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Captioning Tools

Before looking at tools, please look at the DMCP Captioning Key to get familiar with captioning standards. Note that I just discovered this in 2009, so many of my captioned videos do not yet conform to the captioning standards. http://www.dcmp.org/captioningkey/special_considerations.html
Also see: A gentle introduction to video encoding, part 4: captioning by Mark Pilgrim.

Favorites
online editor: DotSUB
software editors:  Aegisub and Gnome Subtitles
Captioning With Video Editors:

Online Captions:

Offline Captions

Other Tools

30 Comments

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  1. Brein / Apr 15 2009 4:49 pm

    Can you actually separate this somewhat into subtitling and captioning tools, since they have different functions? I know the terms are used interchangeably at times, but at least ‘traditionally’ in the U.S. TV industry, subtitling is embedded, and captioning usually refers to ‘closed’ captions or captions that work only on activation.

    Reply
    • Bill / Apr 15 2009 5:18 pm

      Hi Brein,

      Subtitling and captioning (aka subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing) use the same tools.

      Open/Closed is a description of the display options, and depends on the player that is used to display them.

      Some of the options, like TubeCaption and Bubbleply, do not allow the export of the caption files, but they are still a separate entity.

      Subtitles that are “burned in”, like the type of titles you might see if you used Windows MovieMaker, and JumpCut to add titles and comments, are usually created at the time of the editing of a movie.

      Does that make sense? Let me know if I am wrong, or need to further clarify something.

      Reply
  2. Brein / Apr 15 2009 7:16 pm

    I disagree that they use the same tools, but there are so many variables and options that the line is very blurred.

    I’m looking for a tool that provides a reasonable Closed Caption display option in the finished product. It seems like you clarified at least some of the variables here. The video editors usually do ‘burn-in’ as you said. And at least some of the post-production tools do not by default provide options to turn off the display. Overstream is a good example.. you can export the caption files, but their own display does not let you turn it off.

    Is the link to subtitlehorse.com supposed to refer to http://subtitle-horse.org/ ? That seems like a nice resource since you can embed it in a CMS.

    Reply
  3. Bill / Apr 15 2009 8:30 pm

    Yep, that’s the one, I’ll make corrections.

    I feel the best for that use is to caption in Overstream, and import into Google or YouTube player (the export works as-is for import into those)

    I use these definitions of captioning vs subtitling:
    http://openandclosed.org/topics/captioning/
    http://openandclosed.org/topics/subtitling/

    Captions, as opposed to “subtitles,” reflect all of a program’s audio for deaf or hard of hearing people, converting not only dialog into text, but also sound effects, music, speaker identifications and the like, which are needed for a more complete understanding and enjoyment of the content. Subtitles convert the spoken dialog from one language to another for hearing viewers, and do not include non-speech information.

    http://www.nationaltechcenter.org/index.php/2008/06/06/closed-captions-enabled-on-handhelds/

    On the other hand, sometimes the difference refers to the font format – this sounds like maybe where you’re coming from?:

    The only significant difference for the user between “SDH” subtitles and “closed captions” is their appearance: SDH subtitles usually are displayed with the same proportional font used for the translation subtitles on the DVD; however, closed captions are displayed as white text on a black band, which blocks a large portion of the view.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subtitle_(captioning)

    If you have a good basis for your definitions, I would be interested in knowing it. I have only been doing captioning since 2007.

    Reply
  4. Bill / Apr 15 2009 8:40 pm

    Overstream is also planning on adding a caption on/off button in their player.

    Reply
  5. Brein / Apr 15 2009 9:19 pm

    I posted & replied to you on twitter, but posting here so as to maintain the conversation on site.

    http://twitter.com/Signcasts/status/1528114022 —
    @grwebguy deaf people inaccurately say ‘captioning’ for Closed Captioning. subtitles = open captioned. method vs content definition issue.

    http://twitter.com/Signcasts/status/1528263925 –
    @grwebguy see http://ow.ly/2XO6 (formats) vs http://ow.ly/2XOh (content). Both right in context. http://ow.ly/2XOC is for tools = formats.

