Captions and Transcripts for Videos and Audio Files

How to add a file

To add an audio transcript to an audio file, or to add captions or an audio transcript to a video:

1. When viewing an audio or video work, click Edit to edit the work.

2. In the Work’s “Edit” view: On the Files tab, add and upload a new file. Upload a VTT file for captions, and/or a TXT file for a transcript.

   1. Video files can take both captions and a transcript. Audio files can take only a transcript.

   2. VTT files have specific formatting requirements; see below for an example.

3. Save your changes.

4. At the bottom of the Work’s main page, find the video or audio file’s thumbnail, and select Edit to edit the file itself.

5. On the “Edit File” page, under “Captions”, click on the drop-down menu and select the VTT file that you uploaded.

6. On the “Edit File” page, under “Transcript”, click on the drop-down menu and select the TXT file that you uploaded.

7. Save your changes.

Open

The figure above shows how the file edit options have options to select a caption and transcript file for videos.

How to view a video’s captions

1. Click the three dots in the lower-right of the video screen.

2. Click the “CC” button. This toggles the display of captions on the video screen.

Open

The figure above shows the video display in Chrome with the three dots. The figure below shows the menu after clicking on the three dots and then selecting to turn on the captions. In addition, the video transcription link is on the left side below the video viewer.

Note: The captions work in other browsers. However, they may display differently. In Firefox, the option to turn on the captioning exists but is difficult to see; a fix is forthcoming.

How to view an audio file or video’s transcript

1. Look for the link below the video or audio file, labeled “Video Transcript” or "Audio Transcript".

2. Click on the link. It opens your TXT file in the same tab.

Format Instructions

A transcript is a generic text file, but a captions file needs to follow these rules:

1. Begin the file with WEBVTT and a blank line.

2. Comments to explain the captions file, that should not be displayed, are notes. Notes should be on their own line, and the line should start with NOTE

3. Every caption has two lines:

   1. The time stamp

   2. The caption text

4. The timestamp is in this format: HH:MM:SS.TTT --> HH:MM:SS.TTT where HH: is hours, MM is minutes, SS is seconds, and TTT is tenths, hundredths, and thousandths of seconds.

   1. HH: Hours are optional. If only one colon is present, the number before it represents minutes.

   2. Note that a colon separates hours from minutes and minutes from seconds, but a period separates seconds from tenths of seconds.

   3. The start time (when the caption appears) is separated from the end time (when the caption disappears) by --> . That is, a space, two hyphens, a greater-than sign, and another space.

5. Separate captions from each other with a blank line.

6. Save the file with the extension .vtt

Examples