Captioning Resources

DECT Grant

The Distance Education Captioning and Transcription grant (DECT) provides CCCs with funding for live and asynchronous captioning and transcription as a means of enhancing the access of all students to distance education courses.  Further, the DECT promotes and supports awareness of available funding as a means to support faculty efforts to develop high-quality, media-rich distance learning courses. Funding for California Community Colleges

The Distance Education Captioning and Transcription grant provides funding to California Community Colleges to support captioning of instructional content. Faculty need to apply for their own grant based on your needs and the application will need to be signed by the Dean of Student Services, and one of the three VP’s.

http://www.canyons.edu/Offices/DistanceLearning/Captioning/Pages/default.aspx Links to an external site.

Providers of Captioning Hardware/Software

The following vendors provide encoders, captioning software, decoders and other technologies used for producing real-time and off-line captioning. We will continue adding to this list as more vendors are identified.

• National Captioning Institute (NCI) Links to an external site.
• Computer Prompting and Captioning Links to an external site.
• Cheetah Links to an external site.
• Bay Area Video Coalition (Captioning Service Provider) Links to an external site.
• WGBH (Captioning Service Provider) Links to an external site.

Providers of Captioning Services

The following vendors provide captioning services. Rates will vary depending upon:

• the availability of a transcript for the tape
• how much narration the tape contains
• whether or not the tape contains technical jargon
• what captioning formats are used
• how quickly the job must be completed.

Some of these providers have established a business relationship with the Community Colleges Foundation, and offer discounts to California community colleges. Please remember to inquire of these vendors if such a discount is available. We will continue adding to this list as more vendors are identified.

• Off-line Captioning Providers Links to an external site.
• Real-time Captioning Providers Links to an external site.
• Web Captioning Providers Links to an external site.

Sample Permissions Letters

Video resources from third party providers are generally copyright protected. You will need a formal letter of permission in order to add close captioning to such video resources. Listed below are sample form letters requesting permission to captioning video.

Sample Permission Letter (PDF) Links to an external site.

All the following links will open in a new window.

WebAIM Captioning Overview
http://www.webaim.org/techniques/captions/ Links to an external site.

The Captioning Key
http://www.dcmp.org/captioningkey/ Links to an external site.

Caption It Yourself Guidelines from DCMP
http://www.dcmp.org/ciy/ Links to an external site.

Video Clips of Captioning for Music and Sound Effects
http://www.dcmp.org/captioningkey/special_considerations.html Links to an external site.. 

Funding

Fortunately for everyone working in distance ed in the California community colleges, the Chancellor’s Office has recognized the expense of captioning and created a grant to help.

The Distance Education Captioning and Transcription (DECT) Grant

The Distance Education Captioning and Transcription (DECT) grant is being administered by College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita, California. The director is James Glapa-Grossklag.

http://www.canyons.edu/Offices/DistanceLearning/Captioning/Pages/default.aspx Links to an external site.

To find out more about how this grant works, see James' seminar
"Fund your Captioning Projects Links to an external site." (link opens in new window).

The grant supports captioning and transcription for multimedia materials used in the following activities:

• Distance education classes at CCCs
• Live (aka synchronous) distance education
• Delayed (aka asynchronous) distance education

Classes may be for-credit or non-credit courses; however, community education and community extension courses are not supported.

Funding can be paid either as reimbursements to the colleges or as direct payments to vendors when approved vendors are utilized.

The application process is as follows:

1. Identify classes that need captioning or transcription
2. Choose vendor selection process
3. Estimate number of minutes, get quote
4. Submit application
5. Notification of award
6. Submit end-of-term report on retention and success rates

The first step is to arrange for an agreement between your college and College of the Canyons. Make sure to contact the grant before contracting with the pre-approved vendors in order to ensure that funds are available. 

Do your own!

Camtasia Studio, and YouTube all have captioning functionality that can be used to make your instructional media accessible to students. We'll cover these in more detail on the individual pages for those tools.

Captioning with Camtasia Studio

Camtasia Studio integrates Microsoft Windows voice-recognition engine to produce a text transcript of the audio file. Once the transcript has been edited, Camtasia's syncing process consists of listening to the video while clicking on the text captions at the correct intervals for their display. Therefore, the syncing process takes the same amount of time that it will take to listen to the video the whole way through.

Captioning with Online

• The DECT Grant: (Distance Education Captioning and Transcription) is a state chancellor’s office funded grant that pays for the captioning of your online or hybrid content. The College of Canyons is the grant administrator and the grant is accessible to all California community college instructors.

• 3C Media Solutions. is another chancellor’s office funded grant and works similarly to the DECT grant and is another FREE captioning solution for online/hybrid California community college instructors. Content is uploaded to 3C Media and your content is captioned (usually) within a few days. Check out my demo.

• Amara is home to an award winning subtitle editor that makes it easy to caption and translate video for free. Amara also hosts volunteer localization & accessibility communities, and offers professional tools and services for subtitles.

