

YouTube also has an ‘auto-generated closed captions’ feature. Once YouTube tries to sync your transcript to the audio, you can easily edit the timings using a simple visual timeline. It’s by no means 100% accurate, but it gives you a head start and saves you time. ‘Transcribe and Auto-Sync’ is a tool that takes your typed transcript and uses YouTube’s speech recognition engine to match the transcript to the audio to time your captions. You can upload an existing transcript, transcribe and auto-sync in YouTube Studio itself, or create new captions or subtitles with timecodes. Select your video from your YouTube account and choose an option for how you’d like to add captions or subtitles. It’s versatile and simple to use, but you can only use it for videos that are uploaded to YouTube. YouTube also has a tool for creating captions.

The text is then synced with the spoken word in the video and displays on screen. In the first step, spoken dialogue is converted into text. The captioning processĬreating captions is a two-part process. There are two types of free captioning tools: Browser-based captioning platforms, and captioning software, which must be downloaded.

Note that in some countries, such as the UK, ‘captions’ and ‘subtitles’ are interchangeable and mean the same thing. Subtitles are a translation of what’s being said into a different language. SubtitlesĪll of the tools below produce both captions and subtitles, as does Ai-Media.Ĭaptions are the words on a screen that reflect what the people on-screen are saying. In the meantime, we’ve made a quick, easy guide to the free tools out there.īefore we dive into the review, there are a few things to know about captioning a video. And like art, there’s a time and place for cheap and cheerful and a time and place for quality and perfection.Īt Ai-Media, we caption your content when it deserves quality and detailed attention. There’s an art to creating the captions you see on videos and live streams. 3 Free Captioning and Subtitling Tools You Can Try
