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Captions

Summary

Pre-recorded videos must be accurately captioned to meet accessibility standards and for usability.

Relevant VLE site design principles

  • 3.5 Essential: Pre-recorded videos are hosted in a streaming service and captioned accurately.

Captioning & accessibility

Under the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018, University digital resources should meet the WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility standard.

It is your legal obligation to ensure that your digital teaching materials meet this standard.

To meet these standards, pre-recorded videos must have accurate captions. This includes:

  • "at-desk" style lecture recordings: pre-prepared screencast recordings of lectures, talks, cohort feedback etc.
  • lecture capture recordings re-used from a previous academic year
  • video resources provided via YouTube, Box of Broadcasts or other platforms

Panopto provides auto-captioning for recordings, but automatic captions alone are often insufficient without manual quality checking. You will need to check and edit the captions as necessary before making the recording available to students.

Tip

It isn't required to edit auto-captions on lecture captures for the current academic year as these are classed as 'live' recordings. However, students can request that captions be corrected or be made available in an alternative format if necessary.

Captioning best practices

  • Keep Captions Concise: Aim for one to two lines per caption for readability.
  • Ensure Accuracy: Double-check the spelling of names, technical terms, and punctuation.
  • Consistency: Use consistent capitalization and formatting across captions.
  • More detail on subtitles and transcripts (including on YouTube and other platforms) is available on the Practical Guide to media editing.

Edit captions

  1. Sign into Panopto with your University of York credentials, or access the Panopto folder within your VLE site.
  2. Locate the video to edit. Hover over the thumbnail, then click the Edit icon.
    Edit icon appears on hover
  3. In the editing screen, click the Captions tab in the left-hand menu.
    Captions is third in the menu list
  4. Click any caption text to make corrections. Type in the box to modify the text for accuracy, clarity, and punctuation.
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  5. To synchronize captions with audio, click the three dots icon then Edit to manually enter the time, or adjust the start and end times by dragging the handles.
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  6. Preview captions by playing the video to ensure edits are correct and properly timed.
  7. Click Apply in the top-right corner to save your edits. Choose whether to replace the existing session or create a new version.

You can also download the captions, edit the caption file offline and re-upload if you prefer.

Download and upload captions

  1. Locate the relevant video. Hover over the thumbnail, then click the Settings icon.
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  2. In the left-hand options list, select Captions.
  3. Choose the relavant task:
    • To download: Under Available Captions, click the arrow icon next to the relevant captions option, then click Download file.
    • To upload: Under Upload Captions, select the relevant file and cilck Upload Captions
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Create Transcript

Captions can be converted to a transcript to provide a text-based alternative. To do this, remove timestamps from the downloaded caption file and format the captions into coherent paragraphs.

You can do this efficiently using Gemini Notebook:

  1. Log into Gemini Notebook using your UoY account (this prevents your materials being used to train the underlying model).
  2. Upload your caption file as a Source.
  3. In the main Chat function, request the transcript using following prompt:
    "Please convert the provided caption file into a clean transcript. Remove all timestamps and index numbers, and format the text into coherent paragraphs. Keep the text verbatim, but strip out all vocal fillers (such as 'um', 'uh', and 'you know') and ensure the final text is grammatically correct while preserving the original meaning."
  4. Copy/paste the output into a file and provide as needed.

Troubleshooting

  • Misaligned Captions: adjust the timestamps if captions do not sync with audio.
  • Missing Captions: check that captions are enabled and properly uploaded.
  • Saving Issues: check your internet connection; try applying changes again if edits do not save.
  • Visit our comprehensive Panopto Recordings and Captions guide for details on how to edit captions on a larger scale and for more complex editing and troubleshooting tips page.