Using Captions in YouTube
For video content, you should provide captions of the audio for the benefit of those without hearing, who are hard-of-hearing, and who are non-native language speakers. Captions can be either closed captions (where a user can turn them on and off) or open captions (where the text is embedded into the video and cannot be turned on or off).
Automatic Captioning
YouTube can use speech recognition technology to automatically create captions for your videos. Please remember that the automatic captions are generated by algorithms, so the quality and accuracy of the captions may vary. They may incorrectly caption the spoken content due to mispronunciation, accents, dialects, or background noise. You should always review the automatic captions to check for accuracy. Currently, automatic captions are available in Dutch, English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, and Vietnamese.
How to review or edit automatic captions
Manually Adding Your Own Closed Captions in YouTube
Closed captions allow you to share your videos with a larger audience, including deaf or hard-of-hearing viewers and viewers who speak another language. If you already have captions, get help editing or removing existing captions. There are four ways to add closed captions to your YouTube videos:
- Uploading a file: The file needs to contain the text of what is said in the video and timestamps for when each line of text should be displayed.
- Auto-sync: You can create closed captions by entering them in as you watch the video.
- Type manually: You can choose to type or paste a transcript of your video captions. With this option, your subtitle timings will be set automatically.
- Auto-translate: YouTube can use speech recognition technology to automatically create captions for your videos. If automatic captions are available, they'll automatically be published on the video.
