Texas Tech University

On Accessibility

Captioning Software Available to TTU

by Jackie L. Luft, Ed.D.

Instructors who create instructional videos will be happy to hear that Worldwide eLearning has purchased self-captioning software, Synchimedia Movie Captioner, to help with the captioning of their videos. This software is extremely easy to use and users can either transcribe the captions of an existing video, or upload a transcript and set the caption timings.

The easiest and fastest way to self-caption an instructional video is to write the transcript ahead of time and then set the timings. Although this goes against what we normally do in a class lecture, writing a transcript for our video can seriously reduce the amount of captioning time after the video is recorded.

I would like to use one instructor I have been working with as an example. She wrote out her transcript, recorded the audio and then used screen casting software to record the video while the audio played. Once all the recording was complete, the instructor used the already written transcript with Movie Captioner to import the captions in the video. The time stamps are saved as the instructor listened to the video.

How does having a transcript save you time on captioning? First of all, you only write down information that covers the objectives. Typically, an instructor will answer questions from the class, and use individuals' experiences to modify the face-to-face lecture. When you write a script for an instructional video before recording, you eliminate any information that is not pertinent to the specific objective. Secondly, it takes less time to write a transcript before recording then after recording. Also, since you have a transcript in front of you, you spend less time re-recording or adding to a lecture about information you may have accidently omitted.

If you already have recorded lectures, Movie Captioner can still help. You can easily upload your video. The video will play in loops of four seconds, or any other amount of time you determine. As you type the transcript, you can press enter to go on to the next four seconds. Eventually, the entire movie will be captioned, with time stamps in alignment. 

There are many aspects of this product that are not discussed in this article but Movie Captioner has several tutorials that are only four to five minutes long each. Another great thing about our license with Movie Captioner is that students can also use this software. If you require students to create videos for a course requirement, you may also ask them to make sure the video is captioned. This will teach the students to be aware of accessibility in their own online content.

The Movie Captioner software can only be downloaded on Texas Tech computers so if you have a computer lab that will need this software, contact Worldwide eLearning or your IT department. 

We are planning upcoming workshops and training on how to better use this software, and, as always, you can find the list of accessibility workshops we offer at eLearning's events page and the TLPDC event registration page. Please be sure to register. If you have several people in your department and would like to have a more content-centered accessibility training, we would love to do that for you: just send an email with your request.