How do you add captions and translations to your videos?

Premiere Pro & Da Vinci are the staples of best-practice video editing and colour grading without a doubt. Although for AI driven animated captions with emoji's submagic.io is a clear favourite.

Descript and Capcut are among two of the most user-friendly, free options for auto-captions. You don't need to invest the money in (or time to learn) higher-end software like Final Cut or Premiere.

What I’ve been doing is uploading a video to Vimeo first and then letting the built in automatic caption engine within Vimeo do all the heavy lifting for me. It’s not perfect, but it’s WAY better than what YouTube comes up with. From there, I can export a .srt file and viola; upload it to YouTube and then make any necessary subtle tweaks manually from there.

In my experience I edit in premiere pro and add let premiere generate the captions. There is a minimal amount of cleanup. Mainly you have to capitalize words, the beginning or sentences and add punctuation. Add who is talking. I make medical documentaries so sometimes it has trouble with medical terminology. Otherwise it works very well. Most accurate I’ve used so far.

I use Premiere Pro for all video edits. It has built in tools to add captains and translations that you are able to edit. Another free option is to upload your video to YouTube (as a private video) and Google will automatically generate captions in which you can edit and export in YouTube Studio.

After Descript or Capcut generates your auto-captions, if you need to make any changes, it's very easy to do so. There's no need to hire a professional captioner nor to write them out yourself.

If you are getting video at scale, then editing captions can be a chore. But it's worth a brief look to correct spelling of names or other things that auto-captioning often gets wrong. At the same time, tools like LinkedIn have high-quality auto-captioning for uploaded video. So you don't always need to burn-in your captions.

I like the level of accuracy in Descript. Regardless of the software used to generate captions, proofreading is recommended. Synchrimedia's MovieCaptioner is inexpensive but not as easy to use as Camtasia.

I believe it's more creative to put up your own captions going by what is trending and what will catch the audience's attention,

Writing captions yourself can be very demanding, especially for long form video contents, and the automatic transcription services may not be so accurate especially if the speakers are not speaking in a native accent. I always advise hiring a pro to do it in this case. But if they’re short videos, the cheaper and more efficient option is to use auto transcription services like capcut, or Premiere pro, etc

The trend of single-word, over-produced, highly animated, distracting 'karaoke' captions are not accessible for deaf/hard-of-hearing viewers who may also rely on lipreading. Also, consider the colour contrast of your text. White text on a black background might seem boring, but it's more easily readable. Some neurodivergent viewers report that animated captions can help with their attention (especially for ADHD). So consider how you can compromise, and still include full or partial sentences (using natural, linguistic breaks). 42 characters per line (with a maximum of two lines) is considered industry standard. Readability is key and accessibility should be your priority.

Descript and Capcut will add auto-captions to your video with the click of a single button. No need to "add" them yourself. Both options are fast, easy, and free.

Echoing what Tiffany Hendricks said, don't play around with captions. The point of them is so that people can engage with your content. If you make captions that are unreadable, that defeats the whole purpose. Not to mention that you are telling part of your audience that they do not matter to you.

The next step is to import the video and the .srt file into Ooona tools - it's a very user-friendly online tool that allows me to reposition the subtitles on the screen so that they don't cover baked-in text information, like speakers' introduction or definitions, which are often displayed at the bottom of the screen. This reduces users' effort to move the captions manually or to turn them off to read the content.

In broadcasting, the safe areas to broadcast must be respected, this can vary depending on whether the video will be 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratio, normally professional programs provide a guide on the monitor of the areas of action/logos and text, because some channels compress the signal and this is reflected in a cropped image. Although I always respect these safe areas, it is not a straitjacket to keep them for social networks, streaming and platforms such as YouTube, Vimeo and the like, on computer screens and smartphones the image is not cropped. It is very important in all cases to take into account the color contrast of the text with the background image, as well as to use a legible font.

It is always good to translate your captions into one or more languages to reach a wider audience. Do not rely too much on Google Translate because the translations are approximate at best. It is always preferable to ask a native speaker of the language or someone who is fairly proficient in the target language to translate. That way, the cultural nuances and subtleties that might get lost in translation can be conveyed properly.

