From a Distance...

 
Online Newsletter for Arkansas Distance Learning

Caption This
by Liz Stover

Since accessibility is a particular interest of mine, I would like to share a few tools to help you caption your movie files, by using Camtasia Studio and by using YouTube with Subtitle Workshop.

The Global Campus at the University of Arkansas has recently revamped the instructor and student support sections for its learning management system (Blackboard). One of the most intensive and time-consuming tasks was to create new movie tutorials for the variety of tools used in Blackboard. To meet section 508 requirements, we selected to use synchronized captions for the movies. Having captions available also provides users with a script to read if a user’s audio is not functioning or if they are in a location where they cannot use the audio feature on their computer.

Captions can be easily created in Camtasia Studio as either open or closed captions. Our Blackboard tutorials project has been carried out by our gifted graduate assistant, Lindsey Loftin. The script is first written out and then read while the recording is being captured. The script is then added to the Camtasia’s editor and synchronized with the video before being published. Student movies (open captions) are available to the public on our Blackboard website. View a sample of open captioning used in student tutorials. A sample of closed captioning (click on the “cc” to see captions) can be viewed on a quick start tutorial I created for one of my classes.

While I love Camtasia, there are times when I want to create movie files to post in YouTube that include true captioning rather than an uploaded file with text embedded. Assistive devices cannot read this text. YouTube now supports captioning, which also allows a new translation tool to translate the movie into different languages. This is exciting!

YouTube is compatible with SUB and SRT subtitle format types, so my first task was to find a free tool to create the captions in this format. I selected Subtitle Workshop, which I found amazingly easy to use, though it is a bit more tedious than Camtasia. You can either import the captions in another format and export as SUB or SRT for YouTube, or add your text to the editor and set the caption points as the movie plays. You will then save your file in the appropriate format.

Now you have your caption file ready to plug into your YouTube movie. After uploading your video to YouTube, browse for the SRT or SUB file using the “Captions and Subtitles” link and upload the caption file. That’s it. We now have a close captioned YouTube video. You can view a sample of YouTube closed captioning on my Dellbert Desktop movie. The computer voice was created using Adobe Acrobat’s read aloud feature.

As I promised, you can also use the captioning feature to translate your movie into other languages. With closed captioning on (click the “cc” button in the lower right), select the arrow to bring up the translation feature and select your desired language. It does a pretty good job if the captions do not include idioms or slang.

This was a quick tour of some options for creating captioned video for your eLearning needs.

About the Author 

Liz Stover works as an instructional designer with the Global Campus at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. Her professional interests include web usability, online course quality, and accessibility. Liz is also an adjunct instructor for the online Educational Technology program. She received her M.Ed. in Educational Technology from the University of Arkansas and lives in Fayetteville with a variety of four-legged companions.
Lizstover.com

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