CTTL Faculty Repository: Video Captioning

• Add Automatic Captions to Panopto Video - Written Guide

Why: Captioning Benefits All Learners

Researchers with 3PlayMedia discovered 75% of students use captions, and over a third of students use captions frequently. If you're wondering why, here's a short list of the most common reasons students use closed captions:

• they have a hearing impairment;
• they are watching in a public place or work;
• they find it helpful in improving their English;
• they find captions helpful  to study or learn complex vocabulary.

What: Captioning Guidelines

OEI Rubric Check 

Unsurprisingly, the OEI rubric requires accurate captions for video and transcripts for audio files; which again, can benefit all students.  There are some minor legal exceptions- such as one-time video/audio inside the LMS that is never repeated-  but it is highly recommend to use captions for all video.  

Make sure any third-party content (such as OER videos or publisher content) is captioned.   Most YouTube videos are close captioned, but there are exceptions.  Audio, such as a podcast, will need a transcript.  Live broadcast and synchronous video conferences must include a means for displaying synchronized captions if requested.

Zoom and Live Captioning

Zoom is the tool we recommend for video conferencing with students, for virtual office hours, or for synchronous online class meetings.  Zoom integrates with Canvas and you can even upload recorded Zoom sessions into Panopto.

Editing Automatic Captions in Panopto

Captions will be automatically applied to your video, but it's a good idea to always double check the captions on your videos. Panopto makes it easy to correct any mistakes that you might find in your captions.

1. Go to your Panopto Recordings in Canvas
2. After the video has finished processing, hover over it and select "Edit" (this can take a few hours  -- the automatic captions are sometimes being generated even after the initial processing complete) 
3. On the left-hand side of your screen, you will see the editing menu. Select the “Captions” option to edit the video captions.
4.  To edit a caption, click on the caption. Type in any changes you need to make.
5. Click "the Apply" link to save the captions.
6. Click the cogwheel link, under the Captions area click the Available Captions > Download file link if you want to download a .txt file of the captions.