OSU Guidance for Captioning Third Party Videos and Recorded Lectures

Choosing Captioned Videos

If you are choosing videos that have been created by someone else, make sure they are captioned. We recommend watching a video all the way through to ensure the captions are accurate. Automated captions and transcripts can and usually have inaccuracies and lack punctuation and capitalization, making it difficult to follow.

Checking Videos for Captions

To check if a video is appropriately captioned, click on the “CC” button at the bottom of a video. If there is no “CC”, the video is not captioned at all. This information usually appears in the control bar at the bottom of a video screen. Using YouTube as an example. When only an auto-generated transcript is available and captions are turned on, text displays this info as "English (auto-generated)."

When human-generated, or non-AI captioning methods are used, text displays this info as "English." Note that this text displays the language captions are being shown in for each example.

Finding Captioned Videos

If you’re searching for video content to use in your courses, you can narrow your YouTube search to just those videos that are captioned. Go to YouTube and enter the topic you want to search for. After you select the search button, you will see a button labeled Filter appearing in the top right, just above the first result. Selecting that button opens a large drop-down menu with many options. Under the Features column, select Subtitles/CC. This will then narrow your search results to only those videos that are closed captioned.

Vimeo does not have an auto captioning component, and the Vimeo search function does not provide a filter to search only for videos with closed captioning. Vimeo videos with closed captioning become evident when you scroll over the video screen, and a CC icon appears in the control bar at the bottom. If the CC icon appears, you have to click on the icon then select “English”, so that you can review the captions for accuracy.

Captioning Videos (or Audio) Owned by Others

If you don’t own a video that you’d like to use and it is not captioned, or the video uses auto captioning, copyright policy does not currently allow you to copy and caption the content. Similarly, if you do not own an audio podcast that you’d like to use and it does not have a text transcript, copyright policy does not currently allow you to create a transcript. However, consider the following: 

1. If the video has auto captioning, watch it in its entirety to determine if it is accurate; if it is accurate, you could use the video.
2. Reach out to the owner and share your interest in using their content for academic purposes, and let them know you are unable to use the content until it is accurately captioned (or a transcript for the podcast is provided). Ask if they are able to make the content accessible by the term you intend to use it.
   If the owner does not have resources to make the content accessible, ask for permission to copy and caption the video (or transcribe the podcast)
3. Search for an accessible alternative. (Consider videos available through the library, search YouTube with the caption filter enabled, etc.)

OSU may have additional solutions in the future.

Captioning Videos You Have Created

If you have or want to create your own videos, you will need to caption them or have them captioned. Disability Access Services (DAS) may have resources to assist you, but it’s important to understand that they usually focus on remediating content you’re already using, and only if a student in your course requires it. Institutional, state and national laws and policies, however, expect you to provide accessible content at all times, not just when a student registered in your course requires accessible media as an accommodation. It’s not terribly difficult to create your own captions, however, especially if you’re hosting it on YouTube. There are different ways to do this:

1. Create a transcript of the video, upload that to YouTube and allow YouTube to sync the transcript and video.
2. Upload your video to YouTube and allow it to make an auto generated transcript for you, then edit the transcript, making corrections, adding punctuation, etc.
3. Create a transcript and use a tool (like 3Play Media) that allows you to add timings to your transcript. Then you can upload the caption file to YouTube.

Transcribe the video in Microsoft Word, which has a spellcheck feature. It is possible to play the video and use Word’s dictation feature to transcribe it, but the script must be read to ensure accuracy.

DAS uses the DCMP’s (Described Captioning and Media Program) Captioning Key to produce accurately-captioned videos post-production. DAS Captioning Services recommends using Subtitle Horse for editing captions (there is a free version).