    —-
    Deaf people use CC on TV heavily, so our definitions and ideals are shaped by that. Both the content of the text and the format are often (inaccurately — I do this too! ) defined interchangeably. But with web tools for creating captioning we do have to consider what formats and method they use. The creation of the content of ‘subtitles’ for foreign languages versus ‘captioning’ for the deaf could be any tool, but the format they put them in does make a difference!

    In a reversal of fortune, I wish to do captioning for Sign Language videos for hearing people to have access to the dialogue. But since ‘open captioned’ subtitles can’t be turned off, they can be visually distracting to those who understand signing. Closed captioning (on/off) seems to be more ideal.

    Also would love love love to have more spoken videos captioned, so the more deaf people are involved in understanding how to make it easier to have captioning, the more we can encourage it to be done for our benefit. Any “K.I.S.S” tools like that now?

    Reply
  6. Bill / Apr 21 2009 2:47 pm

    Review of CaptionTube
    http://www.meryl.net/ci/2009/04/captiontube_you.html

    Reply
  7. Bill / Apr 21 2009 2:56 pm

    http://billcreswell.wordpress.com/2009/04/16/two-more-ways-to-caption-youtube-online/

    Reply
  8. Rob Colling / Jun 1 2009 9:57 am

    Hi Bill and Brein.

    I’m enjoying the discussion here very much. But given that we are no longer limited to a simple choice between burned-in subtitles or Line 21 closed captions, I’d like to see a broadening of the definitions.

    The Joe Clarke site that Bill quotes is spot on in defining subtitles versus captions. The Wikipedia entry, on the other hand, is hopelessly out of date. To my mind it’s perfectly possible to have open or closed captions, and (independently) to have open or closed subtitles. You can have closed captions and closed subtitles living happily side by side on a DVD or YouTube video, for example, with the ability to switch between the two during playback.

    In the 21st century I’d submit that open/closed refers purely to the delivery format, and captions/subtitles purely to the content. Let’s not muddy the waters by talking about “open-captioned subtitles”… :)

    Kudos for your respective sites, by the way. Bill, yours has long been a fixture on my bookmarks list, and Brein, I’ve just discovered you, but I like Signcasts very much.

    Reply
  9. FruitySudz / Jan 8 2010 5:49 pm

    MovCaptioner for Mac has quite a few output formats including SCC (line 21), embedded QT Text, embedded QT XML, SMIL, Flash, JW Player, YouTube (SUB an SRT), Adobe Encore, STL (for importing into DVDs), SAMI (for Windows Media), and will also output transcripts in both plain text and HTML. Requires QT Pro for embedded formats. Cost is $39.95 and they have free lifetime upgrades to purchasers. Very easy to use and there is a 14 day free trial that is not cripple-ware.

    Reply
  10. heidi / Mar 18 2010 10:58 am

    another online caption tool: OpenCaps
    http://opencaps.atrc.utoronto.ca

    can import/export different formats

    Reply
  11. FruitySudz / May 15 2010 12:09 pm

    Just wanted to add that I’ve recently discovered that MacSpeech Dictate works great with MovCaptioner. Now I just speak what i hear in the headphones into the microphone and it types what i say into the MovCaptioner interface. This combination of MovCaptioner and MacSpeech really makes captioning videos a piece of cake!!!

    Reply
  12. bill / Jun 7 2010 6:48 pm

    http://www.fluffalopefactory.com/miyu/index.html

    Reply
  13. boro / Jul 13 2010 5:25 pm

    Hello,

    I was wondering, is it possible to use a streaming URL from youtube for example, with a subtitle that i have on my server?

    For example, i want to use a youtube URL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Loq3onwIXII and put a CC from a file on my site, in this way visitors can play the movie with CC on it, and not use any of my bandwidth.

