Closed Captioning with latakoo
Increase the impact of your video with a seamless caption integration
There’s an explosion of closed captioning happening online. As of July 1, 2017, the FCC requires captions for live and near-live clips within 12 hours. The FCC has previously ruled that any video broadcast to have accurate captions when re-shown on the Internet.
While the regulations are meant to assist the hearing impaired, reading while watching videos has spread widely, thanks to mobile devices. Facebook and YouTube have integrated captions for maximum ROI. In an internal study, Facebook found that adding captions to videos increased view time by 12%.
Captioning as workflow
latakoo now has integrated transcription and captioning service from Cielo24. There’s no need to have a separate workflow for video captioning, simply upload your master, select the quality level of the transcription along with a turnaround time, and order.
Let’s walk through the steps to produce a caption for your finished video with latakoo.
Step One: Upload your video
We take many formats and codecs, but whatever you upload, choose a robust file, like the master you exported from your edit system. Allow our patented technology to simultaneously compress and upload the file to the latakoo cloud system, where the captioning takes place.
Note: Selecting a quality setting for your video
If you are not intending to use latakoo to transfer the video file to another user, but only need to place an order for transcription, you’ll want to compress the file. Use the faster or fast setting on the latakoo Flight quality slider. Select the network (in our case, it’s “Latakoo”) and click start.
Learn more about uploading files with latakoo.
Step Two: Complete the Transcript Order Form
Once your file appears in our cloud service, called latakoo Pilot, you have access to our transcription order form. Below the file, click on the word “Expand”, and then select “Order Transcript” from the bar below the video.
Now you can customize your order. Choose the source language of the clip. (There’s more than a dozen to choose from.) Then, select the quality of the transcription, the turn around time, and whether you need any additional notations, such as adding speaker names. The system will generate both a “cost per minute” and a total cost.
Caption Quality
Caption quality varies from mechanical, which is approximately 70% accuracy, to professional, which is 99% accurate. For US broadcasters seeking to meet the FCC requirements, professional-level quality is recommended.
Most of the time, latakoo will return a lower-quality transcript quickly while the higher-quality transcripts are being processed. For instance, if you request a professional-level quality transcript, you’ll received a mechanical-level quality first, then a premium and finally a professional quality.
Turnaround Time
Turnaround times also varies, depending on the quality level you select and whether translation is required. For instance, mechanical captioning comes back within three times the length of the file. At the Professional level, you can choose from a range of turnaround times; 3 hours, 12 hours, 24 hours, 48 hours, or 7 days.
Click “Order Transcription” and enter your credit card information. If you’d like to purchase a block of transcription minutes or turn on automatic transcriptions for your network, contact our sales team.
How it works
For example, you upload a 5-minute long video to latakoo Pilot and select a professional-level transcript to be delivered in 3 hours. In no less than 15 minutes (3x the length of the file), you’ll receive a mechanical transcript of the video. Then, a premium transcript will be returned. Finally, the professional level transcript will be ready within the three hour window. Many times, it’s faster.
Step Three: Download an .SRT File
When the transcript is complete, you will receive an email. When you log-in, you’ll see the bar below the video changes to reveal download options. In the example below, a professional transcription is ready to download.
While there are many types of transcription files available, you’ll want an .SRT file which carries the run time of the video file along with the text of the video, which allows the captioning to sync with the narration of the video. SRT is the most common subtitle/caption file format, especially for YouTube or Facebook captioning. Learn more about our other caption formats.
To check the accuracy of the captions, you can use the playback feature on latakoo Pilot to watch the video and verify the transcript. Or, you can reveal the written transcript by selecting the “+” sign above the download menu. However, if the caption file requires edits, you will need to download a free .SRT file editor, such as Aegisub.
Step Four: Upload your .SRT File
The final step is to upload the video file and the .SRT file to the host site.
In YouTube, click on the closed caption icon below your published video. In the window that opens, select “Add new subtitles or CC.” Upload your .SRT file.
On Facebook, you can add an .SRT file in the captioning tab of the video control panel while your video is uploading. You must adhere to a naming convention — filename.language_country.srt. For example, English videos from the US are filename.en_US.srt. If you don’t follow this naming convention, Facebook will prompt you with instructions.
Captioning your videos doesn’t take a lot of time or expense with latakoo. We integrate easily with your current video workflow — and give you a new tool to connect with your audience online.
