Closed Captioning for online video

March 29, 2009 11:26 PM

Is there an effective, easy way to make online videos closed captioned for the hearing impaired?

I've recently started doing a lot of short digital documentaries, which I post online, and it would be a huge pain in the ass to cc them using iMovie. Recommendations?

posted by Astro Zombie to media & arts (5 comments total)

No, you'll just have to close caption them yourself. Audio parsing is still a massive pain in the butt.
posted by christhelongtimelurker at 12:37 AM on March 30

I've used Subtitle Workshop on Windows to create a subtitle file. You could burn them into the video (easier), or offer them separately, but I have no advice there.
posted by Pronoiac at 1:28 AM on March 30

Sorry, make that Subtitle Workshop.
posted by Pronoiac at 2:46 AM on March 30

iMovie is lousy for creating captions. I've used Jubler on OS X, and that was a pretty good experience - there's a short learning curve. But it takes time. It took me about half an hour to subtitle a one-minute film; then again, that was my first time doing it. So it is time-consuming no matter how you do it, but there are far better tools than iMovie.
posted by spaceman_spiff at 5:31 AM on March 30

I have had success using Magpie (http://ncam.wgbh.org/webaccess/magpie/) to create captions for QuickTime videos. These aren't true closed captions (the kind that are decoded by special equipment) but rather "open" captions, so you can basically offer two links for a captioned or non-captioned video.
posted by oblique red at 2:04 PM on March 30