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capri0mniThere are free closed-captioning tools online, that grab your uploaded video, and allow you to write captions as its playing. But the fiddliness varies, and sometimes, the websites go wonky. So I figured it would be worth my while to learn how to do it myself, offline. And I thought, as a Public Service Announcement, that I'd share what I learned this week.
First: It's simple, and more intuitive than you might think.
Second:: Subtitle tracks can be written in .txt format, in Windows Notepad; When you go to save them, change the .txt extension to .srt. and hey, presto! you have a subtitle/closed caption track.
Third: 'Simple' does not necessarily mean 'easy,' however; You do have to mind your commas and colons, so don't proofread while you're tired.
Fourth: Parts of a subtitle/caption code (each letter in this list represents a single line):
a) the number of the title (1, 2, 3, ...)
b) the start time (hour:minute:second,millisecond) arrow (-->) end time (hour:minute:second,millisecond)
c) text of the title
d) empty line
Here are the first 14 lines of captioning that I wrote for my most recent video (the first caption appears 7 seconds in, and the last one ends just a smidge over a minute):
1
00:00:07,000 --> 00:00:11,000
If my grief over Mother's death were a person,
2
00:00:11,400 --> 00:00:16,530
This would be the year it could buy its first drink
3
00:00:16,930 --> 00:00:19,270
With friends at the bar
4
00:00:19,630 --> 00:00:22,220
Slamming the mug down in triumph,
5
00:00:22,330 --> 00:00:25,130
Froth crowning its upper lip.
6
00:00:25,500 --> 00:00:28,540
Then, maybe, there'd be singing.
7
00:00:29,600 --> 00:00:32,860
Or, maybe, my grief, taking after me,
8
00:00:33,240 --> 00:00:34,850
Would be a teetotaler,
9
00:00:35,300 --> 00:00:38,900
content to drift on the rising tide
10
00:00:39,160 --> 00:00:41,510
Of friends' besotted laughter.
11
00:00:43,080 --> 00:00:46,470
If my grief over Mother's death were a person,
12
00:00:47,000 --> 00:00:50,410
I'd make a wish that its friends, when drunk,
13
00:00:51,330 --> 00:00:55,740
would only laugh -- Opening their arms wide
14
00:00:56,000 --> 00:01:00,940
for tipsy hugs And slurred "I love yous!"
Fifth: Things I can do to make the next time I do this easier:
a) make a boilerplate for the time code line, so I can just fill in the numbers, and am less likely to put a colon or comma in the wrong place
b) open Notepad, and write the captions as I go along with putting the video the together, so I don't have to go back and figure out the timing after the fact.
c) YouTube doesn't measure in milliseconds, just just round up to the nearest second, and don't worry about that bit.
---
Reasons to go to the "extra trouble" of writing a caption track:
1) It's the right thing to do; the last U.S. Census to include information on deafness or hard of hearing status was 1930. But the most recent estimates from Gallaudet University have about 13% of the total U.S. population have some trouble hearing speech clearly (and that's including all ages, from birth -- it goes up to about 30% when you get into the 60s). And that doesn't include people who can technically hear, but still have trouble understanding the spoken word (not to mention, either, the people who can hear, but may wish to watch your video with the sound off -- such as when they're watching videos in the library, or alongside someone who's reading, or...)
2) Even if no human uses the caption track you provide, Google/YouTube does. Putting a track on your video allows people to find it with greater accuracy in Google Searches -- based on the things you actually say in the video, even if they can't remember the title you gave it, or the exact name of your YouTube channel.
3) Once you have a caption track on your video, Google can provide a translation into other languages. Yes, Google Translate is often dodgy/spotty. But it can do a better job translating my poetry into Arabic (say) than I can. At least, it gives speakers of other languages a sense of the gist of what your video's about.
First: It's simple, and more intuitive than you might think.
Second:: Subtitle tracks can be written in .txt format, in Windows Notepad; When you go to save them, change the .txt extension to .srt. and hey, presto! you have a subtitle/closed caption track.
Third: 'Simple' does not necessarily mean 'easy,' however; You do have to mind your commas and colons, so don't proofread while you're tired.
