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April 19, 2023 By Jake Drown

The Battle of Automated Captions: Facebook vs YouTube

Header images showing Facebook vs YouTube Captions

The Battle of Automated Captions: Facebook vs YouTube

Are you tired of inaccurate captions on your social media videos? You’re not alone! With more and more people using social media to share videos, it’s essential to ensure that captions are accurate and accessible to everyone. In this blog post, we’ll discuss the automated captioning systems of two social media giants, Facebook and YouTube.

Case Study: A Tale of Two Captions

Let’s start with a quick case study. A video posted on both Facebook and YouTube with automated captions. The speaker’s accent is not from the region where the language of the video is spoken. The YouTube caption has a few mistakes, but the meaning is still intact. On the other hand, Facebook’s automated caption is a complete mess, with words that don’t make sense and a lot of unintelligible gibberish. If you’re like most viewers, you’d prefer the YouTube caption over Facebook’s. But this doesn’t mean the battle of Facebook vs YouTube Captions is won as both fall short in accuracy.

Accuracy of Automated Captions

Automated captions have come a far way in recent years. However, they still have a long way to go before they can replace human captions. Automated captions are often inaccurate, especially if the video has background noise or music, the speaker has a heavy accent, or there are multiple speakers. Moreover, automated captions often miss important details, such as proper nouns, acronyms, and technical terms.

Why Human Captions Are Still the Most Accurate

Professional captioners create human captions by carefully listening to the audio and accurately transcribing it. Unlike automated captions, human captions can understand context, distinguish between different speakers, and add details that may be missing from the audio. Additionally, human captioners can ensure that captions appear on the screen at the right moment by properly timing them.

At CaptionLabs, we provide high-quality closed captioning services that are accurate, affordable, and fast. Our team of professional captioners can create captions for any video, including live broadcasts, webinars, podcasts, and more. We use the latest technology and tools to ensure that our captions are accurate and meet all accessibility requirements. Whether you’re a content creator, marketer, or business owner, we can help you reach a wider audience and increase engagement.

While automated captions have come a long way, they still have limitations and are often inaccurate. Human captions, on the other hand, provide the highest level of accuracy and accessibility. If you want to ensure that your videos are accessible to everyone, it’s best to choose a reliable captioning service like CaptionLabs. Request a quote today to learn more about our closed captioning services and how we can help you reach a wider audience.

Jake Drown

Jake Drown is our Vice President and oversees our day-to-day operations. Jake thrives on solving our customer’s problems - if you’re stuck at a roadblock, he’s the one you need to call. As a jack-of-all-trades, you never know what you will find Jake doing on the weekends! He and his family are seasoned travelers and can be found anywhere from a mountain top, a forest, a beach, or even a corn field!

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