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Closed Captioning
Do you provide closed captioning as a service?
Do you provide closed captioning as a service?

Need help with closed captioning? Read this article before contacting customer service.

Updated over a week ago

Videolinq is a leader in providing closed captioning for live streams and recorded files. We help broadcasters simplify the way they create and add closed captioning to content. Adding closed captioning to a video can be done manually or by using an automated system. Read this article about the difference between human to automated captioning. The five use cases listed below represent the most common workflows our customers use. If your project does not fit in any of these examples, contact us for further assistance.

Live: Automated Captioning

We offer native or translated automated closed captioning for live streams. This is a fee-based service adding AI-generated closed captioning to a live stream with the ability to improve accuracy by using a real-time editor to correct mistakes before the captions are inserted into the live stream. When the broadcast ends, download the caption in SRT or VTT format, or save the transcripts.

Live: Human Captioning

We are integrated with leading closed-captioning tools helping 3rd party stenograph operators connect to Videolinq and publish closed captioning manually when using 1CapApp, Streamtext, EEG Falcon/iCap, or Telestream. This is a courtesy-free service. Customers are responsible for bringing their own service providers and paying them directly for the service.

If you need Videolinq to provide you with a stenograph operator contact us in advance.

Live: Captions in the Video

Customers with hardware encoders who hire closed captioning operators to insert captions to the video can pass the video with captions over an SDI cable to their media encoder. They point the encoder to their Videolinq channel and deliver live video with closed captioning. Videolinq will distribute this signal to the customer's destination or player of choice. This is a courtesy-free service.

VOD: Automated Captions

Use our native or translated automated closed captioning service to generate SRT or VTT captions files. Upload recorded media in the MP4 format. Select the language spoken in the video from 60+ options, start the service, and wait till it is done. When the caption file is created, open the captions editor to correct spelling mistakes. Export the caption in SRT or VTT format for uploading to social media and 3rd party video platforms. You can also export the ready-to-use transcripts in PDF format.

VOD: Ready Captions

You have already the captions files. Upload recorded media in MP4 format together with a caption file provided by a closed captioning service. The caption file must be in the VTT format and named the same as the media file. For example:

myfile.mp4 (this is the recorded clip)

myfile.vtt (this is the caption file)

Use the recorded media + caption file to create a player for video-on-demand or as a video source for a channel. Simulate a live broadcast and publish the live stream to destinations, to a player, or to Studio.

Supported Languages

Automated closed captioning for video-on-demand services (captions and transcript file creation) supports 60+ languages. Adding real-time closed captioning to live video is limited by the CEA-608 standard and supports only the English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and Portuguese languages.

If you are new to these workflows or have a question about your specific needs, please talk to us. We are here to help!

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