Overview
All videos that Kaltura ingests are automatically given "machine captions": captions generated by a computer program that provide generally no less than 70% accuracy. Kaltura users can edit these or any captions attached to an entry.
These instructions apply to all Kaltura users at UCSD with active directory credentials (instructors, students, staff, etc.).
Captions can be edited in both Canvas and MediaSpace. Note that while this tutorial will walk you through how to download your captions and edit them on your computer, Kaltura also does offer the ability to edit captions with their web-based editor.
Critical Concepts
What are Captions?
Captions are the textual representation of spoken dialogue, narration, or relevant audio information that display on screen during a video. While their primary purpose is to make the video more accessible to viewers that may have difficulty hearing, captions benefit many viewers and address a wide variety of learning styles.
Though captions can be "burned into" a video during postproduction (that is, edited directly into the video, rendering them unremovable), generally captions are contained within a separate text file that's formatted in a particular way. Timecodes within the file tell the player when to display the text on screen.
Captions are technically different from transcripts. The latter typically refers to a raw text file just containing the text without any timecodes.
Things to Keep in Mind
- If you edit the captions, the transcript will update too. You may know that many of our Kaltura players within Canvas and MediaSpace have a "transcript widget" beneath the player. The information within this widget, however, comes from the caption file. So if you make changes to your captions, those changes will be reflected immediately in the transcript.
- You can also edit captions on the web As mentioned above, you can edit your captions in Canvas or MediaSpace if you prefer. (Check out our tutorial on using Kaltura's closed captions editor if you're interested.)
- If you give someone co-editor access to your video, they can edit your captions. Co-editors of Kaltura videos can follow these instructions as well. (Check out our tutorial on adding collaborators if you need to.) This can come in handy if you want a friend, colleague, or student worker to edit your captions for you.
- Let us know if you want to add something to the dictionary. You may use words frequently in your videos that Kaltura's ASR vendor isn't aware of. Shoot us an email at kaltura@ucsd.edu if you want us to add something to the dictionary so there's a better chance of the word term being represented correctly next time.
- Zoom integration entries use Zoom's machine captioning system. Currently, Zoom and Kaltura use different systems to generate machine captions. If your Kaltura entry is the result of the Zoom integration (i.e. an entry you originally recorded to the Zoom cloud but ended up in your "My Media" in Canvas or MediaSpace), it will bring over the captions that Zoom generated. This can be nice in some ways because Zoom adds the speaker's name to each line of transcribed text (leveraging the user's UCSD login information).
- Looking for caption editing tips? Editing captions can be time consuming. Check out our tips for editing captions to help make it as quick as possible.
Steps to Take
You can download and edit your captions in both Canvas and MediaSpace. In either case, you'll need to get to "My Media." Follow the instructions in the table below depending on where you want to download your captions.
| In Canvas | In MediaSpace |
|---|---|
|
|
- Locate the video in question and click the pencil icon on its row.
- Click the Captions tab below the video preview.
- On the row with your captions, click the icon with the downward arrow, and the caption file will download to your computer.
- Open the caption file with a basic text editor. Most operating systems have a free text editor that comes with them, such as WordPad in Windows and TextEdit on a Mac.
- Edit your captions.
- Save your caption file.
- Return to the captions tab for the video by following steps 1-4 above if necessary.
- Click Upload captions file.
- Browse for the file on your computer, select the language, leave the accuracy at 100%, and give it a label. (The label is what will appear in the player when viewers select the captions they'd like displayed.)
- If there are other caption files available that are inaccurate, consider deleting them or disabling them. (See our tutorial on deleting captions or our tutorial on disabling captions if needed.)
- If you want the captions you uploaded to be the default captions that display when viewers watch the video, click the checkmark on its row.
Your edited captions will be available in the player immediately, and will also display in the transcript widget.