Universal Design Center
University Library 34
Mail Drop: 8235
Phone: (818) 677-5898
Make an appointment
YouTube & DIY Captions
Students: I made this video for my class, do I need to caption it?
Yes! Captioning your video gives your classmates another way to access the audio for it. How?
Do It Yourself (DIY) Captions
There are several Do It Yourself (DIY) captioning tools that you can use for live captioning your lecture, video calls, or pre-recorded videos.
Important: Built-in microphones or standalone microphones and headsets can complicate things with automated captioning your lecture or video calls. For automatic captioning tools, use a laptop built-in camera and microphone or standalone microphone. This way the apps could “hear” voices in video calls to provide automatic captions. For instance, headsets with an attached microphone will not work to "hear" voices in video calls in order to provide captions. Automated captioning does have limited speaker identification, limited punctuation, and accuracy is highly dependent on audio quality.
Please note: Auto-captions are often machine-generated captions with poor quality in which content is not accurately communicated to people who depend on captions. Auto-captions should be corrected for accuracy and provide equal access for everyone.
Creators/owners should review auto-generated captions for accuracy. Accuracy highly dependent on audio quality.
- Vocabulary
- Terminology
- Acronyms
- Names
- Locations
- Unusual words
- Complex Technical Language
- Limited punctuation
- Limited speaker identification
- Incorrect words choice do not match the spoken audio (e.g. Can vs Can’t, Know vs No, Hear vs Here, Ban vs Van, Cake vs Kate, Savvy vs Say Vi)
- Add sound effects and music if applicable (e.g. (water dripping), (upbeat music), (audience cheering), (balloon pops), etc. Descriptive captions help to ensure the viewers have full experience of the sound and enjoy the media.
YouTube Captions Guide
To upload to YouTube, you will need to create a YouTube channel. For instructions, visit Create a New Channel.
The easiest way to add captions on your own YouTube videos account is:
- Go to your Video Manager by clicking your account in the top right > Creator Studio > Video Manager
- Next to the video you want to add captions or subtitles to, click the drop-down menu next to the Edit button.
- Select Subtitles/CC
- Select Add new subtitles or CC button
- Decide if you want to add or edit subtitles or closed captions
Please note: Auto-captions are often machine-generated captions with poor quality in which content is not accurately communicated to people who depend on captions. Auto-captions should be corrected for accuracy and provide equal access for everyone.
For more ways to add captions on YouTube visit:
Amara offers a free caption/translation editor, and they’re building a community to support it.
Captions are available on videos when the owner has added them or when YouTube automatically provides them. You can change the default settings for captions on your computer or mobile device. Burned-in captions/subtitles do not have these options. Visit Manage Caption Settings.
- Go to YouTube video player
- Select Settings gear icon
- Select Subtitles/CC
Select Options to customize
- Font, color, opacity, and size
- Background color and opacity
- Window color and opacity
- Character edge style
Note: These will be your default captions format settings until you change them again or select Reset, which will go back to the default captions format.
- Go to YouTube video player
- Select anywhere in the description box below the video
- Select the Show Transcript button
- In the transcript box, use Find or CTRL + F in your browser to search for a specific word in the transcript
- Or use the timestamps to get to that point in the video
- Go to YouTube video player
- Find a video you'd like to share at a specific start time
- Select Share button
- Find the small checkbox which says "Start at:"
Universal Design Center
University Library 34
Mail Drop: 8235
Phone: (818) 677-5898
Make an appointment