HowTo: 6 Ways of Captioning Youtube Videos Part 4

If you don’t like using online solution to set captions and timecode, there are software solutions for the Windows and Mac operating system. Comparing to the online solutions and the software solutions, the software solutions are better if you can install it.

For Windows, there is SubtitleWorkshop (currently on version 4). The program is simple. There is a box for over viewing the captions and timecode input and a box for the text for the caption. The program has the standard cut/copy/paste tools, insert and delete subtitles, set timing, setting the max characters of captions, break/unbreak /group captions (if the captions is too long, or short), and the option setting the standard underline, italicized, bold, and the color of the captions does (not work on Youtube, but it is there for other media to handle caption). There is also a video preview (hidden until you want to have the viewer) to see the view with the caption before uploading to YouTube. The video player supports many popular video formats (Audio and Video Interleave (.avi), MPEG 4 (.mp4),  Flash Video (.flv), Divx, Xvid, gif, etc.). To get the video preview, it must be turned on by going to the view and selecting to show the video player, after that select the video menu box and click open to open a video. The program also lets you search for a specific captions (helpful if you have many captions). The only problem is that when the icons for the video player is showing, the icons are a little bit confusing. You know the standard play/pause/stop/fast forward/rewind/slow play icons, but there is some other icons that are there, and without some information when hovering the cursor there, it is confusing what the icons are. What I know is that the arrow between the down arrow icon and the fast forward/rewind/slow icons are the for viewing when the a single captions start and end. The half arrow between the playback speed icons and the (+>) and (V>) icons are the setting of the input and output. The (+>) and (V>) icons between the setting the input icons and the (1_) and (2_) icons are for adding new captions. The(1_) and (2_) icons are for synchronizing the captions. And the (S) tool is to adjust the first spoken line to the last spoken line. (Overall I think some of the tools are not needed for YouTube captions, but possibly for advanced captions on certain media). After typing out the captions and the timecode, the program comes with a spell-check tool, a translate tool, and a text converter (uppercase, lowercase, title type, sentence type, and inverse type). The save option has many captions format. For YouTube, we will need either the SubViewer (*.SUB) format or the SubRip (*.SRT) format.

For Mac (currently, but it looks like they may be in the making of a Windows version since they said, “Macintosh OSX only
(sorry, no Windows yet)”), there is MovCaptioner. Unlike SubtitlerWorkshop, MovCaptioner gives you clear to read GUI. The function buttons are in text unlike SubtitlerWorkshop. The program has add/remove/split/merge captions like SubtitlerWorkshop. They also have the options to edit the style/size/color of the captions like SubtitlerWorkshop. The program has a video preview, but unlike SubtitlerWorkshop, it is always there.

After saving the captions, the captions needs to be uploaded to the YouTube video. Like before go to the YouTube video and click on the captions option. After selecting the caption option, you are greeted with the caption page. Select the “Add New Captions or Transcript option” and select the caption file you created (the SubViewer (*.SUB) format or the SubRip (*.SRT) format). Then select the “Caption file (includes time code)” option and not the “Transcript file”. After that is done select the upload. This will instantly be added to the YouTube video and not require waiting for it to be added since the timecode is already applied and does not require for Google to add in the timecode.

Although if you don’t like the program and just like to add in the caption and the timecode without a program, there is a way to do it with only notepad…