Transcripts

From captions to transcript

All the videos we feature on the University website contain captions. Also known as closed captions (that's why you see the CC logo). These differ slightly from subtitles in that they describe important sounds [eg a loud crash] as well as dialogue. These captions are added in YouTube to make our content accessible and inclusive.

When you add your video to the website using Terminal Four, you use this caption content as the basis for your transcript [you may need to also add descriptions of visual content]. This article will show you how to add a transcript to your video content in T4. But first, here are some of the reasons why all our videos require this.

Why we need transcripts

Did you know that 85% of Facebook videos are watched without sound? With regards to time, locality, or even personal preferences, not every visitor is bound to watch or listen to your video content on every visit. The surrounding they’re in could be noisy, maybe they forgot their headset/headphones, or they just prefer written to video materials.

People on a tight schedule might be in urgent need of particular information; there might not be sufficient time to listen to a 30-minute video. And, people with hearing and sight impairments may be relying on a transcript to provide them access to the content. Transcription enables your visitors to have convenient and reliable access to your content.

There are also SEO (search engine optimisation) benefits to including transcripts with your videos as transcription allows search crawlers the ease of access to your text content and, as a result, directs more organic traffic to the webpage.

Creating a high-quality transcript and captions means:

• Improving the user experience and allowing people to check content detail
• Complying with our legal requirements regarding caption quality and accuracy
• Enhancing the University of Derby brand image by providing high-quality content and improving trust, credibility and rapport
• Increasing user engagement and return on investment for your video

So, now you know the why. Here’s the how:

Step-by-step guide

1. Open the Media Embed component (where you add your video to your page) in T4. [You can skip the next two steps if you already have your closed caption content within an SRT file, for example. However, using the following method avoids the need to delete the timestamps]

2. Go to your video in YouTube and open up the transcript pane by clicking on the three horizontal dots underneath the video and choosing "Open transcript".

3. When the transcript opens in the top right-hand corner, it will have timestamps listed. You remove these by clicking on the three vertical dots next to where it says Transcript and choosing "Toggle timestamps". The timestamps will disappear. Copy the text in the transcript pane.

Our short video shows you how to complete steps 2 and 3.

4. Once you have your timestamp-free transcript, go back into T4. Scroll down to the Transcript field in the Media Embed component and paste in the content. You should always "paste as text" (if you have copied from YouTube) either by using the Edit dropdown or by using Ctrl-Shift-V.

Transcripts can difficult to read in one long post so it’s important to format the content as you would an article or blog post and break the text up into paragraphs. You will also have to remove any mid-sentence line breaks.

5. You may need to add additional content to the transcript - contextual details alongside the speech, ie important sounds and essential visual content, for instance "Radzi walks out of the Sports Centre on to the empty, pristine sports pitch and spreads his arms wide". 

This descriptive content fills in the gaps of information by including critical sound elements, important visual actions, scene changes, and any text shown on the screen. This should provide information on visual and sound content that is considered essential to the comprehension of the content, such as significant visual details and important sounds, that cannot be understood from a transcript containing speech alone. See our related guidance about audio descriptions. 

6. Add a name in the "Media Name" field. This is what creates the link from your main page to your transcript page. The system will add the words "view" and "video transcript" to the link so you should not put those in the name. If you have added an audio-described version of the video, the link will also include "and audio description".

7. Save your content as pending and check to see how your page looks in a preview.

8. Follow the link to view your video transcript in the preview. This will take you to your separate transcript page where you can see how it will appear on the website.