Accessible Content Creation
Resources for Captions and Transcripts creation
Read more about captions and subtitles. (Link Opens in new window) (https://www.w3.org/WAI/media/av/captions/)
Below is a select list of several user-friendly resources to caption and subtitle videos.
Key: CC: closed captions, OC: open captions, S: subtitles, F: free, $: paid, D: download, W: web
Amara (CC , S , F , W ) (http://www.amara.org/)
Amara is a free, web-based program for creating subtitles. The site promotes and permits collaborative work. Subtitles created at the Amara web site can be linked to videos uploaded to other web sites (such as YouTube). Subtitles can be created and viewed in approximately 60 languages.
Camtasia (CC , OC , S , F , $ , D ) (http://www.techsmith.com/tutorial-camtasia-8.html)
Camtasia is a commercial screen capture program (Camtasia Studio for Windows and Camtasia for Mac for Macs) that creates video as a hybrid between a slide show (such as may be created with PowerPoint) and traditional video, where computer screen content, audio, overlaid visuals, and other computer “desktop activity” can be recorded and viewed as a video.
CaptionTube (CC , S , F , W ) (http://captiontube.appspot.com/)
CaptionTube is a free, web-based tool specifically for adding captions to YouTube videos. Users must have a YouTube account and a CaptionTube account. Videos uploaded to YouTube are imported to CaptionTube and captioned there in one or more languages. Captions are visible to viewers of these YouTube videos after permission to connect the two has been granted by the account holder.
M4V Captions for Mobile Devices (CC , OC , S , F , D ) (http://ncam.wgbh.org/invent_build/web_multimedia/mobile-devices/how-to)
WGBH’s National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) offers a short series of online tutorials for captioning M4V format videos, primarily for use with Apple devices including iPods, iPads, and iPhones.
MAGpie (CC , OC , S , F , D ) (http://ncam.wgbh.org/invent_build/web_multimedia/tools-guidelines/magpie2helpcontents)
Created by WGBH’s National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM), MAGpie is a free tool for creating captions and audio descriptions for video.
MovieCaptioner (CC , OC , S , $ , D ) (http://synchrimedia.com/#movcaptioner)
MovieCaptioner is a commercial program for Windows and Macs for creating video captions. It can import and export text files as well as SCC, STL, XML, SRT, QT Text, Adobe Encore, and SUB formats caption files; export of other file formats are also available (for example, HTML , JW Player, Flash).
QuickTime (CC , OC , S , F , $ , D ) (http://support.apple.com/downloads/#quicktime)
QuickTime is a media player developed by Apple, Inc. for recording and watching videos on Windows and Macs. There are two major versions: QuickTime 7 Pro and QuickTime X (QuickTime 10). At present, QuickTime 7 Pro is more widely used for creating captions and subtitles.
Windows Media Player (CC , OC , S , F , D ) (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-media-player)
Windows Media Player is a media player developed by Microsoft that displays videos with captions and subtitles. Captions and subtitles that are supported by this player can be created using Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange (SAMI) files , Windows Media Encoder , or Microsoft Expression Encoder , which are all free to download from Microsoft’s web site.
YouTube (CC , OC , S , F , W ) (https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2734796?hl=en)
YouTube is a free, video sharing web site that streams videos with automatic and user-generated captions and/or subtitles. Upload a pre-existing transcript with or without time codes or caption/subtitle videos within the tool. YouTube’s voice-recognition technology helps sync transcripts without time codes, but it is recommended to edit them further for timing and visual presentation after the initial sync. Note that YouTube’s automatically generated captions and translations currently remain in development and are not yet of high quality.
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