Camtasia Subtitles and Captions

You’re about to discover how to get more subs and views on your YouTube videos by adding closed captions.

Adding captions to your videos will help you boost your SEO results on both YouTube and Google, and also provide accessibility for the hearing impaired

Let’s create those captions inside the Camtasia editor and then upload them with our video to YouTube. And we’re going to do that right now! Hey, it’s Gord here, welcome! If it’s your first time here, and it’s your passion to make great videos,  become a ninja at video editing, and learn more tips on how to succeed with video and marketing on YouTube,  then make sure you hit the subscribe button and click that bell notification icon, so you don’t miss a thing! Let’s dive in. With the Camtasia Caption tool you can add captions manually, Import an existing caption type file, Copy and paste in a narration script from another file and then use the Sync Captions option, or even auto-generate a script through the speech-to-text option Of course, depending on the option you choose, you will have additional tasks to perform in order to achieve a polished result. Since our need is to produce a video with closed captions to upload to a video hosting service like YouTube, or Vimeo, you’ll need to produce an exported .SRT caption file to accompany your MP4 video file for upload, OR, render and upload your video to YouTube through Camtasia’s Share to YouTube feature whereby you can “Upload captions” as part of the process, without having to create the .SRT export file! The .SRT is known as a SubRip file that can be used to display captions over various video files like AVIs, and MP4s.

The caption files not only include the subtitles and caption text, but they also include the timing and other details

You can actually look at the .SRT file by changing its file type to .TXT and looking at it in Notepad.

You can even do edits in Notepad if you desire

Now let’s look at the few scenarios for caption creation: Scenario 1: You have no script of any kind. In essence, you’re starting from scratch. The simplest solution is to add the caption text on the fly as you play the video. Simply press the Add Caption button to add each piece through the Caption Editor as you go, with each successive caption being added after the last one ended. Another option is to have Camtasia auto- generate captions through the “Speech to Text” script option. Once the captions have been auto-generated, you will want to put in all the punctuation and fix the speech-to-text transcription errors. The speech-to-text feature in Camtasia is based on the Windows speech-to-text engine that learns based on the training that you have done. The accuracy of the text produced often leaves a lot to be desired and so, based on the result produced, you will need to decide if this approach works for you. Also, if there are multiple voices, music or sound effects, the produced script may not be very useable. Camtasia creates a caption clip track with clip segments. Each caption clip segment has up to 3 lines of text maximum. The words per caption can by updated by running the “Sync captions” option in the Script Options menu, but before you run that, it’s best to fix all the punctuation and transcription errors so that you will have better precision in the syncing effort. If you are producing videos for government clients or for hearing impaired accessibility, then following government compliance rules and the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) standards for your script creation is good idea. By default, Camtasia features ADA compliant formatting but you can override it if you desire. 0:05:12.066,0:05:12.000 Scenario 2 (for caption creation): You have a video narration script from another source (e.g. Word file, or from another Speech-to-text tool like Dragon Naturally Speaking). For this solution, you can “paste” the text into caption editor and then synchronize it. Of course, as with the copy and paste method above, you’ll need to review and edit the result to your satisfaction. Once you have completed your captioning, you then need to use the Script option “Export script” to create the caption .SRT export file to upload along with your rendered video file into YouTube. Again, as mentioned before, you can use the “Share”, “YouTube” production wizard that will support auto-inclusion of the caption data along with your video in the upload. Closed Captioning for YouTube This can be achieved in 2 ways. Method 1: Using YouTube Video Manager for uploading Step 1 - In Camtasia, create a captions Export .SRT file for use along with your MP4 file for uploading into YouTube. Be sure that the Captions track is visible (i.e. not hidden) so that the .SRT file is created with the captions. Step 2 - In Camtasia, create the MP4 file for upload but be sure that the Captions track is now hidden. By hiding the Captions track, you ensure that the MP4 output produced has no captions burned into it. Step 3 - Upload the MP4 file to YouTube as you normally would, and then follow it up with an upload of your Captions .SRT file.

To load the

SRT file, use the “Subtitles/CC” facility and select your SRT file for upload.

The result will be a proper video with Closed Captioning working

Method 2: Using the Camtasia Share -> YouTube production wizard Step 1 - First, be sure to leave the Captions track visible in Camtasia Step 2 - As per the wizard’s request, log into your Google account so that the utility can execute the upload to YouTube. Step 3 - Fill in the details you wish for the video metadata and be sure that you check the “Upload captions” option so that the Captions will get loaded. Selecting this option will result in the captions being loaded. No separate .SRT file creation and upload is required. The result will be a proper video with Closed Captioning working. Please also note, that if you are working from scratch with no narration script, you could use the similar subtitle/caption creating features that already exist inside YouTube. YouTube has its own auto-generating speech to text feature and synchronization, and caption updating. You can even request professional pay transcription services from within YouTube as part of your process to setup the “Subtitles/CC” in the Video Manager. Outside of YouTube professional services, another 3rd party source for transcribing, captioning and translating is Rev.com. This route is especially useful if you are planning to produce multiple language subtitles/captioning for upload. Wow, adding captions to your videos to help increase views and subs is a great growth strategy for your Channel.

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Tags: caption creator