Written by Chris Albrecht
Posted Thursday, August 28, 2008 at 8:26 AM PT

YouTube Adds Captions

The nice thing about most popular YouTube videos is that they require no translation (especially the global language of a guy getting kicked in the nuts). But for more conversational vids, it might be nice to offer subtitles so the whole world can understand what you are saying. To help out, YouTube has launched a captions feature to its videos.

With captions, video uploaders can add a translation into a foreign language, provide clarification for garbled dialog or make the video more accessible to the hard of hearing. In order to add captions, you’ll need to have files with captions or subtitles in them, created using software or a service. Once added, the captions can be accessed by clicking on the arrow in the lower right hand corner of the video. Like video annotations, captions don’t seem to work with embeds.

There’s been a bigger push for more accessibility of web videos, Congressman Ed Markey (D-Mass.) is backing a bill that would require major web video producers to include captioning and video descriptions that describe the action for the blind. Elsewhere, dotSUB is a free browser based wiki-type tool to provide video translations.

Sphere Tweet This

Topic: Software

Comments (5)

This goes in the “yawn” category of YouTube upgrades. I’ve got 7 more suggestions for useless add-ons. Wanna play?

http://willvideoforfood.com/2008/08/28/youtube-captions-underwhelms/

Kevin Nalts — 11:33 AM on August 28, 2008 Reply
Are the captions treated as searchable metadata?

Sean — 12:23 PM on August 28, 2008 Reply
This is a great step in the right direction for us viewers with hearing disabilities, even with the brain-dead limitation of one language (for now?). As long as they are not abused like annotations.

Wade Menard — 1:24 PM on August 28, 2008 Reply
Best service I found for close caption and subtitles was at http://www.subply.com Free offering for the YouTube player and embed.

john — 2:08 PM on August 28, 2008 Reply
That is cool! Much easier for certain movies that are in languages that I don’t understand!

Dieta dos Pontos — 9:34 AM on October 6, 2008 Reply

Linkbacks (3)

[...] one of its most underwhelming functionality changes in the past decade, YouTube now offers captions. Qui donne une [...]

Will Video for Food » YouTube Captions… — 9:43 AM on August 28, 2008
[...] YouTube Adds Captions [NewTeeVee] – YouTube has launched a captions feature to its videos. With captions, video uploaders can add a translation into a foreign language, provide clarification for garbled dialog or make the video more accessible to the hard of hearing. In order to add captions, you’ll need to have files with captions or subtitles in them, created using software or a service. Once added, the captions can be accessed by clicking on the arrow in the lower right hand corner of the video. Like video annotations, captions don’t seem to work with embeds. addthis_url = ‘http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tamaleaver.net%2F2008%2F08%2F31%2Flinks-for-august-31st-2008%2F’; addthis_title = ‘Links+for+August+31st+2008′; addthis_pub = ‘tamaleaver’; Tags:acamida, america, annotation, celebrity, facebook, fairfax, highered, journalism, mediawork, news, newspapers, olympics, openaccess, panopticon, privacy, research, sport, subtitles, surveillance, wiki, wikipedia [...]

Tama Leaver dot Net » Blog Archive… — 4:53 AM on August 31, 2008
[...] have access to web video, but according to GovTrack.us it never became law. YouTube has had captioning capabilities for its videos since August of last year. Hunt predicts that subtitles and captions will be [...]

Why Netflix Doesn’t Offer Subtitles… — 6:18 PM on June 12, 2009