Captioning

Visual Media

If you receive an email indicating that you have a student needing captions in your course, all videos should be shown with captions turned on. Any videos posted in Moodle or shared with your class should have the option of turning on closed captions. If needed, you can submit videos for captioning to DAR, or we can help you find a captioned version. 

Lecture Recordings

If you have a student approved for captions, you can send your recorded lectures to DAR. We use rev.com for captioning. In general, turnaround for captions take 12–48 hours.

If you do not currently have a student approved for captions, there are many ways to generate captions. The easiest is to take advantage of the captions associated with Google Drive. As of Spring 2024, all videos uploaded to the Google Drive associated with your Hope account will get automatically-generated captions. 

Social Media Videos

Many social media platforms have options for adding captions. If you are looking for a video editor with captioning options, we recommend checking out CapCut.

AUTOMATICALLY-GENERATED Captions

When using automatically-generated captions, it is important to keep in mind that the accuracy of the captions is based on the sound quality of your video content as well as the clarity of the speakers. If the language in your video is very discipline specific or contains complex terminology, this method may not produce accurate captions. Since automatically-generated captions are not 100% accurate, this should be considered a first step towards creating your own captions.

Cleaning up Captions

Automatically-generated captions may miss some content and/or misinterpret what the speaker is saying. We recommend trying out Jubler Subtitle Εditor to clean up your captions. Here are a few things to consider when editing. 

• Make sure that all spoken words are accurate.
• Keep caption lines short and easy to read. Aim for about 5 to 6 words per line.
• If there is more than one speaker, add labels or identifiers. If the speaker's name is known, put their name in brackets. For example:
  [Stacey] Will you go over the second problem from the homework?
• If it is obvious who is speaking, you do not need to use labels.
• Put non-speech sounds in brackets on their own line. For example:
  [Dog barking] 
  or
  [Soft music]
• If you cannot understand something being said, write [indistinct].

If you would like to learn more about captions, check out Captions, Transcripts, and Audio Descriptions (WebAIM).