Captioning by Outsourcing

• Companies such as Automatic Sync Technologies, 3PlayMedia , cielo24 , and many other captioning service providers. will caption videos for a fee.  Contact these companies directly for additional information.

 

General Captioning Tips

• Microphone quality: You will likely get better results from the auto-transcription engines when using a better quality microphone. Here's one good one we have used: http://amzn.to/UKcaft. Links to an external site.
• Using proper sentence structure: Another way to get better results form the auto-transcription engines is to use proper sentence structure and grammar in your recordings. This can be difficult to do in our normal speech patterns, but it does improve performance when it comes to the auto-transcription processes.
• Using a script: One way to make the captioning process easier is to write out the script before doing the recording. The transcription step, then, is taken care of and it's just a matter of syncing it to the video afterwards. This can also be a good way to ensure that you cover everything that you need to in your videos, while keeping it short and focused. You can take the script one step further and use it with the teleprompter included in the Personal Video Studio Links to an external site.equipment, making it easier to maintain eye contact with the camera while reading your script.
• Find a Workflow for You: You may find that you have several options when it comes to recording and captioning your instructional media. Don't let this be overwhelming. Find a workflow that you are comfortable with and that works well for you. 

Transcripts

A transcript file must be saved as a plain text file without any special characters like smartquotes or emdashes. Here's what a transcript might look like:

>> FISHER: All right. So, let's begin. This session is: Going Social with the YouTube APIs. I am Jeff Fisher, and this is Johann Hartmann, we're presenting today. [pause]

YouTube uses experimental speech recognition technology to provide automatic timing for your English, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Russian or Dutch transcript. Automatic timing creates a caption file that you can download. Short videos with good  sound quality and clear spoken English synchronize best.

Here are some other things you can do to help get the best automatic timing results for your transcripts:

Identify long pauses (3 seconds or longer) or music in the transcript with a double line breaks. Use double line breaks anytime you want to force a caption break.

Here are some common captioning practices that help readability: Descriptions inside square brackets like [music] or [laughter] can help people with hearing disabilities to understand what is happening in your video.

You can also add tags like >> at the beginning of a new line to identify speakers or change of speaker.

Caption File

Although you can upload your captions/subtitles in any format, only supported formats will be displayed properly on the playback page. Here's what a (*.SBV) caption file might look like:

0:00:03.490,0:00:07.430

>> FISHER: All right. So, let's begin.

This session is: Going Social

0:00:07.430,0:00:11.600

with the YouTube APIs. I am

Jeff Fisher,

0:00:11.600,0:00:14.009

and this is Johann Hartmann,

we're presenting today.

0:00:14.009,0:00:15.889

[pause]

YouTube supports a wide variety of caption file formats. Here is a list of some well-known formats that YouTube supports:

• .srt - SubRip - only the basic version is supported.
• .sbv - SubViewer
• .scc - Scenarist Closed Caption. For any premium content that has broadcast-quality captions (movies, TV shows, etc) we
• highly recommend this format.
• .dfxp - Distribution Format Exchange Profile.
• .smi - Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange
• .sub - MPlayer Subtitle (and other similar formats)
• .lrc - For lyrics
• .rt - RealText
• .stl - EBU-STL. Widely used in Europe for broadcast content.

 YouTube also supports many formats used for CEA-608 (Line-21) information.

 YouTube does not support the following formats:

• .ssa/.ass - Sub Station Alpha

 Here are some common captioning practices that help readability:

Descriptions inside square brackets like [music] or [laughter] can help people with hearing disabilities to understand what is happening in your video.

You can also add tags like >> at the beginning of a new line to identify speakers or change of speaker. 

YouTube Captioning

YouTube

YouTube is an accessible, easy-to-use, mobile-friendly, universal platform for video sharing. And it's free! YouTube not only lets you host your videos for free, but it also provides online recording, captioning, and editing functionality for your videos as well. It's the easiest way to share videos, making it an incredibly valuable teaching tool. Check out YouTube's Statistics Page Links to an external site. for the most recent analytics on YouTube usage from around the world.

You Tube has an auto caption that is a FREE tool and is an automatic process. When uploading a video to YouTube, it will automatically add captions to your multimedia. Access and edit these captions by accessing the creator’s studio, selecting the Captions and CC button, and selecting the AUTOMATIC caption file. This tool is best used for shorter videos. NOTE: These machine-generated captions are rarely if ever fully accurate. However, if their accuracy is decent and captions can be perfected with only a few minor corrections, the easiest way to correct them is to do so directly in YouTube.  For instructions see the Edit Captions help page on YouTube.

Check out this video created by Katie Palacios from San Diego Community College District.

