Captioning for videos

This guide will show you how to add closed captions (subtitles) to a video in the Editor, how to add ASR (automatic speech recognition) generated captions to your Panopto sessions and how to manually upload captions to your Panopto recording. Panopto also allows users to upload caption files for multiple languages within the captions settings for any video. Both the interactive and embedded players automatically display captions in the user’s current browser language and make it easy for users to switch which language’s captions are displayed.

The following topics will be covered.

1. How to manually caption sessions.

2. How to add ASR captions.

3. How to upload a caption file.

Step One: How to manually caption sessions

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1. Open the video in the editor by selecting Edit.

2. On the left-hand side of the screen, click on the Captions tab.

3. Click inside the box that says Enter a caption and you will be able to begin typing along with the video.

4. To edit or delete the caption, hover over the appropriate caption and click the three dots where the Edit and Delete buttons will appear.

5.If you choose to edit the caption, the following screen will appear. You can edit the time and caption from this screen.

6. Once you have added all the caption you want, click the Apply button in the top right-hand corner to show them to your viewers.

7. This is how the captions will appear to your viewers by default.

 

Step Two:  How to add ASR captions

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Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) captions are available soon after a video has been uploaded and processed. Given below are the target completion times for the captions.

Target completion time for videos one hour or shorter: 8 hours
Target completion time for videos over an hour: One day

The machine-generated captions are not 100% reliable. They need to be revised and edited to ensure they are 100% accurate before sharing with others.

1.  Find and open the session where you wish to manage the captions in the Panopto Editor.

2.  Select Captions from the left side of the editor, and then click the Import captions drop-down.  Import the machine-generated captions by clicking Import automatic captions.

3. Once the captions upload and have been processed successfully, you will then be able to edit the captions.  To do this you can click directly into the box where the captions are to add or delete words, or by clicking the three dots next to the caption and choosing Edit.  

4.  You can completely delete the caption by clicking the trash can icon.

At any time while making these edits, you can press Shift+Space to play/pause the session playback, while editing captions. 

 

5. Once you've imported/edited your captions, commit the changes by pressing the Apply button on the top right of the Editor.

Step Three: How to upload a caption file

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1. Preparing a Caption File for Upload

Panopto supports the upload of *.srt, *.ashx, *.vtt, and *.dxfp files as captions for a video.  These files can be formatted in the following manner:

        00:00:00,500 --> 00:00:07,040
        [ Music ]


        00:00:07,040 --> 00:00:08,300
        >> In order to palpate the medial epicondyle 


        00:00:08,300 --> 00:00:12,320
        of the femur start with your hand on the medial aspect


        00:00:12,320 --> 00:00:15,870
        of the thigh and move in a distal direction


Or you can save a block of text as a supported filetype.

Captions can be written in a regular text editor such as TextEdit, or NotePad.

 2. Upload the Captions

2.1. Navigate to the video you will be captioning and click Settings.

2.2. Click on the Captions tab in the left-hand navigation.



2.3. Click Browse under the Upload Captions header in the Captions Interface, and open your captions file.





2.4. If the captions are based on an edited session, click the Captions are based on the entire edited session checkbox. If this checkbox doesn't show up, contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and ask them to enable it.

2.5.  Click Upload Captions.

2.6. If the Upload Captions section doesn't show up, contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and ask them to enable it.

3. Reviewing your Captions

3.1.  Navigate back to your video. Your captions will now play through the duration of your video.  Listen and read them to ensure the timing is correct.