DIY Captioning Public, Third Party Videos

These directions should only apply to Public videos. For the most part, these videos will need to be hosted on YouTube or Vimeo. Occasionally, (especially if you know HTML) you may be able to harvest the URL of an mp4 or other supported video from another website and use Amara to caption it, but being able to do so successfully is rare. If the file is not supported by Amara, you're welcome to try Overstream.net Links to an external site..

Again, do not use these directions for unlisted or private videos. If someone claims that you are violating copyright, you'll have a harder time arguing that the captions fall under Fair Use (it's not impossible, but it's harder). If you must caption an unlisted or private video, we recommend that you create a second Amara or Overstream account to do so so that if the "offending" account is blocked, it won't effect your "kosher" videos. We also strongly recommend that you save a copy of your caption files so you will be less likely placed in a situation where you have to redo your work.

When captioning, we've found the process of creating quality captions to be easier if we did our transcription and initial caption formatting work in Word. Transcripts should record verbatim what is said, identify speakers, and identify important sound effects. It's best if the transcripts are as grammatically correct as possible too.

• Speaker identification goes in parentheses ( ).
• Sound effects go in brackets [ ].
• Corrections to audio should be in brackets [ ].
• Interruptions should be indicated by -- or —.

Once the transcript is complete, we put the entire transcript into a monospace font such as Courier New and then adjusted the document margins so that there were only 32 characters per line (which is part of DCMP's captioning Links to an external site. requirements). You can copy-paste the string of numbers below into your word document, give them the same font and size as the rest of the document, and then place the right margin just after the 32.

02 05 08 11 14 17 20 23 26 29 32

From there, use the enter key once to create new lines within a caption and use the enter key twice to create new captions. By the end, your document should look like this:

When subdividing the transcript into this format, do your best to follow these DCMP Links to an external site. rules to make reading easier (particularly the first two):

• Unless one of the sentences is short (like one or two words) don't end one sentence and start another on the same line.
• Do not end a line or caption on a conjunction (For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So).
• Try to not split people's names or titles across lines or captions.
• Try to not have modifying words on one line or caption and the word it modifies on another.
• Try to not split prepositional phrases across lines or captions.
• Try to not have auxiliary verbs on one line or caption and the verb it modifies on another.

Once finished, save the document as a Plain Text or .txt file. If a File Conversion window appears, set the text encoding to Other and then Unicode and check the Allow character substitution box (If you don't, you may need to replace apostrophes, quotation marks, and some additional punctuation later).

After the transcript has been saved as a .txt file, copy the original video's URL and then open a new tab to Amara.org. Login or create an Amara account and then click the Subtitle Video link. In the field provided on the new page, paste the URL (1) then click the Begin button (2). This will navigate you to a new page.

On the next page, in the middle of the sidebar that's to the left of the video player, check that there isn't a set of captions already for your video. If you were going to provide English captions and someone has already added English subtitles or captions, then you should see a link that says English beneath the [#] Languages section. Watch the video to determine if the captions are adequate. If they aren't, click the language (i.e. English) link (1) and then click the Edit Subtitles link in the upper right of the page to the right of the Download drop menu.

If there is no subtitles or captions (as evidenced by the lack of a Languages section) or if subtitles or captions that have been provided are not in the language you wish to provide, click Add a new language!

A pop-up will appear where you need to indicate the language of the audio and the language of your captions. After you click Continue, you will finally be in the Amara caption editor. In the editor, hover on the Tools button which has a wrench icon (1) and then select Upload subtitles (2) from the drop menu. In the pop-up that appears, use the Choose File button to select your .txt transcript file and then click the Upload button. Review the transcript in the bottom middle panel then, when satisfied, click the Yes, start syncing button (3).

Next, use the controls listed in the top left panel or use your mouse and the timeline that appears between the top and bottom rows of panels to set the timings. 

Make sure to have a caption at the very beginning of your video (even if it says [silence] or [music]). Also, try to make your captions appear within half a second of when the corresponding sound starts.

Video: Amara Syncing Process Links to an external site.

How to Sync Captions - Written instructions Links to an external site.

Once you have set the timings, click the Start Reviewing button in the top right panel. Play the video and check your work. Also look in the bottom middle panel for red exclamation marks on the right side of caption boxes. These exclamation marks can mean that there are too many lines in a single caption, too much text on a single line, or that the duration of the caption is too short to be read. Out of the three, the last should be the most common for you. To correct the reading rate error, play with the caption duration. You may need to stretch the earlier mentioned 1/2 a second rule to make it work. If the speech is too fast for there to be any adjusting, you can edit the caption to summarize what's being said.

When finished reviewing, click the Complete or Publish button in the top right panel. This will bring you back to the video page. Copy the URL for this page, open a new tab, and go to the page in Canvas where the original video is made available and edit the page. Below the embedded video player or link for the original video, type "Captioned Version: [title of the video]." Select the text you typed and press Ctrl or Command + K to open a pop-up where you should paste the URL in the URL field and then set the Target field to New Window. If you can't get Ctrl or Command + K to work, click the Link to URL button in the RCE toolbar and add your URL that way (the Link to URL button will not allow you to set the Target).

We then recommend that you then go back to Amara and download a copy of the caption file just in case Amara doesn't work and another tool can be used to meet student needs. To do this, go back to the video page in Amara. In the sidebar to the left of the video, below Language, select the language of captions you've been creating (generally, this will be English) (1).  In the top right of the Subtitles tab and to the left of the Edit Subtitles link, click the Download drop menu (2). In the drop menu, select SRT (3) then save the file. 

Once you've downloaded the caption file, you're ready to add the captioned version to your course. Unfortunately, the Amara caption player can't be embedded in Canvas as it isn't built in a way that is supported by Canvas. As such, you will need to create a link to the video page.

Go back to the video page in Amara and copy the URL. Go back to the Canvas page where the video is located, open the page in editing mode, and create a link to the Amara video page near where the original video was embedded or linked. 

Return to Videos Should Have Captions.

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Last Updated Fall 2016