Closed captioning, often confused with subtitling, is primarily used to increase the accessibility of videos for deaf or hearing-impaired viewers. Closed captions are different from subtitles in the way that they include captions outlining all actions occurring in videos, rather than just transcribing speech. To use closed captioning accurately in streams, they should be embedded using a specialist closed caption encoder.
Keep reading to learn all about closed captions and their importance in the streaming community!
Whilst closed captioning was initially invented to make video content accessible to deaf or hard of hearing people, it can be used to effectively boost the size and range of your audience too. Not everyone will have 24/7 access to sound, or people may watch videos in a restrictive setting, like at work! A surprising 85% of people online will watch video content without sound, so by failing to offer the option of closed captions, broadcasters could be missing out on a huge portion of their potential audience.
Closed captions may not be easy to incorporate into live streams, but by maximising on the accessibility and inclusivity of your audience, they are completely worth the effort!
Closed captioning your live video content can have great benefits for the visibility of your streams too. Search engines are able to pick up on your videos and rank you accordingly using the closed caption content. Again, this opens your stream up to a much larger and relevant audience by making your content much easier to locate in the masses of search results.
The nature of live streaming in real-time means that content can move quickly, leaving far more room for confusion with your viewers. Closed captioning can help to get your message across, acting as a reinforcement or reassurance of what’s being said. By offering viewers both audio and text, the information in your live streams can be far easier to grasp - especially if viewers aren’t listening to a stream in their first language.
There are some live stream settings that lend themselves to closed captioning, such as news stories, events, e-classes, webinars, corporate meetings, and more. Embedding closed captions is always a good idea when it’s important for viewers to understand exactly what’s being said.
With better understanding, will come increased engagement too. Viewers are far more likely to engage with your streams if they feel confident knowing what’s going on.
While closed captions can be highly valuable for boosting the reach and engagement of your live streams, there are a number of factors to consider.
The main factor to take into account is the additional costs and equipment that closed captioning requires. While there are cloud-based caption encoders which can automatically produce the captions for your streams, these are far less reliable than their hardware alternatives.
When considering whether to add closed captions to your streams, your budget is the main factor. If you are a brand looking to live stream on a regular basis to wide audiences, investing in the right audio embedder hardware and a closed caption encoder is the right way to go. However, if you’re an individual broadcaster on a tighter budget, cloud-based caption encoders are far more accessible and can keep your costs down.
Although closed captioning isn’t always a cheap affair, you can reduce costs in other aspects of your stream. Zidivo’s professional video streaming and hosting platform can cost as little as £20 a month, encompassing all your streaming needs. Go live from any device and stream on multiple custom web pages, without having to compromise on quality.
Another aspect in deciding whether your streams need closed captioning is legality. For example, closed captioning is a legal requirement in the UK and US when broadcasting on TV. Always check whether the purpose and/or content renders closed captioning a necessity to be 100% compliant!
Fortunately, unless you’re a licensed TV channel or service, there is no universal standard format for uploading closed captions, allowing brands to incorporate captions as they see fit.
To get it right and make sure your captions are as accurate and ‘live’ as possible, here’s Zidivo’s advice on how to do so.
You will need:
Closed captioning process:
Using closed captioning may not be an immediate consideration for all broadcasters when going live. Actually though, it can have huge benefits on the success and inclusivity of your content! Even if you don’t have the equipment or budget to include closed captions in real-time, adding them in when embedding your recorded streams on your site is still worthwhile.
Get in touch with Zidivo today to learn more about their live streaming and on-demand video services. Their team are willing to share their expert advice on all things live video related, so you can decide if their service is right for you.
Earlier this week, we spoke to Voquent about how businesses of all types can appeal to a global audience by making their video content available in multiple languages. We felt this valuable information had to be shared with our streaming customers so we put it all together below...
Everyone wants a bigger audience for their products or services, but to garner a global audience and to be successful you must first succeed at localisation.
Successfully operating in a foreign market will require the careful localisation of the product or service itself, along with the key marketing, sales and supporting materials – which is frequently video content.
Whether you’re localising a product explainer for the German market, a video game in multiple languages or translating an animation from Japanese to English, the two most common methods used are captions or voice-over.
Captioning/subtitling is generally less expensive than voice-over because there is no need to hire or record acting talent. Arguably, voice-over is preferable because the audience is required to do less work (they don’t have to read lots of text). However according to MEC North America, 85% of Facebook video is watched without sound – so it’s still wise to subtitle video content in multiple languages, whether you choose to localise the voice-over or not. Subtitles are the most reliable and successful way to make your video accessible to foreign audiences.
Here are the 4 steps required to subtitle your video in any foreign language:
Transcription is normally the process of converting speech into text. If there is no speech, the on-screen text can be transcribed instead. At the transcription stage, it’s important to note the speaker names and to get clarification on the spelling of acronyms or technical terminology. Transcription can be sped up with Automatic Transcription Tools such as Happy Scribe, but the transcript will still need to be thoroughly proof-read and edited by a person. Technology isn’t quite there yet!
Spotting or timestamping the transcript is the process of synchronising the transcript with the audio.
This requires breaking the transcript down into smaller sections between 2-6 seconds in duration. A verbatim transcript can often be too long to use as subtitles and will need condensing or summarising carefully to fit within character restrictions, whilst ensuring the meaning is the same.
Character restrictions for subtitles can depend on where it’s being published. It’s important to check what the video player supports where it will be published/viewed. If the subtitles are ‘burned-in’ (i.e. permanently encoded into the video file), this can also make a difference. At Voquent, we don’t recommend going above 40 characters per line in Latin languages and 20 characters per line for Asian/Cyrillic languages.
After the spotting work is complete it’s possible to create a caption file, such as an SRT. It’s always worth checking the captions against the video in a program like Subtitle Edit or just by adding the captions to the video on your video hosting platform. This way you can make any final amends before the translation work begins.
It’s important to give the translation agency the video file for reference. Don’t just send the caption file.
The video file gives context, and this is vitally important for an accurate translation. It’s also good to give the translation agency some creative freedom. Most written languages are 15% – 40% longer than English, and this means the foreign captions will require breaking down into smaller captions and/or some further condensing of the message. This applies even if it’s already been condensed from a verbatim transcript for subtitling!
The translation agency will be able to provide you with a translated caption file for approval, but it is also recommended that you get a video file with the captions burned-in as well. This will make it much easier to check and approve the subtitles at your side, particularly the timing.
After the subtitles have been approved, how they will be encoded and delivered will depend on your requirements, and whether open or closed captions are required.
Open Captions: when subtitles are burned-in i.e. encoded into the video file itself and can’t be turned off. Open Captions give you much more creative freedom to choose the font, colour and placement of the subtitles.
Closed Captions: when the subtitles are in a text file format and can be turned off in the video player.
With open captions, the subtitles will now be synced to the video using either subtitling software or video editing software, such as Adobe Premiere Pro or Adobe After Effects. The video will then be encoded out with the subtitles burned-in in the preferred subtitling style.
If you’re going with closed captions, you’ll get a subtitle document in a format such as SRT, STL or WebVTT. It’s important to check which file formats the video player supports, but SRT is the most widely used and is supported by most of the popular web players.