Many ask whether to add captions to a video and how it benefits them. Captions are crucial for modern video content as they improve engagement, accessibility, and viewer retention. They can make them more impactful, whether you are creating videos for education, social media, or professional use.
This guide explores the benefits of captions and the best tools for creating them. It also presents a step-by-step process for adding captions to videos using Transkriptor.
Why Captions Are Essential for Videos
At a time when the entire world goes online, creating videos without captions is no longer a viable option. Captioned content becomes accessible to people with different needs and lifestyles. Following are the primary reasons to add captions in your videos:
- Enhance Accessibility: Most users engage in creating captions for accessibility and expanding their audience reach.
- Improve Viewer Engagement: Captions allow viewers to invest more in the video, further increasing view time.
- Expand Audience Reach: Captioning videos in a foreign language helps creators expand their audience reach and SEO.
- Boost SEO and Discoverability: Creators can add captions to make it easier for search engines to index their content and rank them higher.
Enhance Accessibility
According to WHO, more than 5% of the world's population, or 430 people, have hearing loss. And it is estimated that around 1 in every 10 people will have a disability by 2050. Automated captions allow these people to follow your content, and the more accurate and detailed the captions are, the better.
Improve Viewer Engagement
Captions make it easier to engage your audience, as Facebook reports captions to increase video view time by 12%. These longer view times not only help you convey the message, but the content performs better. Also, irrespective of the audio quality, viewers can follow along with the spoken word.
Expand Audience Reach
Aside from improving video engagement with captions, you can use them to make your videos more searchable. According to Statista, India (476 million) has double the number of YouTube viewers in the United States (238 million). So, captioning videos in a foreign language helps reach a wider audience and boost SEO.
Boost SEO and Discoverability
Adding captions to your content makes it easier for search engines to find it through Search Engine Optimization. Search engines like Google and Yahoo cannot listen to or watch your videos to index your content. An interactive transcript with keywords allows search engines to index your content and drive traffic. Also, you can use transcripts to repurpose your content into other forms like blogs or email.
Top Tools for Adding Captions to Videos
The best tools for video captioning must be easy to use, support multiple languages, customization options, and more. From detailed research and testing, the following tools qualify for the list of top captioning tools:
- Transkriptor: It is a standout speech-to-text platform that lets you transcribe your videos with 99% accuracy in 100+ languages.
- Kapwing: It is a video editing software that can generate accurate captions for your videos.
- YouTube Studio: YouTube Studio primarily offers creators tools to edit videos and generate automatic captions.
- VEED.io: It lets you create professional videos and captions in 100+ languages with a few clicks.
- Rev: It is a speech-to-text tool offering human and AI-based transcription services.
Transkriptor
Transkriptor stands out as the top option for adding captions to your videos. This innovative AI-powered tool can transcribe your content directly in your browser, eliminating the need for additional software. You can seamlessly convert your videos to text with a few clicks.
Not only speed, the software is known for its accuracy and other features. The captions are 99% accurate, and its advanced tools let you customize them per your needs. Besides, its support for 100+ languages and several file formats makes it a great tool to create video captions.
Kapwing
Kapwing is free video-editing software that allows users to create professional-looking videos. It generates automated captions for videos and keeps major spelling and punctuation correct. You can choose how your captions look. Besides, its video editing features like audio cleaning, watermark customization, voiceovers, and more help you generate professional content.
However, when you add captions on Kapwing, it might be difficult to edit them individually. On the other hand, Transkriptor's user-friendly interface allows you to edit transcripts.
YouTube Studio
YouTube Studio has the tools a creator needs to offer a versatile viewing experience and enhance video engagement. The interface is broken down into sections, making browsing and working on your videos easier. Unlike many tools, it generates automatic captions for your videos, and you can edit them for more accuracy.
However, the issue arises when you make content in languages other than English. The automatic captions in such cases are about 60-70% accurate, which affects accessibility.
VEED.io
Veed.io is an online video editing platform with features like subtitles, transitions, stickers, and AI edits. It supports over 100 languages, including Spanish, French, Chinese, Arabic, and Russian. Its intuitive interface lets you transcribe your videos in a few clicks. However, the platform is more expensive and takes much longer than Transkriptor to transcribe videos.