Fourth: Parts of a subtitle/caption code (each letter in this list represents a single line):
a) the number of the title (1, 2, 3, ...)
b) the start time (hour:minute:second,millisecond) arrow (-->) end time (hour:minute:second,millisecond)
c) text of the title
d) empty line
Here are the first 14 lines of captioning that I wrote for my most recent video (the first caption appears 7 seconds in, and the last one ends just a smidge over a minute):
1
00:00:07,000 --> 00:00:11,000
If my grief over Mother's death were a person,
2
00:00:11,400 --> 00:00:16,530
This would be the year it could buy its first drink
3
00:00:16,930 --> 00:00:19,270
With friends at the bar
4
00:00:19,630 --> 00:00:22,220
Slamming the mug down in triumph,
5
00:00:22,330 --> 00:00:25,130
Froth crowning its upper lip.
6
00:00:25,500 --> 00:00:28,540
Then, maybe, there'd be singing.
7
00:00:29,600 --> 00:00:32,860
Or, maybe, my grief, taking after me,
8
00:00:33,240 --> 00:00:34,850
Would be a teetotaler,
9
00:00:35,300 --> 00:00:38,900
content to drift on the rising tide
10
00:00:39,160 --> 00:00:41,510
Of friends' besotted laughter.
11
00:00:43,080 --> 00:00:46,470
If my grief over Mother's death were a person,
12
00:00:47,000 --> 00:00:50,410
I'd make a wish that its friends, when drunk,
13
00:00:51,330 --> 00:00:55,740
would only laugh -- Opening their arms wide
14
00:00:56,000 --> 00:01:00,940
for tipsy hugs And slurred "I love yous!"
Fifth: Things I can do to make the next time I do this easier:
a) make a boilerplate for the time code line, so I can just fill in the numbers, and am less likely to put a colon or comma in the wrong place
b) open Notepad, and write the captions as I go along with putting the video the together, so I don't have to go back and figure out the timing after the fact.
c) YouTube doesn't measure in milliseconds, just just round up to the nearest second, and don't worry about that bit.
---
Reasons to go to the "extra trouble" of writing a caption track:
1) It's the right thing to do; the last U.S. Census to include information on deafness or hard of hearing status was 1930. But the most recent estimates from Gallaudet University have about 13% of the total U.S. population have some trouble hearing speech clearly (and that's including all ages, from birth -- it goes up to about 30% when you get into the 60s). And that doesn't include people who can technically hear, but still have trouble understanding the spoken word (not to mention, either, the people who can hear, but may wish to watch your video with the sound off -- such as when they're watching videos in the library, or alongside someone who's reading, or...)
2) Even if no human uses the caption track you provide, Google/YouTube does. Putting a track on your video allows people to find it with greater accuracy in Google Searches -- based on the things you actually say in the video, even if they can't remember the title you gave it, or the exact name of your YouTube channel.
3) Once you have a caption track on your video, Google can provide a translation into other languages. Yes, Google Translate is often dodgy/spotty. But it can do a better job translating my poetry into Arabic (say) than I can. At least, it gives speakers of other languages a sense of the gist of what your video's about.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-27 03:06 am (UTC)Thanks so much for these details. I was going to cross post this to
Wow, I so want there to be a tool that permits one to just point at the start and end of every caption line. There are computers involved! They should be able to handle the grunt work of noting the start and end times.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-27 03:50 am (UTC)I'm not a mind-reader, but I suspect one reason that people don't put captions on their videos is the assumption that you need super-duper special applications, or know how to write computer code, or something.
When I looked, I was surprised at how simple (as in uncomplicated) it really is. There are only four "moving parts," and those parts make sense. I've seen ascii smiley faces that are more complicated, for crying out loud. So I thought I'd spread the word...
no subject
Date: 2012-10-27 01:55 pm (UTC)Do you have any recs for add-your-own captioning sites? (Or places to avoid?)
no subject
Date: 2012-10-27 05:47 pm (UTC)The one major downside is that the tutorial is all flash animation, so I have doubts as to its accessibility for the visually impaired.
And the last few times I've tried it, it froze up on me while trying to grab and play the video I've uploaded to YouTube. ... I don't know whether it's the site that's off, or simply that my elderly computer can't handle it, so...
That's what got me hunting for other sites. The one I found last week was CaptionTube: http://captiontube.appspot.com/
And that found and played my video just fine, but setting the times for each caption was so fiddly that' what got me thinking: "Ya know? Doing this manually would probably be easier..."