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closed captions

YouTube Auto Closed Captions: 4 Things You Should Know

Others January 30, 2021
youtube auto caption

What you should know about YouTube auto closed captions(CC)

Studies consistently show that adding captions increase viewership time, boost SEO, and help with accessibility. All of which can boost channel likes and earn you more dollars, if you want to do video marketing for your channel.

So if you are going to do it – and you should – it is worth doing it right.

Whilst it is tempting to go the cheap and instant route by using YouTube’s automatic captioning service, there are some limitations to this service to consider.

Let’s look at why you shouldn’t be using YouTube’s automatic captioning service and what you should be using instead.

YouTube Auto Caption is not always available

Maybe you do not believe it, but automatic captioning isn’t always available on YouTube indeed.  In fact, over half of the videos aren’t able to be automatically captioned by YouTube.

Do you know the reasons?

YouTube has listed the reasons on their support document. Under these circumstances, YouTube auto caption is not available.

  • The captions aren’t available yet due to processing complex audio in the video.

  • Automatic captions don’t support the language in the video.

  • The video is too long.

  • The video has poor sound quality or YouTube doesn’t recognize the speech.

  • There’s a long period of silence at the beginning of the video.

  • There are multiple speakers whose speech overlaps.  

That’s a long list of reasons why YouTube auto caption may not work for your video!

(Reference: Google Support)

Limited languages can Auto Caption

Another reason why auto-captioning may not be available is that the language in your video maybe cannot be supported by YouTube’s automatic captioning yet.

In fact, YouTube can only auto caption within limited languages currently: English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.

So what if your video is in Mandarin, Cantonese, Arabic, Greek, or Vietnamese? Well, you will have to find another solution.

Considering that over 80% of YouTube users come from outside of the United States, we find this list of 10 languages quite limiting.

Service is not available all the time

Even if your video has excellent sound quality, isn’t too long, and is trimmed so there isn’t any silence at the beginning, it still doesn’t mean that the automatic captions will be available.

Since the beginning of the year, multiple users have been reporting issues with automatic captioning working on their YouTube channel.

If you are running a YouTube Channel as a business, this can be very frustrating as well as a costly time delay.

Automatic Captions will not always be available

One of the main reasons to include captions is to increase your SEO.  Google can’t scroll through the audio in video content.  Therefore, to be indexed, it needs text. Adding captions to your video can provide this text.

However, Google will not always index YouTube videos that have automated captions.  The reason for this is that automatic captioning is often too poor.

Thus, for your video to be indexed on Google you will need to upload the captions yourself either by attaching an SRT file or manually transcribing the video yourself.  

Is there any Alternative?

It is widely known that YouTube auto captions is free. However, it isn’t the most effective, or necessarily the quickest method.  YouTube’s built in feature doesn’t always work, there are limited languages that it can transcribe, the service isn’t reliable, and the captions aren’t always indexed by Google.

By instead, if you try Autosubtitle.Online, you will obtain a free trial service, the professional speech to text tech, a quick and cost-effectively subtitle online tool.

Autosubtitle Online accepts more than 30 languages to transcribe; and it supports free translation; it can enhance the transcription quality by using Autosubtitle specilized noise reduction technology…

Downloading the subtitled videos or exporting the single SRT files are both good choice for Youtuber’s video SEO.

If you have any questions about transcribing your video, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

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The difference between closed captions and open captions

Subtitles January 22, 2021
difference between closed captions and opened captions

Closed captions Vs Open Captions

If you’ve turned on a television, watched a foreign film, scrolled through Facebook, or checked out a new YouTube video, undoubtedly, you’ve met closed captions or open captions.

Closed caption
YouTube CC Button

If you create a video, you will know that captions are important for a variety of accessibility reasons. And, yes, there is a difference between closed captions and open captions.

But what exactly are captions?

And what is the difference between closed captions and open captions?

Knowing what captions are and the difference between closed captions and open captions is important knowledge for any video content creator. So today we are going to explore these differences and when to use them both.

What are Captions?

Captions are the words and/or sounds you sometimes see scrolling along the bottom of a video, film, or social media post.  In fact, captions provide a text version of all the audio content from a video. Captions include all the spoken words and also any audible sounds in the video like [car horn], [music], or [laughter]. Lastly, captions will sometimes include the name of the person speaking.

What is the difference between closed and open captions?

The difference between CC and OC can be found obviously:

Close captions– can be turned off by users

Open captions:-cannot be turned off by users

Closed Captions

Closed captions are the preferred and most common captioning method as it leaves the viewer in control.

Most of today’s media players and social media sharing sites support closed captioning.

For example, at the bottom of each YouTube video, you will see the CC symbol. If you click on this symbol, the uploaded subtitles or the automatically generated captions will show up.

In most instances, video content creators should use closed captions as it gives the viewer the most choice and most viewers like to customize their viewing experience. If your video is solely going to be hosted on Facebook or YouTube, then you should use CC.

Open Caption

Alternatively, open captions (also known as “burned-in subtitles” are hard-coded into your video. There is no way to turn them off.

Open captions are great when you want your captions to look the same no matter what format your video is being played. Open captions also allow the creator to have full control over how the captions are displayed. Specifications like font color, font style, font size, background color, and positioning are all at the video creator’s discretion. 

Therefore, it is advisable to adhere to the Web Accessibility Guidelines for captions to minimize any issues for viewers.

How to get captions for videos?

If you are looking for the best caption creator online, then you should consider Autosubtitle. Autosubtitle’s caption tool brings together automated transcription, automated translation, and automated subtitles for the most powerful caption and subtitle creator.

auto caption creator
Autosubtitle.online caption creator platform

Relevant article>> What is the difference between subtitles and closed captions?