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donaldw30326818
Known Participant
December 9, 2021
Question

Captivate 2019 Closed Caption Options?

  • December 9, 2021
  • 2 replies
  • 2254 views

Hi All,

I did  a brief search and didn't find anything pertaining to my question, so apologies if I am flagellating an expired equine.

 

I have an hour-plus video that is being converted to eLearning. I need to included closed captioning.

 

How are people handling closed captioning in Captivate? I understand that Captivate does not import CC files. There are services that provide transcripts that are machine-generated and machine-human generated. That helps. But is there a way to get these transcripts into Captivate other than copy/paste?

 

Are there services that will handle transcription AND CC inclusion in a supplied Captivate file?

 

The need for closed captions is an increasing demand on the work my area produces, so I am hoping to find a sustainable process rather than a one-off ad hoc that solves my immediate problem.... but will cheerfully accept an ad hoc to get this project out the door.

 

Many thanks!

 

Don

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    2 replies

    Paul Wilson CTDP
    Community Expert
    Paul Wilson CTDPCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    December 11, 2021

    Perhaps this might help you. https://youtu.be/SgBx9yl18y0 

    Paul Wilson, CTDP
    D
    donaldw30326818Author
    Known Participant
    December 13, 2021

    Hi Paul,

    Huge fan, BTW. Without  you and Lilybiri, I would be lost.

     

    Your video is a great intro to manual captioning. But I am seeking the holy grail of captioning - having Captivate automagically create and time its own closed captions.

     

    This is beyond Captivate at the moment. So the next approach is to use the technique described by TLCMediaDesign and take a VTT file, an HTML file and an MP4 file. smash them all together and insert the zip file as an HTML Animation object in a Captivate project.

     

    I am still working on the nuances of this approach. A coworker grabbed the idea and ran with it, I am still catching up. The idea works well enough, but what is lacking is timing. The HTML Animation approach does not allow for variable timing. Getting a VTT transcript from Transcribe, for example (the transcribing service I am using here for this) requires that pre-determine the time hack duration: 1 second, 5 seconds, up to 999 seconds. But obviously each slide and section of that slide is not going to fall neatly into these pre-set time groups.

     

    In my ultimate state vision, I would like to be able to play the MP4 file and mark the time hacks that inticate when the next caption appears, and then have Captivate or another tool, generate the VTT file with the specific time cues. Alternately,  perhaps have a continuous scrolling CC window - and this may be the easiest approach to implement.

     

    The group I am in has a mandate for all eLearning to have closed captions. And this is a good requirement. Accessibility is no longer a nice add-on. BUT.... the creation of captions - from voice to text, correcting the text, timing the text, is time consuming. An alternate, having a service manually time a VTT for importation, is (for our department) expensive and we have not line-itemed the cost for this in our budget.

     

    As some of these presentations extend for two hours (I know... we are working on that....) captioning is taking up a larget chunk of overall development time.

     

    Don

    Paul Wilson CTDP
    Community Expert
    Paul Wilson CTDPCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    December 13, 2021

    Take a look at this video about the next release of Adobe Captivate:

    https://youtu.be/nFpwS-WKH2g?t=2584

     

    If you watch at approximately 46:47 you will see that there is an option to add and IMPORT captions for this project. While this is only pre-beta software, it's clear that the engineers at Adobe are thinking along the same lines as us like minded individuals.

    Paul Wilson, CTDP
    TLCMediaDesign
    TLCMediaDesign
    Inspiring
    December 9, 2021

    Basically the answer is no to all of your questions, you need to copy and paste and time them.

     

    If you can use a service and they provide a .vtt file, that would be the easiest and the timing would stay consistent throughout the length of the video. You would need to create an html file with the video and .vtt or other CC format file, zip them all up and insert into CP as an HTML5 animation.

    D
    donaldw30326818Author
    Known Participant
    December 9, 2021

    I guess having a voice-to-text feature built into Captivate is not on the drawing boards?

     

    Your HTML5 animation solution..... I am not familair with this aspect of Captivate. Does this mean that the captioning would be an HTML5 animation, or the whole Captivate video would be an HTML5 animation that now includes the captioning?

    TLCMediaDesign
    TLCMediaDesign
    Inspiring
    December 9, 2021

    You create an html file with the video and vtt linked in the video tag. You would then zip the three files together, html, mp4 and .vtt and insert into Captivate as an HTML5 Animation. This link explains the html and vtt.

     

    https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/Audio_and_video_delivery/Adding_captions_and_subtitles_to_HTML5_video

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