Thomas Logan from Equal Entry and I have a regular meetup with state and local government teams who are interested in digital accessibility and meeting the upcoming ADA Title II web accessibility regulation deadline. If you work in a state or local government and would like to join our next meeting, just follow our sign-up link for the October 2 Meetup.
One of the issues that came up was captioning online videos in Vimeo and YouTube. I'm a Vimeo guy and Thomas is a YouTube guy. So I volunteered to create a quick post showing how dead simple it is to caption videos in Vimeo and Thomas promised to do the same for YouTube.
We create a LOT of videos. I'm going to demonstrate two workflows. The first workflow is the one we typically don't use because we have a subscription to Descript. The second workflow shows how we usually caption videos in Descript. You shouldn't think that Descript is an essential tool but it is very handy in our workflow.
The Simple Way
For most videos, this is a perfectly fine workflow.
Step 1. Find and Open Your Video
When you open your account in Vimeo, you should see a list of videos. In the screenshot below, you will see the videos that comprise our Digital Accessibility Workshop, which gives state and local governments all of the tools and best practices that we have developed for state and local governments to comply with the ADA Title II web accessibility rule (federal) and HB 21-1110 (Colorado).
Step 2: Find and Download AI-Generated Caption Files
Vimeo constantly changes its layout, so there's no guarantee that your screen will look like the image below. First open the video and you'll see the screen below. As shown in the screenshot, you need to open the left panel. Then, select the languages tab, turn on "Subtitles(AI)", and choose "Download" from the hamburger menu on the right side.
Step 3: Open and Edit the .VTT File
Next open the .vtt file in a text editor. Read through the text file and see if the text aligns with what was actually said in the video. You can also add a quick note when speaker names change or when other sounds come in (e.g., music playing). The one caveat is do not use angle brackets (i.e., "<" and ">").
Step 4: Save, Upload, and Use Your New Caption File
Last, you upload your new captions to Vimeo and use them. Using the same "languages" tab, click on the upload icon to upload your newly edited caption files. Then turn off the other caption options.
This process is so simple that it really makes no sense that people complain about captioning videos. I'd say it takes about 50% longer than actually listening to the video itself-- so expect to devote about 90 minutes to fixng the captions in an hour-long video. If it takes a lot longer than that, then maybe your first investment should be in better sound recording systems so the captions are more accurate in the first place.
The More Precise Way
While the process above works great, there are a few situations that make using a silghtly more robust solution advantageous. For instance, let's say you have any of the following situations:
- You have a perfectly clean and accurate transcript already of the text,
- You have an video file that includes a number of different speakers (e.g. a podcast or City Council meeting) and you want the different speakers automatically identified, or
- You are creating a training in Vyond using text-to-speech .
In this case, Descript may provide a better solution because it is a dedicated speech-to-text and text-to-speech solution. Most workflows in Descript for captioning boil down to the following steps:
Step 1: Import Your Video into Descript
When you open Descript, you can create a new project. Then you drag your file into the upload window (or click in the window and select the video file in your file system). Immediately, Descript will present you with the dialog box shown below.
This dialog box tells you that Descript is transcribing the video and gives you a chance to automatically detect new speakers or you can specify the number if two voices sound the same (it's rare that Descript can't accurately discern between different voices).
Step 2: Edit or Replace the Transcript
After a few minutes, Descript will show you the transcript for the video that you just uploaded. From here, you can easily edit the mistakes that the Descript Underlord made when carefully transcribing your video.
Because we usually start with clean transcripts, however, a far easier step is to replace the existing transcript with an accurate one. Here is a helpful link from Descript that describes how to do it but you can find a million resources by just googling, "how do you replace a transcript in Descript."
When you replace a transcript in Descript, the program automagically realigns the text in your clean transcript with the time stamps from the original video file.
Step 3: Export Your Captioning File and Upload to Vimeo
Once you've cleaned up your transcript in Descript, you'll need to next create a captioning file that you can upload with your video. As shown in the screenshot below, select the "Export" button at the top right of the screen. In the tab panel that appears, select the "Subtitles" panel.
This gives you the option to export either a Subrip (.srt) file or Video Text Titles (.vtt) file. It really doesn't matter which one you choose. You can also select options to show the speakers and adjust how the captions will appear.
Once you've exported the files, you can upload them as described in Step 4, above.
What Else Can You Do?
You can do all sorts of creative things with Descript and Vyond?
- Animated Training. I like to use it with Vyond to create animated videos. In fact, this is how we're able to customize training videos for our customers at such low cost.
- Multitrack Podcasts. Thomas and I have been experimenting with using Descript's multitrack features. When we do a podcast, we each record it locally to improve the sound quality. Descript lets you create a video that combines multiple sound tracks. Then, Descript lets you clean up the transcript and associated audio and export each speaker separately. Vyond also lets you associate an animated character with each voice, making it possible to make fun videos with each person's lip movements synchronized to their respective transcript.
Here is an example of a snarky video that I created leveraging some of these techniques. Note that you won't find a captioning button on this file because it's open captioned.
Few Excuses for Not Captioning
There really isn't a good excuse for not captioning a video. The tools are inexpensive and speech-to-text technologies make it really simple.
Want to See More Content Like This?
Want the latest blog posts, videos, white papers, and announcements? Sign up for our mailing list and stay in the loop!
We're Here to Help When You're Ready
Take a deep breath. Then feel free to reach out to our team when you're ready to discuss your accessibility needs.
0 comments on “Captioning Videos in Vimeo”