YouTube & DIY Captions
Students: I made this video for my class, do I need to caption it?
Yes!听 Captioning your video gives your classmates another way to access the audio for it. How?
Do It Yourself (DIY) Captions
There are several听Do It Yourself (DIY)听captioning tools that you can use for live captioning your lecture, video calls, or pre-recorded videos.
Important:听Built-in microphones or standalone microphones and headsets can complicate things with automated captioning your lecture or video calls. For听automatic captioning tools, use a laptop built-in camera and microphone or standalone microphone. This way the apps could 鈥渉ear鈥 voices in video calls to provide automatic captions.听For instance, headsets with an attached microphone will not work to "hear" voices in video calls in order to provide captions.听Automated captioning does have limited speaker identification, limited punctuation, and accuracy is highly dependent on audio quality.听
Please note:听Auto-captions are often machine-generated captions with poor quality in which content is not accurately communicated to people who depend on captions.听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听
- 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.听Can vs Can鈥檛, 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.听Descriptive captions help to ensure the viewers have full experience of the sound and enjoy the media.
YouTube Captions Guide
Subtitles and captions allow you to share your videos with a larger audience, including deaf or hard-of-hearing viewers and viewers who speak another language. Learn more about听.
- Sign in to听.
- From the left menu, select听Subtitles.
- Select the video that you'd like to edit.
- Click听ADD LANGUAGE听and select your language.
- Under "Subtitles", click听ADD.
- Then choose from one of the options to add your subtitles and captions. 听
Please note:听Auto-captions are often machine-generated captions with poor quality in which content is not accurately communicated to people who depend on captions.听Auto-captions should be corrected for accuracy and provide equal access for everyone.
For more ways to add captions on YouTube visit:听
Amara offers a听, and they鈥檙e building a community to support it.
Captions are available on videos when the owner has added them or when YouTube听. You can change the default settings for captions on your computer or mobile device.听Burned-in captions/subtitles do not have these options.听Visit听.
- Go to YouTube video player
- Select听Settings听gear icon
- Select听Subtitles/CC

Select听Options听to customize


- Font, color, opacity, and size
- Background color and opacity
- Window color and opacity
- Character edge style
Note:听These will be your default captions format settings until you change them again or select听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听Find or CTRL + F听in your browser to search for a specific word in the transcript
- Or use the timestamps to get to that point in the video

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- Go to YouTube video player
- Find a video you'd like to share at a specific start time
- Select听Share听button
- Find the small checkbox which says "Start at:"