How I worked out how to add captions to videos for marketing training
René Power
Marketing Director / NXD delivering highly targeted content marketing strategies for manufacturers and B2B service companies to attract larger contracts. #MarketRight via DFY, DWY, team training, speaking & coaching.
28 Jan 2021: This is the story of how I tried to get my videos for my new mini-course captioned last week and why it took so long.
I started off at the beginning of the week using BigVU teleprompter on my iPhone. When I need to do decent quality scripted video, that's what I use.
Normally the app can process captions. It can be a little glitchy but for the most part it's been fine. Last week though, it literally had a meltdown. So, I had to find something else.
Before I did that, I output the videos to iMovie to add an audio soundtrack, plus the intros and outros I’d already created in Canva.
I'd heard somewhere that .SRT files were the way to go in terms of getting captions on video. After researching a lot of this, it seemed that Otter would be the best product to do this. True it was fantastically slick in getting the audio into a near perfect text format.
Unfortunately, iMovie doesn't like .SRT files.
More reading led me to the conclusion that I needed to upload the videos to YouTube as private videos and sort out the SRT files and captions in there. The problem there though is with it uses closed caption technology that's only really good for social hosting like YouTube LinkedIn Facebook – not for producing videos to go into a closed training platform.
More research this time for apps and software led me to Zubtitle and this has proved to be a fantastic find. Not only can it caption and sync to audio seamlessly, it's easy to edit online, and also gives you headings, captions, progress bars and an ability to add your logo and colour treat the whole thing.
So, I've cancelled the annual subscription to BigVu (￡80 annually), cancelled the Otter pro that I'd signed up for ￡12.99/mo, and gone all in on Zubtitle initially at $19.00 a month for up to 10 x 20 minute videos.
Hope this helps someone out there as video marketing is so important these days.
What tips and tricks apps and software are you using to stand out and make your videos more engaging for your audience?
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I help manufacturers and professional services businesses improve marketing output and outcome. Marketing plans, content, training and more.
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IT and Ops Manager (and Excel expert!)
4 年.srt files are just text files written in a certain format and saved as .srt. I'll admit to doing my subtitles by hand, in that I use my vid editing software to get the start and stop times for each sentence or word section (the slow bit), then create the srt by hand (the quick bit)
Managing Director @ Affirm IT | Cyber Security Evangelist
4 年Thanks for this René, I've been struggling with BigVu (having paid for it). Similar to yourself I'd just like to make a video with captions all the way through. Although I'm a Samsung/Android kind of guy.
Built environment marketing expert | Driving AEC growth through strategic marketing campaigns | Speaker | Trainer | Fractional CMO | Non-Exec | NED
4 年Check out VEED, it's user interface is great to work with