Videos on social media platforms allow people to receive news, entertainment and information that specifically cater to their interests. Moreover, videos are a key marketing tool for all types of businesses. Video transcription service providers create a text version of the words spoken in videos, a process that involves viewing and listening to the video and converting the audio content into text along with suitable captions.
Text on video is the best way to capture the viewer’s attention. Subtitles make it easy for the viewers to understand what’s being said in the video. There’s good news for those dabbling in digital media – YouTube allows you to add subtitles to your social videos using SRT (SubRip Text) files. In an article published by journalism.co.uk, a mobile technology lead at the Hindustan Times explains that once the SRT file is generated, it can be uploaded to Facebook along with the video for “smart, simple and flexible subtitles”. This is a great option for journalists who are pressed for time in the newsroom.
Here are the steps involved in producing SRT files using YouTube:
- Upload the video to YouTube, preferably as unlisted.
- When the upload is complete, go to the video’s editing window – the Edit button may need to be selected
- Select Subtitles and CC in the main editing window
- Type in the transcription or caption
- Edit the captions by clicking on ‘Edit’ above the captions – delete unwanted captions, adjust timings and fix incorrect captions, and add missing captions as you listen to playback.
- When done, select Publish
- Select .srt from the Action Menu dropdown menu and the .srt will download to the computer.
The benefits of using SRT files for video captioning are:
- You can engage more effectively with viewers during silent autoplay
- All video formats support SRT files
- SRT files look great and are not burnt onto the video
- Allows viewers to choose whether or not they want to see the captions – if they don’t want text on video, they can switch it off
- Files can be quickly edited if text needs to be altered in the future, without having to re-export the video
- Captioning videos with SRT files speeds up mobile journalism workflows and makes things easier
With the subtitling part of video production workflow taken care of, journalists can film another video while the subtitles are being created for them.
According to statistics from YouTube, the number of hours that people spend watching videos on YouTube is increasing 60 percent year-over-year. Many people continue to watch the videos in their social feeds without sound, and text on video is the best way to catch their attention. When it comes to bulk video transcription and captioning, partnering with an efficient digital transcription service provider is the best option for media and business professionals.
