Create transcripts or closed captions

You may hire an outside service to transcribe and caption your video, or you may do it yourself.

OUTSIDE SERVICE IN-HOUSE
ADVANTAGES
  • Reduces staff effort; may save time
  • No one-time costs
DISADVANTAGES
  • Cost usually is based on the time length of the media file.
  • The transcript must be proofread
  • Time consuming, requires some training
  1. Outside Services
    There are many transcription/captioning services available. You can request them to do the whole process for you – take your video, make a transcript from it, and then add closed captions to it and return it to you as a finished file ready to post. Or you may provide them with the transcript and have them use it to add captions to the video, and then return the file to you to post.
  2. In-House Transcripts and Captions
    The most time-consuming step is creating the transcript. Readily available and affordable software makes the synchronization of a transcript with its video almost easy.

Steps for Creating Transcripts

  1. Create an audio file. If starting with a video, extract the soundtrack into a stand-alone sound (MP3) file that can be used for transcription. One way to accomplish this is to import the video into Camtasia and export the soundtrack as an MP3 digital audio file (tutorial for extracting the audio from a video file toMP3 format).
  2. Transcribe the audio. You can do this manually or using voice recognition software. A good rule of thumb is to manually transcribe when the automatic transcription is less than 70%accurate. Once you have a transcript, you will need to proofread and correct it.
    1. Manually. Once the audio file is created it can be used in a manual transcription process - a text transcript is created by typing while listening intermittently to the audio file. This process can be greatly facilitated by use of a transcription-optimized, free audio player such as Express Scribe (tutorial for using Express Scribe).
    2. Using voice recognition software. It is possible to use a voice-recognition package such as the Microsoft Windows voice-recognition engine now integrated into Camtasia 7.1+ or the commercially available DragonNaturally. Speaking to convert the audio file into a rough text transcript. This transcript must then be edited to produce a usable document. The efficiency of this approach vs. the manual method described above is variable, but the tight integration between CamtasiaStudio 7.1+ and the Windows voice-recognition technology makes this a good choice for videos involving a single speaker for whom a voice recognition profile has been created. This method is generally ineffective for multi-speaker videos or those for which a speaker voice profile cannot be created.
    3. Tutorials:
      1. Using Windows VR and Camtasia Studio
      2. Using Dragon Naturally Speaking

Once you have the transcript, the next step is to use the transcript to make the captions. A variety of tools are available for captioning.