DPR&Co Senior Account Manager Carla has been generating and inserting captions into videos for her clients for over 7 years. Here’s her crash course on video captions.
What are video captions?
Video captions are defined as the timed transcript of a video’s dialogue and audio, appearing on screen.
Why are captions important?
Captions are essential to meet video accessibility standards and to ensure viewers with a hearing impairment can fully comprehend the video’s content. But in the modern digital age, captions are also important to ensure all viewers can comprehend the video’s content, even with their phone or laptop muted. I recommend inserting either open or closed captions into all videos.
What’s the difference between open captions and closed captions?
Closed captions can be turned on or off by the viewer – for example, when watching Netflix. They are separate text files (most commonly .srt files), uploaded at the same time as the video file. Open captions are burnt into the video file and are permanently visible. They cannot be turned off by the viewer.
What type of caption do you recommend?
Different caption types are recommended for different media formats. Here are my recommendations:
- TV ads: Closed captions (inserted during TV despatch)
- BVOD ads: Open captions (as closed captioning isn’t yet available for Australian BVODs)
- YouTube videos and ads: Closed captions (.srt file)
- Facebook videos and ads: Closed captions (.srt file)
- Instagram: Open captions (as Instagram only allows for auto-generated captions)
- TikTok: Open captions (as TikTok only allows for auto-generated captions)
Can you create captions for my video?
Everyone in DPR&Co’s project management team is proficient in creating both open and closed captions for all video types.
Need help creating and rolling out your digital media campaigns? Let’s chat.