The optimal start point to a good translation is an accurate caption and transcript start point. Edit your captions carefully to ensure your translation will be localized with accuracy. There are many free auto translation services but all will fall short if your source is inaccurate.

The best way is to select the automatic translator. Why? Because you may know a language or two. But we are looking at it worldwide. The automatic one will translate better and conveniently.

I think this still has a lot to be desired as it relates to auto translation. The tools are advancing, but they're not yet as accurate or nuanced as needed. And for global organizations I would be weary of using auto translation software. Spotify recently launched it's translation service for podcasts and the tool seems really powerful and exciting—it has a ton of promise. We should be celebrating these technological advancements as they will create higher accessibility standards across the board. However, I don't think this means you can fully automate the work, nor should you. If you do, there should be a disclaimer that makes clear the captions are auto-generated in different languages.

This is another area that I would use an automated online service. Adding multiple language support to your content means more people will be able to engage with it. But I understand there's also an upward limit to what we can afford as independent filmmakers and video creators. If you translate your captions to the key markets you expect, you cover enough of your audience to justify the cost.

Having worked with Adobe Premiere-pro for over 8 years, I found I like to create the text for the Video in and from the Text input I can make the text in Photoshop for more creative control and input I can add to the video or with adobe after effects motion graphics and then the text usually is a .png file and file/import it or drag and drop it the Media box usually in the bottom left corner of P/P. Creative input to any product is my inner bread & butter. Yeah, creatives "We like it".

98% of video editing programs allow you to add texts without resorting to external programs, this is highly recommended because in case you need to make changes or corrections, the time saved is considerable. To make multilingual versions of the same video I use Adobe Premiere, which allows me to make several subtitles of the same sequence and be able to export them in annex format such as SRT or stamped on the video

There are some devices that won't play certain videos, so when editing using Adobe, one should ensure that when saving the video or during the editing process you select an option that the video can play on all devices. This is to ensure it reaches a large number of people... because what's the use of posting the video if it won't play on some devices?

Each platform is different and your captions will need to change accordingly. If you're creating content that's meant for mobile first, then you're most likely creating vertical video. Those captions will need to be positioned within the frame at different points than something that is going to be posted to YouTube. I suggest creating safe margins in your editing software that is platform specific so that you can spec your deliverables correctly.

Definitely play your video on a few different devices to see how it looks. Test your video on your phone, on your laptop or desktop computer, and then also test it on a television if you can. Each display format will look slightly different and though it doesn't need to be perfect, it should be consistent.

Our videos are published on YouTube so to leverage the repositioning of the subtitles on the screen, I use the .vrt format - it retains the position on the screen and our viewers are very appreciative of the automatic repositioning.

As a producer who works with audiences who are deaf, it's imperative that videos have captions or at a minimum the option to view closed captions. Without captions, you're automatically eliminating a portion of your perspective audience. Additionally, captions provide an easy way to convey the message for viewers who are watching on their phones with the volume turned off. The captions may be an extra step in video, but it's an important one.

If you're creating a short video, consider using a brief caption of 1-3 words to make it catchy and stunning. More, you can combine words with illustrating images like stickers to make different and easier understanding.

Always proof watch your video at least 2 times and have a second pair of eyes watch them too, before you distribute them to any channel.

Premiere Pro is one of my favorite tools to use for captioning videos as it gives you a lot of control over the way your captions are generated. The added benefit being that it creates transcripts too. Let's say you have six interviews with thought-leaders at your company. You need to include them in your approvals process, along with various other stakeholders. What I will typically do is mark-up the transcript with highlights around soundbites that could make up the narrative and run this by the team before crafting my edit. It's saved me countless hours in editing as I don't need to go back and remove things or reshuffle music to fit those edits in seamlessly.

Captions are an essential accessibility tool for deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers. But they're also valuable to people watching in busy environments, or who might have English as a second language. Accessibility, readability and accuracy should be your top priorities. Your aim should be to recreate the viewing experience as close as possible. Don't censor or alter the transcription from what was said. If there's time/space, add brief captions for other non-speech sounds. If you can, describe the source and nature of the sound. E.g. [Ada scoffs in disbelief], [robot beeps frantically] Test it for yourself by watching the video on mute. Importantly, captions shouldn't be an afterthought - plan and budget for them in your production.