Rev
Rev is a speech-to-text tool that offers human and AI transcription and captioning services. It supports speaker diarization, identifying and labeling individual speakers in a video. Besides, it can summarize the transcripts and offers tools to customize them according to your needs.
The human-generated transcripts are 99% accurate, but accuracy suffers in automated transcription. This is where the Transkriptor excels.
Step-by-Step Guide to Adding Captions Using Transkriptor
There are two answers to how to add a caption to a video. You manually add captions in a video editor or generate captions using an AI tool. The latter saves your time, and with tools like Transkriptor, you can vouch for accuracy. So, here is a step-by-step video captioning guide using Transkriptor:
Step 1: Upload Your Video
First, open Transkriptor and log into your account using Google or user credentials. Then, add a video link or upload a video that requires captioning. You can tap “Browse files” to find the video or use the “drag and drop” method to upload it. Make sure that the audio is clear for optimal transcription accuracy.
Step 2: Generate Captions Automatically
As you select and upload the video, a new pop-up window appears. Here, you choose from 100+ available languages, “subtitle” as the service, and tap on “Transcribe.” You can also choose transcription destination, label speakers, and speaker count from its “advanced settings” option.
Step 3: Edit Captions for Timing and Style
The platform takes only a few minutes to transcribe a video. Once it is done, you can use the built-in customization tools to customize captions in videos. You can adjust timings, edit texts, and test how your subtitles align with the video playback.
Besides, Transkriptor offers a few additional customization features. For example, you can configure how long each line appears on the screen and set limits for words or characters. This helps improve the readability of your subtitles. You can also control subtitles' duration and visibility to ensure proper video synchronization.
Step 4: Export the Caption File
Once satisfied with the subtitle formatting, you can easily download the file in SRT format. Alternatively, you can embed the subtitle into your video and download it in different formats (WAV + SRT or MP3 + SRT).
Then, you can split your text by characters, words, sentences, timestamps, or voiceover blocks. It allows viewers to process ideas cohesively, improve pace, and a better viewing experience.
Step 5: Upload to Your Platform
The final step is to complete the captioning process and make the video accessible to your viewers. You can upload it to your desired platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. Simply follow the prompts to share the video and click “Publish” to complete the process.
Benefits of Automated Captioning Tools Like Transkriptor
Transkriptor is an AI-based transcription tool trained with large amounts of data to deliver accurate results. Other benefits are as follows:
- Save Time and Effort: Transkriptor automatically transcribes your videos within minutes, saving you time to transcribe manually.
- Multi-Language Support: You can generate video captions in 100+ languages like English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Hebrew, and more.
- Customization Options: The editing tools allow users to configure the subtitles for better readability.
- High Accuracy: Transkriptor AI can reach up to 99% accuracy when converting your videos into words.
Save Time and Effort
An efficient AI tool like Transkriptor instantly converts spoken language into text. This reduces the manual efforts creators might put into typing each word in a video. You can quickly access the subtitles without spending hours on manual transcription. That is much faster than most popular captioning tools like Veed.io, Rev, etc.
Multi-Language Support
Automated video captioning solutions like Transkriptor let users create captions in multiple languages and improve accessibility. It supports over 100 languages, including Portuguese, Hebrew, Turkish, Arabic, and Spanish. This makes your content accessible to non-native speakers and improves accessibility and engagement.
Customization Options
A transcription tool must offer customization options to cater to various users and use cases. Transkriptor is one such tool, with options to adjust timings and edit the text of your captions. It also allows users to configure the length of subtitles and set limits for words or characters.
High Accuracy
Transkriptor uses AI to produce highly accurate video captions. The platform can reach up to 99% accuracy when transcribing your files, provided the audio is clear. Besides, the advanced ML (machine learning) algorithm can automatically and accurately label the speakers from the audio. This eliminates the need for manually tagging the speakers, speeding up the editing process.
Conclusion
Whether to improve accessibility, enhance discoverability, or boost engagement, you must add captions to a video. And you must choose the right tool for that—otherwise, you will spend hours editing it.
Transkriptor qualifies as the best video captioning tool due to its advanced AI, high accuracy, and 100+ language support. Its easy-to-use interface makes the process simple and efficient. So, start captioning your videos using Transkriptor for free and create content that connects with your audience.