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.)

Swallowed by the Google Search Machine

Google me.... it's harder than you (and I) would have thought! Watch the short video below to see why: When doing this name search assignment I decided to do a video screencast rather than individual screenshot images because I had four different searches I wanted to accomplish--my current name, my maiden name, my professional name (Sra. Taylor), and my newly decided upon web presence name (SraTaylor10).  The searches proved that I am much less present on the web than I thought I was, much more of a visitor rather than a resident. I think this is partly due to all of my personas over the past few years and a lot to do with not having an established web presence "handle." Reflecting on this I have strangely mixed feelings. One one hand it's kind of nice knowing that I'm not usually the first thing that comes up in a Google search. It gives me a sense of privacy and security (perhaps a false sense, but a sense nonetheless). On the other hand, I'm proud of my accomplishments--both professionally and personally--and it makes me a little sad to know that those are hidden away unless you really know how to find them.  But since changing these things from the past is impossible, I'm looking forward to going ahead my new web presence name as I further integrate myself online and seeing how it will help centralize my current internet persona. Hopefully it will strengthen and help foster my move toward the resident side of the spectrum, at least in the professional realm.