Adding Subtitles to videos

Many instructors needed to teach online because of the pandemic in 2020. For many instructors, it was the first time to teach online.

When the online instructions first started about 20 years ago, it was normal to have web pages only in texts. The technology has advanced enough so that it’s easy to produce and make videos available to online students. Making videos available to students makes it possible to recreate the environment close to the classroom to students. The main method of communication is auditory, not the reading which heavily depends on the ability of each student.

One important factor for videos to online courses is closed captions (subtitles). Having closed caption on videos for online courses is required by federal law to be ADA compliant.

In this presentation, the presenter will show an easy way to add subtitles to videos. The presenter will show how to produce closed captions by using freely available resources online. By utilizing various resources, it’s possible to make closed captions without spending hours transcribing every sentence by oneself. By using various tools (some are AI tools), adding closed captions is not as time-consuming as some people think. It can be done without relying on manpower to transcribe each sentence.

The method I’m going to share with the participants makes it possible to add captions of not only English, but various major languages such as Japanese, Chinese, Korean, etc.