Captioning is becoming more popular these days for online videos. With more people viewing video content on their phones with the sound turned off, captioning is essential to ensure that you get your message across. Here is what you should know about using real-time captions. 

Captions For Edited Videos

If you are producing an edited video that you plan on uploading to the web, know that adding captions to the video can be done in a few different ways. 

A popular method is to use video editing software to create a caption file. It involves translating the spoken words into text and placing them over the video with the correct timing that aligns with the audio. It can be a very time-consuming process, but it ensures that your captions are timed correctly. You can even tweak the timing of the captions so they turn on and off on the exact frame. You then attach this caption file to your video on the video streaming site of your choosing, and the viewer has the option to turn the captions on or off.

You also have the option to burn the captions into the video so that they cannot be turned off at all by the viewer. While this takes the choice away from the viewer of whether they want to view captions, it ensures that videos on mobile devices with the sound turned off are able to understand what you're saying. You also have more control over the size, color, and placement of the caption text.

Captions For Live Videos

Captioning your live videos is a bit harder to do since you can't exactly type out everything that you are saying in advance and have the text sync up with your voice. In this instance, you are going to want to use a real-time captioning service to take care of the captions for you. 

Your streaming software will need to support an extension that allows you to use a real-time captioning service. There are also paid and free live captioning services out there, which have varying degrees of quality. For example, you may want different language translations for your captions for foreign language viewers.

One potential issue with a live captioning service is that it is using speech-to-text technology, so it is not always going to be 100% accurate. However, the captions are often good enough to get your message across and be usable for your viewers.