Creating Closed Captions In 2024: 10 Helpful Tips For Video Content Success
Whether you’re a researcher, corporate professional, or content creator, videos play a dominant role in your work. Similarly, the standards for video content creation are ever-increasing for all professions. One of the most prevailing expectations right now is creating closed captions for your videos, not only to accommodate the deaf or hard of hearing but also non-native speakers who want to learn the language spoken in the video.
As time passes, offering captions is an expectation that is slowly becoming a non-negotiable standard. With that said, how do you catch up to this trend in 2024?
Don’t worry — here are 10 trends to help you stay ahead of the curve:
10 Tips For Creating Closed Captions For Your Videos In 2024
1. Add Closed Captioning To Your Content Creation Permanently
At least half of viewers in the United States watch videos with closed captions, while at least 89% have watched videos with captions at least once in the past, according to a 2022 survey by Preply. This means that having closed captioning in your workflow is an absolute must in content creation.
2. Dedicate Enough Time And Energy To Captioning
Creating closed captions involves precision, patience, and endurance. Hence, captioning requires a lot of time and energy, which you may be reluctant to spend when you have more important tasks to do.
Nonetheless, it is definitely worthwhile to enhance the reach and engagement of your content.
As you decide when you’ll create closed captions, dedicate a certain amount of time solely to this task. Put your focus into writing the captions and remove distractions. This lets you be productive and efficient with captioning.
3. (Serious) Practice Is Key
Like any other skill, closed captioning takes practice. Of course, it may be difficult to take practicing captioning seriously, especially when it’s tedious and only feels worthwhile if it’s urgent.
You can, nevertheless, take this as an opportunity to build discipline and grit (on top of your captioning skills).
Try taking out 2-3 hours of your week to practice captioning a 1-hour video. Over time, you’ll build a strong muscle memory and workflow for creating closed captions.
4. Caption Them All (Or Don’t Caption At All)
It is important to remember that closed captioning should be consistent across all your videos. If you choose to have captions in one video, it is recommended to have them in all. This not only ensures that you reach a wider audience but also provides a better viewing experience. Inconsistency in closed captioning can be distracting for viewers and may negatively impact their experience.
Thus, you should hold back on providing closed captions in your videos until you have a sustainable workflow for providing captions in all your content.
And if you do find a captioning strategy, go all out!
5. Use Transcriptions
Audio and video transcriptions are also worth adding to your video content strategy for three reasons.
- They serve as a crucial first step in your closed captioning process. As captions are finalized, they’re converted into a file that is difficult to access. Having a transcript gives you an accessible textual version of your video dialogue.
- You can use transcriptions for repurposing your videos into other forms of content like blog posts, podcasts, or social media posts.
- It makes planning future content easy.
Transcription, however, can also be time and resource-intensive. Consider outsourcing it to an expert transcription provider so you can enjoy its benefits without the drawbacks.
6. Typing Speed Is Captioning Speed
When creating closed captions, your typing speed is half of the story.
Being able to type quickly can significantly cut down the captioning process, as you can catch up with the spoken words or dialogue. This is possible by learning touch typing and consistently improving your typing speed.
To achieve this, take typing tests from websites such as TypingTest and 10FastFingers on a regular basis.
7. Optimize Your Captions (And Videos) With Keywords
For content creators, videos can be a potential gold mine for scoring higher on search engine results.
Currently, search engines can only index text-based content to rank your content in search results. Hence, creating closed captions for your videos gives search engines something to index. This works best if your video dialogue contains plenty of search engine optimization (SEO) keywords to begin with, however. If you want to maximize closed captioning for SEO, you need to rethink your video scriptwriting approach.
Focusing on keywords is important even to non-content creators. For instance, university associates and other research professionals can benefit significantly from having keywords in the captions. A shareable copy of the captioning (transcript) allows viewers to easily navigate to key insights or terms with the search function.
8. Language Options Help You Go Farther
On their own, closed captions in your native language substantially increase the accessibility of your video content to non-native speakers — but you can take it one step further with captions in multiple languages.
Use a dedicated translation service provider to help you create captions in other languages. TranscriptionWing, for example, offers flexible translation services on top of expert-made audio transcriptions and closed captions.
9. Master Subtitle File Formats
There are many types of subtitle file formats, with each having distinct advantages and uses. It’s vital to know what those formats are to determine what type is needed for specific videos.
SubRip Subtitle (.srt) files, for instance, may be ideal for providing clear, simple subtitles to your videos offline. On the other hand, SubViewer (.sbv) is crucial for providing captions for YouTube videos via YouTube Studio.
10. Outsource Captioning To An Expert Provider
Even when you’ve mastered creating closed captions, it still takes a significant amount of time and energy to do. With video content becoming higher in demand regardless of profession, captioning becomes even more taxing to do. Wyzowl, for instance, reported that 91% of consumers expect more online videos from brands in 2023, a trend that is expected to ring true in other industries.
The most sustainable way of utilizing closed captions for your video content is to outsource the captioning process to a dedicated expert firm. They must be capable of offering a variety of services, such as rush transcription services, that are powered by human transcriptionists for accuracy and flexibility.
TranscriptionWing, for example, offers academic transcription services for university researchers, as well as interview transcription services for market researchers.
Creating Closed Captions Is Key To Video Content Success In 2024
Closed captioning in your video content need not be difficult to achieve. With these 10 tips for creating closed captions, you’ll be well on your way to massively increasing your video engagement, reach, and accessibility.
Video content creation also need not be challenging to do on your own. No matter what niche or profession you’re in, you need a transcription and captioning provider like TranscriptionWing you can rely on.
