Multimedia

Plans. Business and Pro. See Business. Creating captions and transcripts uses credits.

Open Multimedia. A page with no audio or video does not appear here. That list is the full set your team needs to work through.

You can tell a colleague: "Every page we are watching that has audio or video is in Multimedia. If it is missing captions or a transcript, it is on that list."

Create the captions and the transcript

1. Open the audio or video item.
2. Start the captions. SiteScan drafts timed text. This uses credits. Settings → Credits shows the balance, and the plans page says how many minutes one credit covers.
3. Name the speakers. Fix any line that is wrong. Add a note for a sound that matters such as calming background music or a door slam.
4. Write the visual notes for the transcript: what a viewer needs when they cannot see the picture. Sure, the door slammed, but who slammed it? What is on the screen that is not spoken? A chart, a slide, someone pointing, or text that appears in the picture?
5. Mark the item complete when you have checked the words.

Download the files and publish them

Download the caption files and the transcript. You will see Download VTT, Download SRT, and Download transcript. VTT and SRT are the caption files most players accept. Use the format your player asks for. If you are unsure, download both.

SiteScan prepares the files. You publish them where that audio or video actually plays:

• On YouTube, Vimeo or another host, upload the caption file to that video.
• In your content management system, attach the captions to the player on the page.
• Put the transcript on the page as well, or link to it beside the player, so people can read it without pressing play.

If the same file is used on more than one page, add the captions and the transcript in each place it plays. One download can be reused. Each player still needs the file attached.

What good captions and transcripts include

Captions are the timed text on the video. They include the words people say, and the sounds that carry meaning. A door slam, laughter, music starting, or an alarm belongs in the captions when a viewer who is deaf or hard of hearing, or anyone watching the video in a loud or quiet environment without sound, needs that sound to follow the video. Captions that only repeat speech, and skip those sounds, are incomplete.

A transcript is the full text of the audio or video, readable as a document. It names who is speaking, so a reader knows which person said which line. It also describes important things that happen on screen and are not spoken: a chart, a slide, someone pointing, or text that appears in the picture. A transcript that is only a dump of the spoken words misses that visual information.

Read both before you publish. Done looks like this: the player on the website offers captions, and a transcript sits with the audio or video, with speakers named and the important sights described.