Instructional Support

Captioned Media on YouTube

YouTube

Don’t be fooled by YouTube’s auto-generated captions. Almost all YouTube videos have a CC button, but be warned, they could be auto-generated captions that are not completely accurate and are missing punctuation.

To search for videos captioned by a human and not auto-generated, follow this easy search technique.

  1. Enter your search term (for this example, let’s say I’m searching for videos on volcanoes) in the YouTube search field.
  2. Add a: , CC (that’s a comma, CC)
  3. Hit Enter or click the magnifying glass icon.

youtube search with the letters "cc" added after the search term

Verifying captions are not auto-generated

To determine if a YouTube has auto-generated captions (consider these as uncaptioned) or captions done by a human (much preferred),

  1. Click on the Settings button in the bottom right corner of the video player.
    Close Captioned options within the youtuble player
  2. Choose Subtitles/CC
  3. Make sure there is an English option, and not just an English (auto generated) option.
    Close Captioned settings which include languages and whether captions are autogenerated or applied by uploader

Caption videos from someone else

This allows you to create captions for other YouTube and Vimeo videos without having access to the video itself.

  1. Go to Amara and create an account.
  2. Start captioning
  3. How to Transcribe a video