Video Platforms and Subtitles

The Importance of Subtitles

We have already discussed the importance of subtitling videos: not only do they make them more accessible to the target audience, but also help it to be better indexed on search engines and better placed in search results.

It’s no coincidence that social and video-first platforms where the “audio off” setting is the default are now everywhere. This shows the extent to which subtitles are important to new media, they are a silent and effective tool to get your message straight to the audience.

In fact, subtitles are one more reason to stay glued to the screen when you cannot listen to audio content directly. This is crucial information in terms of business, so if the aim is to bring the video to an international audience, you should seriously consider not only subtitling your videos, but also having those subtitles translated.

Keep in mind that while there is a huge number of tools out there to help you do this, they all basically boil down to two methods.

How to Create Subtitles

Creating the Subtitles “Manually”

This is a time intensive process that also requires specific software and a good grasp of writing skills. Far more than just a matter of “jotting down” a series of words and expressions, this means transcribing and synchronizing the subtitles with the audio dialogue, and also using the subtitles to ameliorate unclear segments of audio.

You might start with an automatically generated audio transcript with tools like Amberscript to avoid having to transcribe all the text by hand, but there will still be a substantial amount of correction and adaptation work to do.

You’ll need to synchronize the subtitles with the speakers’ lip movements, pay close attention to timing, take any other text that appears in the video into account (captions, credits, etc.), and ultimately know how to make the most of the space available, consider the per-line character limit, and also manage any overlapping dialogue between speakers.

The benefit, though, is that this time-consuming process allows us to ensure an experience that is just as vivid and engaging for those who aren’t using audio and have to rely on subtitles to follow the video. Turn to an agency specialized in writing subtitles and you’ll reap all the benefits and save yourself from falling into related pitfalls, not to mention the advantage of being able to get “tailor-made” subtitles in multiple languages to reach a much wider audience.

If you decide to translate the content into one or more languages, you will have to go forward with translating and synchronizing the translated subtitles. Unless you are dealing with videos that are openly amateur, it is always best to rely on a professional.

Generating Subtitles Automatically

The (often) automatically generated transcription of the video content is called “closed captioning”.

Closed captioning, as intended in this article, is less “refined” subtitling, aimed at a faithful recreation of the audio in text form. Unlike proper subtitles, closed captions that simply report what is said, without claiming to actively aid understanding, are already fulfilling their job description.

This operation is done using specialized software which is often integrated directly into the video platforms, which use voice recognition technology to generate a transcription in real time, while also relying on artificial intelligence. Some platforms also allow changes to be made to the generated text even if, as mentioned, we do not have to worry about adapting the text to particular communication needs in this case, as it should be enough to simply correct any transcription errors.

Platforms like YouTube take things one step further by letting you use machine translation technology directly connected to the platform, which translates the closed caption content simultaneously and synchronizes it with the images as best as possible.

“Great” you must be thinking, “all I have to do is upload my videos to a platform like that then”. Well, there’s good news and there’s bad news. The good news is that, yes, technically it could be enough to do so. The bad news is that, since we are dealing with artificial intelligence and tool is still in development, most of the results can hardly be called satisfactory. Speaking of corporate videos, then, where the message being communicated is more complex than a simple chat at the bar, it’s best to be doubly careful.

How-to: Subtitles on Major Video Platforms

Not all online video broadcasting and sharing platforms let you manage subtitles so easily. Each of the industry giants has its own method, each with varying degrees of flexibility, but one thing they all have in common is the continuous development and improvement of subtitles and closed captioning. The frontrunner, undisputedly, is YouTube.

How to Upload Subtitles to YouTube Videos

Using YouTube definitely has its advantages when creating subtitles for your content. The platform has been working on this issue for a long time and it is certainly one of those that offer more options for inserting and managing both subtitles and closed captioning.

It is one of the few to use voice recognition technology, yielding acceptable results in about ten languages (the most widely spoken), when the themes of the dialogue are relatively simple and the languages do not have any particular regional influences.

