Recent YouTube improvements have made watching online videos with captions better than ever.
Since YouTube’s introduction of caption support in 2006, the social media site has been a trendsetter for online accessibility.
New YouTube Features Enhance Video Captioning and Accessibility
With voice recognition technology, videos can auto-caption, or the owner can provide a verbatim transcript. YouTube will then automatically synchronize the text with the spoken word.
A special caption file (.SRT) could also be used to manually add a synchronized caption script.
In March 2012, new FCC rules were published in the Federal Register, making captioning required for broadcast programs distributed over the Internet.
The law mandates that the Internet captions must be of the same quality as the televised captions.
This includes moveable placement of the captions to identify speakers and to avoid covering faces or graphics, a feature not previously supported by YouTube.
In addition, the FCC has challenged program owners and distributors to support other advanced features. These include user-selectable font sizes, colors, and backgrounds for captions.
Because the new regulations take effect on September 30, 2012, nearly every Internet video platform will be impacted. As a result, they will soon upgrade the captioning of online videos.
Once again, YouTube has risen to the challenge by introducing new captioning features. These features set the standard for the accessibility of online videos.
Here’s a preview of the new features.
Display Settings:
The user can now change the way captions display on the video. Click the ‘CC’ icon and then the ‘Settings’ menu item to configure the font size and colors.
Placement:
Instead of displaying captions only at the bottom of the video, YouTube now supports caption placement.
Just like watching captions on TV, viewers now see captions move across the screen to indicate who is speaking. This also helps avoid covering faces or graphics.
Languages:
Automatic captions now include Japanese, Korean, and English. Plus, video owners can create and add captions in 155 supported languages and dialects.
Search Options:
Users searching YouTube for a particular quote can simply add “, CC” to the search, or filter after searching by clicking Filter > CC.<.p>
Broadcast Captions:
Video owners now have more options when adding captions to their videos.
Broadcast caption formats such as .SCC, .CAP, EBU-STL, and others now support captions.
In addition, if a video owner uploads an MPEG-2 video with CEA-608 encoded closed captions, the system automatically imports the captions with the video.
The new accessibility features of YouTube are setting the pace for other media sites and program distributors.
What other sites would you like to see implement feature-rich captions like these?
Read more about these features on the YouTube Blog.
Ben Kalb
Ben is a broadcast engineer and creator of StationDrop. With a longevity in the broadcast industry, over 20 years, Ben has experience with everything from 1” tape reels to completely file-based workflows. Recently, Ben has broken into the world of coffee. Ask him about his latest brew.
