated by machine learning algorithms, so the quality of the captions may vary. Sometimes the errors are quite funny but confusing and frustrating for people who cannot hear. So it is important to edit YouTube automatic captions using YouTube Studio. There are many resources for using YouTube Studio, here are a few:

Zoom – Zoom Cloud Recording and Auto-Captions

Zoom can be used to record a video to the cloud, and then provide an auto-generated transcript (using Otter.ai) that can be synced up and edited. It can then be shared online in various platforms. Here is a video on how to do this:

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115004794983-Using-audio-transcription-for-cloud-recordings-

CADET (Caption and Description Editing Tool) – http://ncamftp.wgbh.org/cadet/help/introduction.html

CADET is free, downloadable caption-authoring software that enables anyone to produce high-quality caption files that are compatible with any media player that supports the display of captions. CADET can also be used to generate audio-description scripts.

Camtasia – https://www.techsmith.com/tutorial-camtasia-8-add-captions-manually.html

Camtasia is a dedicated video creation and editing software tool that allows you to manually add and sync captions to your videos.

Amara – https://amara.org/en/

Amara is a free cloud-based tool built by a nonprofit organization to reduce barriers in communication and foster a more democratic media ecosystem. The application is for external online medial only.

Jubler Subtitle Editor – http://www.jubler.org/

Jubler is a free java-based tool for editing text-based subtitles for both platforms. It can be used as an authoring software for new subtitles or as a tool to convert, transform, correct and refine existing subtitles. It’s best choice for users that look for something small and lightweight, that can be used on all platforms.

Full Captioning Services

Alternative Communication Services (ACS) – https://www.acscaptions.com/

The mission of Alternative Communication Services (ACS) is to provide the highest quality voice-to-text and sign language services possible, delivering these services to consumers throughout the world, and recognizing the unique strengths of each individual in the process. In an effort to give back by supporting good causes meaningful to its employees, Alternative Communication Services (ACS) donates a portion of its profits to charitable causes supported by its employee

National Captioning Institute (NCI) – https://www.ncicap.org/

A nonprofit corporation created in 1979 to provide the option of television access to deaf and hard-of-hearing communities and subsequently to those learning to speak English as a second language. NCI also offers subtitling and language translation services in virtually any language as well as described video service for people who are blind or have low vision.

Caption First – https://captionfirst.com/

A woman-owned, disability-owned small business that provides a range of services from realtime captioning to transcription, transcript time-coding, subtitling and offline captioning.

Automatic Sync Technologies (AST) – http://www.automaticsync.com/captionsync/

AST has been in business for more than 10 years and has over 5000 customers, mostly in education. Professional transcribers create the captions and then AST’s CaptionSync software syncs the captions with the audio.

3playmedia – http://www.3playmedia.com/

3playmedia was founded by a group of MIT graduates in 2007. Transcription and synchronization is done by professional transcriptionists who can handle difficult and technical content with discipline-specific expertise.

Cielo24 – https://cielo24.com/

Founded in 2012, Cielo24 promises searchable captions and media data solutions at competitive prices.