YouTube has recently announced some new advances to its platform in order to make it easier for more channels to add captions to their videos.
If you ran a channel with over 1,000 subscribers, you were granted access to the feature of automatic captioning. However, this will no longer be the case; YouTube is opening up the option to all streamers, giving creators additional ways to maximise their content’s accessibility.
What is Automatic Captioning?
We all know that captions are a great way to make your content more accessible to viewers. But, YouTube’s features have grown in strides and now offers creators the ability to use speech recognition technology to automatically create captions for their videos.
Although creators are encouraged to add professional captions first (due to the fact that YouTube is constantly improving its speech recognition technology), using automatic captioning will provide creators more ways to connect with different audiences and viewers.
Here’s how you can review automatic captions and make changes.
How to Review Automatic Captions
- Sign in to YouTube Studio.
- From the left menu, select Subtitles.
- Click the video you want to add captions or subtitles to.
- Under “Subtitles”, click More next to the subtitles you want to edit.
- Review automatic captions and edit or remove any parts that haven’t been properly transcribed.
Automatically generated captioning aside, YouTube is also expanding its subtitle translation options to mobile. Currently, the option is available on desktop, where users are able to translate available caption tracks into another language.
Lastly, YouTube is making video transcripts searchable. This means users will be able to find specific segments of video clips based on the caption text.
As said by YouTube:
“In Searchable Transcripts, users can view and search transcripts for information that’s most relevant for them. This allows them to find the most interesting information without watching the entire video.”
