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CTTL Faculty Repository: Video Captioning - Panopto

Tutorials, articles, and professional development artifacts for faculty

How To Record and Caption Videos in Panopto

Setting up Panopto (Video Recording and Captioning)

  • Watch the instructions in the Getting Started with Panopto 
  • From within your Canvas course, click on the “Panopto Video” link from the course menu on the left hand side. Check to see if Panopto is enabled in your Navigation bar. If not enabled visit: How to access Panopto in Canvas.
  • The Panopto interface will appear.  Click on the “Create” button and then “Record a new session.“
  • If you've already installed the recorder, click “Open Panopto.” If this is the first time you have accessed Panopto, you will now be prompted to download the Panopto recorder on your computer. 
  • When finished recording, the system will automatically publish the recording to your Canvas course site.  After the video is processed (can take up to a few hours), you (and your students) will be able to access it from the “Panopto Recordings” link in Canvas.

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.

Captioning Guidelines (from Chris Weidman)

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:

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. You can also request live captioning (contact your accessibility specialist or instructional technologist).  Zoom integrates with Canvas and you can even upload recorded Zoom sessions into Panopto.

Why Caption Videos? (video)

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CTTL Instructional Designers

   Andrea Fuentes

   Erica Reynolds

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