For the remaining languages, the advice is to insert the subtitles manually and to avoid taking forever to correct transcription, spelling, and grammar errors.

Once the video has been uploaded on the platform, in fact, the user has the opportunity to edit the subtitles proposed by the software by going to Video Management > Edit > Subtitles/CC (all of this obviously after having selected the content language in the settings). Once the necessary changes are made, simply confirm and save. You can find the relevant step-by-step guide Here.

To translate content into another language, simply do the same procedure by setting that language in the initial phase, though, as previously mentioned, an automatically generated translation is unlikely to yield adequate results.

In fact, when your video’s purpose is to help the company reach and make itself known to an international audience and in multiple languages, not only will it need translating, but the message itself will need adapting, as otherwise it may cause more confusion than anything else.

How to Upload Subtitles on Dailymotion Videos

The world’s second largest video publishing site is still a step behind the leader on the subtitle issue. Dailymotion allows users to choose the language for subtitle input and attach them in the form of a file previously created with a special program. Alternatively, the platform also comes with an editor where you can add subtitles manually and sync them with images.

Closed captioning, however, is not included. Since automatically generated closed captions are a good starting point for improving the accessibility of videos in their native language, this is where creators of non-professional or non-commercial videos might turn their noses up.

To manage subtitles on Dailymotion, go to the page of the uploaded video and click on the small pencil icon at the bottom right to display the information and settings of the video. Now all you have to do is click “Subtitles” and from there choose whether to upload a subtitle file or add subtitles yourself using the editor. As with YouTube, we’ll leave you a link to the guide.

How to Upload Subtitles on Facebook Videos

At a time when awareness and inclusion initiatives are becoming very valuable, even social media platforms where videos aren't necessarily the top priority, have been quick to add captions and subtitles to encourage greater content accessibility.

Not only that.

With the default settings, every video on Facebook initially plays in mute, meaning it is up to the user to turn the audio on if they’re interested and if their environment allows for it.

This means that most users very often play videos without audio, focusing all their attention on any images and subtitles that may be present, meaning they take on a decisive role. Together with the images, subtitles become the pivotal element for understanding audiovisual content.

Facebook has enabled closed captioning for its media content, however, this feature is only available at full capacity in English (US) and for users running business pages. Recently, experiments have begun to appear in other languages, like Italian, which makes us think that some background work is going on, meaning more users will be able to see these in their own native languages.

In general, business page managers have an opportunity to add subtitles and closed captioning to their videos after uploading them and selecting the language of the content, keeping in mind that even Facebook has an option to review subtitles before finally uploading them.

How to Upload Subtitles for Instagram Videos

Instagram has also gone to great lengths to give its users the opportunity to watch videos silently and without missing out on anything being said. In this case, the feature is limited to IGTV only, a special type of content that works independently of the popular Instagram Stories and that is managed by an integrated app within the platform.

To enable subtitles, you need to go to your Instagram settings, click on Account > Subtitles > Auto-generated subtitles, then upload the IGTV video and enable “Auto-generated subtitles” in the advanced settings.

Even in this case the generation of closed caption is not perfect and the quality obtained depends very much on how intelligible the words spoken are, and the AI’s ability to transform the sounds into written form. It seems this feature will also be released in multiple languages, so as to provide a translated version of the auto-generated subtitles as well.

The New Giants: How to Upload Subtitles on TikTok and Twitch Videos

Somewhat surprisingly, not even TikTok, the youngest social media platform out there, allows closed captioning and subtitles to be included directly in its videos, if not manually, despite the app’s high degree of customization in terms of content, playback speed, duration, effects, filters.

There are, however, several apps, like Clips (which you can find out more about here), that have a number of options to further edit content to be uploaded to the platform, including automatically generated closed captions.

In the case of Twitch, a large live streaming platform aimed especially at eSports fans, the use of closed captioning is the main captioning strategy since it matches the vast majority of purposes that users have.