    Is this possible?

    Reply
  14. bill / Jul 13 2010 5:28 pm

    Yep!

    You can use flowplayer or jw player with a separate file, or import it into dotSub or Overstream

    Reply
  15. Tanya Ward English / Jul 30 2010 5:28 pm

    Bill, I wanted to make you aware of Transendia. It’s an online player built for accessibility and searchability. I am the technology director and President of Realtime Transcription, Inc., and we designed Transendia to be very user friendly. It’s an online Flash player, with a big CC on/off button that makes it one of the easiest ways to see captions. The search features are very robust.

    Please check it out and consider listing Transendia as one of your captioning options. We allow anyone to submit an accurate transcript with their video, or we can provide the transcription. We also allow branding of the Transendia player and make it available to CART and captioning companies, so they can process videos for their clients.

    Here is a link to our examples page.

    http://transendia.realtimetranscription.com/examples/

    I’m happy to answer any questions. Thank you, and keep up the great work!

    Tanya Ward English, Certified CART Provider & Certified Broadcast Captioner
    tenglish@realtimetranscription.com

    Reply
  16. Bill Creswell / Nov 16 2010 6:44 pm

    http://www.radioactivepages.com/subcreator.aspx

    Reply
  17. Patrick / Nov 18 2010 10:53 am

    Another tool you might add to your list is SCC Caption Reader. It will take an SCC caption file and make a readable text transcript from it. This is helpful for troubleshooting and also for being able to provide text transcripts of movies. http://www.synchrimedia.com
    It’s Mac-only right now, but there will be a Windows version out very soon.

    Reply
    • Bill / Nov 19 2010 5:18 am

      I just saw that the other day on their site. I was wondering what anyone would use that for?

      Reply
      • Patrick / Nov 19 2010 5:31 am

        SCC caption files are unreadable, as the text for the captions is in binary code. This tool interprets the code into readable text. So you can create a text transcript from the file for your web site, for instance.

        It can also aid in troubleshooting these files. A lot of times with SCC captions you get something called timecode overruns where the buffer time needed to display a caption overlaps the timecode of the previous caption, resulting in a non-working SCC file. If you can narrow down the line that’s causing the problem you can fix it, but since the timecode is often different in the SCC file (due to the buffer time added) than in your captioning s/w, you can read which caption is giving your the problem and jump right to it. The tool itself won’t identify the problem, but it will help you identify the caption that has the problem so you can possibly add a bit more time to it and fix the issue.

  18. Bill / Jul 16 2011 3:31 pm

    Nice article on youtube captioning here too: http://terrillthompson.blogspot.com/2011/07/youtube-caption-tools-part-2.html

    Reply
  19. Joe / Nov 21 2011 4:34 pm

    Has anyone else figured out a replacement for bubbleply? I have been searching all over the internet for a way to add clickable links with no success at all

    Reply
    • Bill / Nov 21 2011 6:16 pm

      You can make clickable links with annotations on youtube,
      Nope. Just links to other youtube stuff.

      Reply
  20. Tanya Ward English / Nov 21 2011 8:09 pm

    Transendia (www.transendia.com) is a searchable captioning player, created by Realtime Transcription. The current version is build on Flash. Although it is not a self-service tool, Transendia does have the capability to place links within the captions and within the searchable transcript. If you’d like to discuss this and see what’s possible, feel free to contact us at info@transendia.com

    Tanya Ward English, Pres.
    Realtime Transcription, Inc.
    http://www.RealtimeTranscription.com

    Reply
  21. Tole / Feb 12 2012 9:41 pm

    There’s a free online cap­tion for­mat con­verter tool that con­verts between all major cap­tion for­mats, includ­ing SCC, DFXP, Flash Cap­tion­ate, SRT, STL, Quick­time, and SMI: http://www.3playmedia.com/resources/caption-format-converter/

    Reply

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