Subtitles for lesson videos

Why captions help language learners

Students who are still learning English understand more when they can read along: unfamiliar words are spelled out, fast speech becomes text they can pause on, and subject terms stay on screen long enough to copy. Captions help every student in a noisy room, too.

Steps

1. Open the studio and add the recorded lesson, from a screen recording, Zoom, Meet or your phone.
2. Click Find words. On cloud transcription, add subject terms as key terms so they're spelled right the first time.
3. Read the transcript and click any word to fix it.
4. Export an MP4 with the captions burned in, or an SRT or VTT file for your platform.

Settings for students learning English

• Clean or Boxed, at the bottom of the frame, so the captions read like subtitles rather than social video.
• Six to eight words per caption on two lines, so students see whole phrases.
• Editorial keeps punctuation and dims the words not yet spoken, which makes sentences easy to follow.

Students who need their own language

Cuecaps captions the language that's spoken; it doesn't translate. Upload the SRT file to YouTube with the video, and students can choose Auto-translate in the subtitle settings to read a machine translation in their language. For exact wording, keep your own captions as the reference.

Questions