The platform also allows you to watch content on demand, so the option to add subtitles to the video to be uploaded is still there, but being a popular platform for its “live” mode, captions in real time are especially necessary. This guide explains how to configure closed captioning from the site settings.

How to Manage Subtitles on Corporate Videos

Communication must be smooth, flowing, flawless: there is no margin of error. You can’t risk giving an approximate or unprofessional impression, nor can you afford to lose users who immediately scroll down the page to move on to the next video when they spot a mistake or are unable to understand a piece of content because of one.

In order to achieve a certain effect in the reader, it becomes essential to pay close attention to the content of what is being communicated and the tone of voice used, especially when it comes to communication for educational or advertising purposes.

What Not to Do

It should be clear by now. Subtitles can greatly improve the interactivity and engagement of your videos, but there’s no gun to your head. If you decide that this is not a priority for the company, that’s perfectly fine; the important thing is not to end up with a job poorly done that might, have quite the opposite effect: a negative impact on your corporate image.

At the end of the day, there are two things not to do. On the one hand, you should avoid publishing machine-generated subtitles without first reviewing them or, worse, having them reviewed by someone who doesn’t know where to look for corrections.

On the other hand, our impartial advice is not to start a subtitling initiative by blindly allocating time and financial resources before you are sure that who’s in charge of it, be they internally resourced or a supplier, has the right qualifications to successfully complete the project.

And if, on top of this, you want subtitles in multiple languages, then you can’t do without looking for a professional partner to manage this activity.

When we say audiovisual translation, what we are really talking about is a higher level of complexity, one that makes it not only redundant, but counter-productive to just “try your hand” at being a subtitler or translator.

Considering that the results of closed captioning translated with machine translation are still limited to the major European languages, and always assuming that the topics addressed in the videos are simple enough to use automatic tools, there remains a risk of obtaining unsatisfactory results and only “saving” on the quality of the work. This field of translation is still considered a complex research area because audiovisual texts are a text type in their own right, and the necessary adaptations are still a cause of some debate.

As well as having to transfer the content expressed in the source language, a good audiovisual translator also chooses the right words for the business strategy adopted, ensures that communication is linguistically and grammatically perfect, takes into account how iconic and verbal elements interrelate and achieves a “code switch” from spoken to written language, while managing to reproduce an illusion of oral speech at the same time.

I know, it sounds complicated, and that’s because it really is, including at the practical level. Now we’ve warned you about what not to do, here comes the light at the end of the tunnel. Let’s take a look at what you should do.

What to Do

Let’s start with the most simple case.

If you want to subtitle an English video for an English-speaking audience on YouTube, it makes sense to consider using automatically generated closed captions, and maybe hire a proofreader to check spelling and grammar. Obviously there is still the option of inputting the subtitles yourself, with all the advantages we have already mentioned, but the support of a professional can save hours of work and money that could otherwise be lost as a result of mistakes.

If you don’t want to put your video on YouTube (such as videos reserved to your web page, offline material to share with customers, etc.), but you still want to automatically generate closed captions, there are valid alternatives available such as VEED.IO and Kapwing, which let you automatically generate closed captions either at the moment the video is uploaded, or by pasting the URL of a video that’s already available online.

If, on the other hand, you want to insert your own version of the subtitles, you still have the option of starting with subtitling software like Aegisub, VLC, or VisualSubSync, for download, or Amara, online.

In this case, the writer must be able to produce a readable, clear and direct text, but above all one that achieves the communicative effectiveness appropriate to the context of reference. Professionals handle aspects like synchronization and possible textual reformulations in case the video contains regionalisms or dialectal forms, typical oral language interludes, pronunciation errors, repetitions, extensions and avoidable blocks or pauses in the written text.

It may seem like a doable job, but if you are not familiar with managing subtitling programs, times and rules, you risk making a big mess and needlessly wasting a great deal of time. Our advice is to make a clear decision and avoid sloppy moves and “quick-fixes”. If you feel that closed captioning is enough for your purposes, use software from the list that we’ve discussed and you will start to see results quickly and with little effort.