Adding Subtitles to YouTube Videos

For one of my other classes we were required to record ourselves teaching so that we could analyze it in class and find ways to improve. It sounded like a great idea.... except that I teach Spanish and very few people in that class speak Spanish.

Hmm.... How are they going to understand what I'm doing or saying to help me improve without a ton of pausing/stopping/explaining? I know! SUBTITLES! :) Perfect for a Foreign Language teacher!

The basic process of adding subtitles, or closed captioning, to YouTube videos is pretty easy and straight forward using CaptionTube, a Google-based Beta program. I used this site to help guide me, but here are the steps summarized in my own words.

1. Upload the desired video to your YouTube account. 
2. Go to CaptionTube; Sign-in with your Google account and select a video to upload/sync.
3. Click 'edit' next to the video to get started.
4. Click 'add caption' at the spot in the video where you would like the text to appear and type your text into the box. 
5. Then adjust the caption start time and duration to ensure it starts and ends where you want it to. Use the CaptionTube Help page for shortcuts, visuals, and other FAQs.
   (I did a lot of pressing 'play'/'pause' to know where in the video I wanted the caption and where I wanted it to end--if I had seen the shortcuts earlier, I'm sure it would have been faster).
6. Once you've added all the captions you want, click 'publish', and select 'Publish on YouTube'. 

And voilà, you have a subtitled video. Pretty cool, huh? If the subtitles don't show up initially on your video, click the 'CC' button on the bottom right corner to turn them on. Here's an example video I captioned to show you how it looks when it's all done:



(Note: My class video was about 10 minutes long, and I speak quite quickly, so it took much longer than expected to write the transcript of my lesson and the caption it. BUT the captioning process itself is not difficult! Just don't choose a long video and expect it to go quickly. Also, having a typed-out transcript is really helpful for longer videos--you can just copy/paste into the caption box quickly once that transcribing part is done.)