Man on tram looking at his smartphone

Watching videos with the sound off

If you are publishing videos on social media without captions, you may be missing out on reaching a big part of your audience.

Captions are not only used by the hard of hearing – they enable anyone to watch videos on their device in public, without disturbing others.

A 2019 Verizon / Publicis Media survey conducted in the United States found that 69% of people viewed videos without sound in public places. So for video creators, that means your message may not be getting through – unless you provide a visual alternative, such as captions.

With 80% of respondents saying they were more likely to watch a video that had captions, this means that captions not only provide an alternative to a soundtrack, they can also help you reach a new audience.

What are captions?

There are two types of captions:

Closed Captions are able to be switched on and off by the viewer, and typically are a complete transcript of any speech heard in the video, seen at the bottom of the screen. To work, a separate caption file has to be uploaded with the video file.

Open Captions (or “burned in” captions) are permanently visible and are included in the video editing process. This is more typical in a social media scenario, where the captions can be made larger, and animate on and off the screen.

How do I get captions for my videos?

For short videos, you can manually transcribe and add captions (depending on your editing software). Longer videos take a long time to transcribe and caption. At contentgroup we use professional captioners, who provide a closed caption file ready to upload. Open captions can be created from this file as well, but additional steps in the editing process are needed.

If you need contentgroup’s assistance in creating captioned videos, or just have a question about the process, get in touch today – we’re here to help.

 

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