Captions are a textual representation of the auditory components of a video. Closed captions mean that one may turn the added text portions on or off. With open captions, the text is hard-coded onto the video and cannot be turned off.
While captioning provides accommodation to those who are deaf or hard of hearing, it also is beneficial in other circumstances:
Captions compensate for noisy backgrounds or where sound isn’t allowed.
They provide a solution for poor audio quality.
The text can be searched for a specific reference.
View the correct spellings of people, places, and things.
Catch details that normally slide by unnoticed.
Meet or exceed compliance with the W3C Web Accessibility Guidelines.
Caption content can be accessed by search engines.
Provide additional support for people who are learning English as a second language.
Video on the web or media player can even look better when the captioning is on.
All McMaster videos booked through the video booking system will already have captions
Request captions for almost all other videos through the request closed captioning website.
Video Tutorials related to Closed Captioning:
|
Length of Video |
Captioning Solution |
|---|---|
|
3 - 5 Minutes |
YouTube auto-generated captions, with manual clean-up |
|
5 - 60+ Minutes |
Upload to Rev.com - if less than 60 minutes, returned within 24 hours - $1/minute Built into the cost of producing all new videos and have captioned at the point of creation |
|
Commercial Videos |
Need to get permission to caption, then provide a digital copy to Rev.com, as above |
|
Lecture Captures |
No viable solution yet - average 3 hours long - only used for one term - very costly |