 

Creating a YouTube Account

If you already have a Google or Gmail account, then you have a YouTube account as well. If not, however, you will have to create a Google account that has access to YouTube. Here's some YouTube terminology that may be useful as you get started with your account:

• Video Manager: The page from which you'll need to upload new videos and access all the videos that you've already uploaded to your account.
• Channel: The homepage for a YouTube account. It shows the account information as well as all the videos that the account owner has made public. Users can customize the video layout and color of their YouTube channel.
• Playlist: A collection of YouTube videos that is easy-to-access from your YouTube account. Any video from YouTube can be added to your playlists.
• Subscribe: Users can subscribe to other YouTube accounts to be notified with those accounts upload new videos
• Public video (Privacy Setting): Available to everyone on the Internet
• Private video (Privacy Setting): Only available to specific YouTube members who you specify
• Unlisted video (Privacy Setting): Available to people who have the link, but won't be returned in searches

Uploading a Video and Transcript to YouTube

You don't have to do the recording on YouTube. You can upload a video file from your computer. Supported formats include AVI, WMV, FLV, MOV, and MP4. However you must own the copyright (or have permission from the copyright owner) to upload the video onto YouTube. If you've already got the transcript for that video, then you can upload the transcript as well, and let YouTube do the automatic syncing of the text to the video.

Captioning your own YouTube Videos

If the audio quality of your video is sufficient, then YouTube will show the option to turn on the machine-generated automated captions for your video. In most cases, these captions are not yet accurate enough for general use. But they can be edited in YouTube, so that they accurately match the audio.

If the audio quality of your video is not sufficient for the automated machine-generated captions, then you'll need to upload a text transcript (a .txt file with the typed out audio) to YouTube. The text transcript gets automatically synced to the video, and it can be edited in YouTube if changes are needed later.

Editing Captions in YouTube

You can edit auto-captions or your own captions directly online. Just follow these steps:

1. Sign into your account

2. Goto your Video Manager

3. Locate the video with the captions you wish to edit

4. Pull down the EDIT menu and select Captions

5. Select the caption track you want to edit. This can be the Machine Transcript track or your own.

6. Click inside any line in the caption track panel. You can edit the text, but not the timing.

7. Click outside the caption line and YouTube will update the caption line.

8. Click Done to save the entire caption track.

Uploading and Downloading Caption Files and Transcripts

Once you've created your transcript or caption file, you can upload them to YouTube to attach them to your video.

1. Mouse over your username located in the upper right corner of every page.

2. Click on Video Manager. You will then be directed to a page showing your uploaded videos.

3. Find the video to which you'd like to add captions/subtitles and click the down arrow located to the right of the Edit and Insight buttons. Select the Captions button from the drop down menu.

4. Click the Add New Captions or Transcript button on the right hand side of the page. You will be prompted to Browse for a file to upload.

5. Select a caption/subtitle or transcript file to upload. If you are uploading a transcript (no timecodes), select Transcript file, otherwise, select Caption file.

6. Select the appropriate language. If you wish, you can also enter a track name.

7. Click the Upload File button.

In order to download auto-captions for a video, you must be the video owner. If this is true:

1. Sign into your account

2. On the Captions pane, click on any track. Click on the Download button.

3. YouTube will then save a file called captions.sbv to your desktop.

Note you will not necessarily be downloading the caption file in the format you uploaded it, so it is always recommended to save any captions file you make locally.

To see how this works, here is a video created by Michelle Pacansky-Brock from @One illustrating the steps for adding captions to your YouTube video.

Basic Editing options in YouTube

In addition to captioning and caption editing, there are other basic editing options available for your videos in YouTube including trimming video clips, adding visual enhancements, adding music tracks, and adding annotations (graphical callouts) to your videos. While there are several editing options available to you, we recommend a program like Camtasia Studio which will give you even more capability for your larger fullblown instructional media projects.

Captioning someone else's YouTube Videos

The captioning options above will only be available to you when you are accessing the videos that you yourself have uploaded and/or recorded. Since copyright law prevents us from altering videos that we do not own, we cannot legally caption videos that are not ours. This can pose a problem when finding the wealth of videos available out on YouTube for your courses, but then finding that they are not captioned. The two tools below, Amara and Overstream, allow you to add captions to videos without altering the original videos. The caption track is overlayed on top of the original video, and played along with it, so that captions get displayed but the original video is not altered.

Amara (formally Univeral Subtitles)

Amara (formally Universal Subtitles) Links to an external site. asks for the URL of the video to which you are adding captions. Amara works with YouTube, Vimeo, and other video sites. It allows you to add captions to videos that you'd like to make accessible on those sites.

 

 

Related YouTube resources

• YouTube EDU Links to an external site. - Collections of education videos, organized by level, topic, course.
• YouTube Analytics Links to an external site. - Get demographic, location, and viewer retention data on your individual videos.
• ViewPure - Links to an external site.Paste your YouTube URL, and ViewPure will give you a URL to use without the distracting "related videos" that get displayed on the YouTube site
• TEDed Links to an external site.: Transform your YouTube video into a lesson which assesses the viewer. Check out our example of a TEDed lesson here: http://ed.ted.com/on/7H7bty42 Links to an external site..