Add closed captions to videos
You can add captions to online and downloaded videos to help you understand what’s happening on screen. Nik Rawlinson reveals the tools you need
When someone says ‘subtitles’, they usually lump together genuine subtitles and what they ought to call closed captions. The distinction is subtle, but worth making. Subtitles are translations – from French to English, say – for those who can hear but can’t understand the content. Closed captions, on the other hand, transcribe all spoken content in the original language, identify who’s saying what, and describe important noises, like gunshots, revving cars or water sloshing (see screenshot below). If you’re hard of hearing, closed captions are more often what you need and, in this feature, that’s what we’ll focus on.
If you have a hearing impairment, you’ll understand the value of closed captions – and so will your family, as it means you can all enjoy the same shows without having to turn up the volume to uncomfortable and potentially harmful levels. And, while not all videos have integrated captions, there are several resources online that can help you add a caption track to your favourite films and TV shows. Here, we’ll show you how.
Turn on Youtube’s hidden closed captions
Start by checking whether the video you’re watching has captions already – or, if not, whether they can be generated as you watch. If you’re watching Youtube in your browser, look for ‘CC’ at the bottom right of the playback controls. Clicking this will turn on closed captions that have been supplied by the video creator. If they’ve uploaded captions in a range of languages, click the cog to open the settings menu, followed by Subtitles/cc, then select your preferred language.
If you’re using the Youtube app on your phone or tablet, tap the videoplayback window, followed by the CC button that appears at the top of the screen. To switch between different languages, tap the three dots to the right of the CC button, followed by Captions, then choose the language you want.
If the video creator didn’t upload their own closed captions but the audio track is clear and in one of 13 supported languages, you may be able to use speech recognition to generate closed captions by choosing ‘English (auto-generated)’ from the language settings (see screenshot left).
With some videos, you can use the same technology to translate foreignlanguage videos in real time – but only if you’re watching them in a browser. Make sure closed captions are enabled, then click the cog, followed by Subtitles/cc, then ‘Auto-translate’. Choose ‘English’ as the language you want to translate into.
Change the design of closed captions
While subtitles are generally an embedded part of a video, effectively burnt into the picture, closed captions can be enabled and disabled, which means, with some services, you can change how they look.
For example, if you use captions when watching Netflix in your browser, you can use the Netflix Subtitle Options extension to make them easier to read. Use any Chromium browser (Chrome, Edge, Brave, Vivaldi) to visit www.snipca. com/40202 and click the blue ‘Add to’ button, followed by ‘Add extension’. Now click the Netflix Subtitle Options icon in your browser bar – a red box with CC inside ( 1 in our screenshot above right) – if you can’t see it, click the jigsaw piece first to open the Extensions menu. Use the dropdown menus 2 to change the text size and colour, the background colour, and the opacity of the caption window.
You can make similar changes to the closed-caption style when watching Youtube in your browser. Enable closed
captions by pressing ‘cc’, then click the cog, followed by Subtitles/cc. Click ‘Options’ at the top of the panel that appears, then use the menus to tailor the font, size, colour and opacity as required.
Add captions with Substital
If the video you want to watch doesn’t have its own closed captions, but you’re using a mainstream service like Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Youtube, Vimeo or Dailymotion, check out Substital – an extension that’s available for both Firefox and Chromium browsers. It promises to add closed captions to all online videos by searching web libraries, rather than expecting you to download and import your own.
Visit www.snipca.com/40208 and click the blue Get button, followed by ‘Add to’ at the top of the following page. When it’s finished installing, navigate to the video you want to watch with closed captions. Start the video playing, then click the Substital logo to the right of your browser’s address bar ( 1 in our screenshot above right) – see our note about the jigsawpiece icon earlier. Substital will detect which programme you’re watching and search for matching subtitles in public libraries.
Click the slider in the top-left corner 2 if you want to limit the results to closed captions tailored to the hard of hearing, which will include descriptions of important sounds, as well as spoken words. Click the language track you want to use, making sure you select the right language and episode if there are several to choose from.
Download closed captions from public catalogues
If Substital can’t find closed captions for the video you’re watching, or you’re using another tool, you should try looking in one of several public catalogues.
Start with Tvsubtitles ( www. tvsubtitles.net), which has almost 300,000 closed-caption files for more than 67,500 TV episodes – from’allo ’Allo and Blackadder to and Zorro - with more in English than any other language. If you can’t find what you want, try Subscene ( https://subscene.com) instead, which covers music videos as well as film and TV.
Open Subtitles ( www.opensubtitles. com) has recently had a redesign, and is one of the best-looking sites of its type, not only providing closed captions but also ratings. You’ll need to install the Open Subtitles extension or sign up for a €10 (around £8.40) annual membership to download captions, but if you want to try before you buy, or don’t want to support the service, check out its free sister site at www.opensubtitles.org.
Use downloaded captions in VLC
When you’ve downloaded a closed caption file, unzip it if it’s been compressed, and copy the .srt file to the folder that contains your video. Make sure the two have exactly the same name (before the dot and file extension). In our screenshot below, we’ve renamed our closed-caption file ‘lastmanonearth-1964.srt’ 1 to match the file name of the video.
Launch VLC (a free download from www.videolan.org), then press Ctrl+o and select the video file you want to play. Now click Subtitle on the menu bar, and hover your cursor over Sub Track. Because you gave the subtitle file the same name as your video, VLC will automatically associate the two, so click Track 1 2 and it will open the .srt file and use it as the basis of your closed captions.