Captioning - The Basics

 The Two Basic Steps of Captioning

The process of captioning consists of two stages: Transcription & Syncing. This short video (3:31 mins.) describes those two stages of the captioning process. 

1. Transcription 

Transcription is the typing out of the audio into text format. This is by far the most time-consuming part of the process. It will vary depending on typing speed. Think of this as typing out the written script of the video. So you'll be listening to the video, then typing what you hear. And then again listening to the video, then typing what you hear. 

2. Syncing

The next step is to sync the text transcript (created in previous step) with the video recording. This syncing process allows the text to be displayed at the correct time interval of the video, so that the audio is played at the same time that the corresponding text caption gets displayed.

 

 
Those Typing Skills?!
I am a decent typist (About 70 WPM). It will take me 3 times the length of the video to type out the transcript to the video. So a 10 minute video will take me 30 minutes to transcribe from scratch.  Now you know why I am a big fan of keeping my videos super short! There are other reasons why short videos are more effective too. But captioning helps me to remember to keep them short.